Pop King Died and Traditional Media Died Too?

Δύο μέρες μετά το θάνατο του "Βασιλιά της Ποπ" και όλος αυτός ο πρωτόγνωρος καταιγισμός ενημέρωσης και αναζήτησης πληροφοριών για το γεγονός, με οδήγησε σε μια μικρή έρευνα πάνω σε δύο ζητήματα:

1. Αντέχουν τα νέα μέσα ένα τέτοιο "ηφαιστειώδες" (όπως είπε το Google Trends ) γεγονός;
2. Μαζί με τον τραγουδιστή θα θάψουμε και τα παραδοσιακά μέσα;

Επειδή όλη η αρθρογραφία που προέκυψε είναι στα αγγλικά σας παραθέτω τις απαντήσεις στα δύο ερωτήματα στην Αγγλική:


1. Αντέχουν τα νέα μέσα ένα τέτοιο "ηφαιστειώδες" γεγονός;

"How many people does it take to break the Internet? On June 25, we found out it's just one -- if that one is Michael Jackson." (CNN report)

The biggest showbiz story of the year saw the troubled star take a good slice of the Internet with him, as the ripples caused by the news of his death swept around the globe.
On Thursday, the TMZ site, better known for embarrassing photos and "dish" than hard reportage, beat everyone. The 911 call from Jackson's home went out around noon Los Angeles time; TMZ reported the cardiac arrest within an hour.
"We've just learned Michael Jackson was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Los Angeles... and we're told it was cardiac arrest and that paramedics administered CPR in the ambulance... and it's looking bad," it said.
It followed up shortly afterwards with: "We've just learned Michael Jackson has died. He was 50."
The massive level of interest caused the site to go down temporarily but that did not stop the news spreading via blogs and social networking sites. TechCrunch reported that TMZ, which broke the story, had several outages; users then switched to Perez Hilton's blog, which also struggled to deal with the requests it received.
Twitter saw a large spike in users with up to 5,000 Jackson-related messages being posted per minute, which slowed the service's speed.
Soon after news of his death emerged Jackson-related topics dominated Twitter's list of most popular subjects being discussed on the site. Twitter slowed to a crawl, as Jackson-related posts climbed to more than 100,000 an hour.
Biz Stone, co-founder of the messaging site, said: "This particular news about the passing of such a global icon is the biggest jump in tweets per second since the U.S. presidential election.”
Facebook saw a similar response, with the number of postings tripling during the hour after news of Jackson's death broke, according to a spokesman.
people searching for news on the singing phenomenon, with a number of contributors posting conflicting reports of his condition for a short time.
Google, the search engine, also encountered problems for a time due to the demand. So many people wanted to verify early reports of his death that computers running Google's news section interpreted the "Michael Jackson" requests as an automated attack for about half an hour.
Soon his death was dominating the top 10 list of Google Trends, which monitors web searches, with up to seven of the slots dedicated to Jackson subjects at one time.
At its peak, Google Trends rated the Jackson story as "volcanic."
Google turned away Jackson queries with this message: "We're sorry . . . but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. . . . We can't process your request right now."
The Instant Messaging feature at AOL crashed for 40 minutes, as thousands sought to tell the news directly to thousands of others. That was backed up by AOL consumer adviser Regina Lewis, who said that, although the numbers weren't in yet, the day should prove a historic milestone for mobile Internet traffic. "It could go down as the biggest mobile event in history," Lewis said.
"One, people clamor for the latest news; two, they share it; three, they react; and then the next stage, which we're seeing alive and well on video sites ... are tributes. In the case of Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett, [people have] a lot to work with in terms of images and video," she said.
By Friday morning, news sites seemed to be coping with traffic, but Jackson fan site mjfanclub.net was still performing sluggishly. Mashable.com reported that tributes to, and remarks upon, Michael Jackson's death were responsible for 30 percent of tweets.



2. Μαζί με τον τραγουδιστή θα θάψουμε και τα παραδοσιακά μέσα;

