Independent Thinking » Privacy

The Rich (Marketers) Aren’t So Different After All

Daria Steigman — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 09:04:48 +0000

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that “the rich are different from you and me.” (And Ernest Hemingway, unblinded by bling, is said to have replied, “Yes, they have more money.)

Turns out, when it comes to marketing, money doesn’t seem to yield a big advantage. According to From Stretched to Strengthened, chief marketing officers (CMOs) are struggling with many of the same challenges that keep small businesses up at night.

Under-prepared for Big Data, Market Fragmentation

It seems no one is ready. As the chart shows, CMOs report feeling unprepared to manage the impact of everything from social media to decreasing privacy and the erosion of brand loyalty. “CMOs are stretched,” write the authors. “Even those who work for the most successful organizations are struggling.” They add:

“One of the most surprising findings… is the degree of consensus among the respondents. No matter where they work, their industry, or how large or successful their organizations are, CMOs are facing many of the same challenges and most feel unprepared to manage them.”

One of the most interesting findings from the report is that many CMOs are still trying to understand markets (not individuals):

At one level, looking just at the challenges of harnessing the data, this makes perfect sense:

Relatively few CMOs … are exploiting the full power of the digital grapevine. Although nearly three-quarters use customer analytics to mine data, only 26 percent are tracking blogs, only 42 percent are tracking third-party reviews, and only 48 percent are tracking consumer reviews. This is largely because the tools, processes, and metrics they use are not designed to capture and evaluate the unstructured data produced by social platforms.

And, yet, the downside of looking only at aggregate data is that they are forced to make a lot of assumptions about individual behaviors.

Is There An Opportunity for Small Business?

Small businesses can have a competitive edge. Sure, we struggle with the same challenges. But we’re closer to all our stakeholders (especially clients/customers, and prospects), so it should be easier for smaller organizations to understand what makes our customers tick.

From Stretched to Strengthened, which reports the findings from one-on-one conversations with over 1,700 CMOs in 19 industries and 64 countries, also looks at the skills CMOs will need to be successful moving forward (including cross-collaboration, creative thinking, and an aptitude for analytics). There’s a lot of good data in the report, so it’s worth taking a look.

Do you think small businesses have an edge? What are you doing in your business to be prepared to meet the challenges ahead?

Have you signed up to receive the Independent Thinking newsletter? Now’s the time! Once a month I’ll send you exclusive, subscriber-only content highlighting interesting articles I’ve found, as well as tips on marketing, social media, and how to grow your business. Sign up today!

Whose Privacy?

Daria Steigman — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 12:32:07 +0000

A colleague e-mailed me the other day to warn me:

Perhaps you aren’t aware, or care, but when I was trying to change my privacy settings, I noticed something about you… Your [Gmail] contact listing showed all your tweet history. I went to “Dashboard” scrolled down to “Social Circle and Content.” Your name was shown as the only one with content and then the listings. I guess that is what tweeting is about.

I just thought this might be a privacy issue for you as well because other contacts can also see it if they have Gmail?

I really appreciate that she cared enough to e-mail me (and I immediately said ”thank you” and tried to explain why I was okay with this). But I was struck by the fact that this had raised a red flag. After all, I knew Gmail was rolling out a new social connectivity feature–and I already use the very robust Rapportive to keep tabs on my contacts’ online activities.

But that’s me, and many of the people in my network.

And it wasn’t this person, or most of the people in her social and professional circles.

It’s useful to be reminded that the online world is still pretty small. We tweet, we tweetchat, and we put our “public-private” lives out there. To me, the only difference between doing this on Twitter and doing it at a conference or a cocktail party is the bigger paper trail.

But lots of people haven’t dipped their toes in. So we have work to do.

Photo by Lel4nd (Flickr).

Privacy, Identity, and Digital Fingerprints

Daria Steigman — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:14:36 +0000

Jeffrey Rosen has a terrific, thought-provoking article in last week’s New York Times Magazine about the end of privacy in our new digital era. In it, he writes:

We are only beginning to understand the costs of an age in which so much of what we say, and of what others say about us, goes into our permanent—and public—digital files. The fact that the Internet never seems to forget is threatening, at an almost existential level, our ability to control our identities; to preserve the option of reinventing ourselves and starting anew; to overcome our checkered pasts…

The truth is that, for a great many people, the permanent memory bank of the Web increasingly means there are no second chances—no opportunities to escape a scarlet letter in your digital past. Now the worst thing you’ve done is often the first thing everyone knows about you.

Rosen looks at the implications of this digital identify and explores potential legal and technological solutions to help us manage and protect our reputations. The article is long–but it is well worth taking the time to read.

Hat tip to Tim Taylor for alerting me to this one.

Photo by graphia (Flickr).