When the next set of BBC management expenses is published, it would be no surprise to find senior news executives charging for a subscription to tnz.com. Because, on Thursday night, the American entertainment gossip site was ahead of the world's major news organisations with the news of Michael Jackson's death.
Though creditable – and allowing the online provider a quick chorus of "beat it!", aimed at the famous networks – this victory brings some shivers. The news newcomers work by rules on reporting and sourcing that are different from those of traditional television journalism. On this occasion, the web whisper proved to be the entertainment news scoop of the decade; many other times, such buzz turns out to be as reliable as sightings of the Loch Ness Monster.
Yet, even so, the coverage of the singer's death was the greatest demonstration to date of the way in which new media have revolutionised TV news. No outlet now dared to wait for the old insurance of at least two reliable reports. CNN, Fox, Sky News and BBC2's Newsnight all cut into their running orders with the first tnz.com flash.
In the past couple of weeks, social-media sites have been instrumental in keeping people in the loop about Iran's unrest and Michael Jackson's death, highlighting a transformation in the news-delivery industry. The shift, years in the making, has given social networks and their close cousins like YouTube a bigger role in how people learn about and react to world events while leaving newspapers and television struggling to adjust.
Millions of people no longer rely on a morning paper, or its online equivalent, to get news. Rather, many are tipped off by friends or complete strangers through Twitter and Facebook, in posts that appear alongside family snapshots, random complaints and movie recommendations.
"The first place people go are these social-networking tools rather than the conventional media," said Shannon Vallor, a philosophy professor at Santa Clara University who studies social networking. "More people are using the major media outlets as places to go after they've heard the basic story to get more information."
Social-media sites played a somewhat different role in Iran, where political unrest erupted earlier this month. Unlike Jackson's death, the sites were used to disseminate eyewitness accounts instead of to repeat what had been reported elsewhere.
To get around a crackdown on professional journalists in Iran, supporters of the Iranian opposition candidate used Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to raise global awareness about their protests and the violence that the government used to stop them. A camera phone video showing an Iranian woman bleeding to death in the street ultimately made world headlines.
Jeff Jarvis, director of the interactive journalism program at City University of New York and author of the media blog BuzzMachine, said the growing popularity of social-media sites is recasting the job of traditional journalists. He sees them as curating, vetting and giving context to news that bubbles up from teams of reliable amateurs they've already recruited.
To get extra exposure, some news organizations are already making links to their articles available through Facebook and Twitter, so users can share them. There's no guarantee that people will visit their Web sites directly, he said.
News organizations, Jarvis emphasized, "can't wait for everyone to come to them."
However, the risk is that people on social-media sites read the news headlines without clicking through to the publication's Web site, eliminating an important source of revenue. Jarvis said that it was always a myth that newspaper readers read every article in print and that, in the digital era, they have to take particular care to write headlines that entice people to click on the links.
Social media is shaping up to be the latest challenge for traditional media, which is still grappling with how to reinvent itself in an increasingly digital world.
Although social-media sites have been credited with breaking news on occasion, they are also prone to spreading false rumors. For example, Twitter posts on Thursday inaccurately reported the death of actor Jeff Goldblum. It's a distinction that traditional media has used to bolster its case for relevance.
Ken Doctor, a news industry analyst with Outsell Inc., a research and advisory firm with offices in Burlingame and London, sided with the social-media sites in saying that people want speed first. Erroneous information is usually corrected by fellow users on such services, making news more of an evolving process.
"People want to know first, even when things may be wrong," Doctor said. "But the crowd will then correct it quickly."
This is the way things are now: live broadcasting can wait for nothing – not even death. In the 50 years that Michael Jackson lived, the rules of journalism have gone from wait-and-see to show-and-wait.

Αυτά τα ολίγα! Οι αναλύσεις όμως είναι σαν την εκδίκηση...είναι καλύτερες όταν είναι κρύες. Stay tuned!

Batman's a scientist?!

Λίγο πριν πετάξω πάλι για Συνέδριο* (viva Italia) και ενώ βαριέμαι να τελειώσω την παρουσίαση που θα κάνω, σκέφτομαι ποιο το νόημα σε όλο αυτό τον απόστευτο χρόνο που χάνουν(;) οι επιστήμονες σε λεπτομέρειες και σε δοκιμαστικά μέχρι να φτάσουν στο πρωτότυπο, στο καινοτόμο, στη νέα γνώση.
Από την άλλη θα μου πείτε πως οι επιστήμονες είναι αυτοί που ανοίγουν τους δρόμους, κατακτούν πρώτοι και μετά μοιράζονται και διευρύνουν τη γνώση.
Δηλαδή, αυτοί που μας σώζουν.

Στη φάση που είμαι τώρα βρίσκομαι πιο κοντά στη γνώμη του Homer Simpson (σύζυγος της Μάρτζεως και πατέρας του Βαρθολομαίου Σίμπσον):

Marge: Homer! There's someone here who can help you...
Homer: Is it Batman?
Marge: No, he's a scientist.
Homer: Batman's a scientist?!
Marge: It's not Batman!

Πέστα μεγάλε!

(*) CAPRI FORUM 2009 ON SERVICE MARKETING, chairs: ο μοναδικός φιλόσοφος του Μάρκετινγκ Evert Gummesson & οι πρωτοπόροι του N-S dominant logic που έχουμε ήδη πει εδώ Vargo & Lusch.

Tο Παράδοξο του Μάρκετινγκ...The Marketing Gap (by georgia)

Κάποιες σκέψεις μου για το Παράδοξο του Μάρκετινγκ! enjoy

The Marketing Gap

View more OpenOffice presentations from Georgia Zouni.

Θέλω να φτιάξω ένα LOGO που ΑΠΛΑ να είναι το καλύτερο στον κόσμο!

Τις τελευταίες μέρες ασχολούμαστε τρία άτομα (το ένα όταν δεν ...πίνει νερό) με τη δημιουργία ενός λογότυπου για μιά τουριστική υπηρεσία. Και όπως μου έχει συμβεί και όλες τις προηγούμενες φορές που έχω ασχοληθεί με το θέμα "πώς να πώ αυτό που θέλω με μια εικόνα ή ένα σχέδιο που να τα σπάει" πάντα φτάνω στο κρίσιμο σημείο. Το σημείο που ό,τι φτιάχνουμε ή ότι βλέπω μου φαίνεται χάλια, παιδαριώδες ή κενό. Είναι το σημείο που λόγω της μεγάλης επιθυμίας να γίνει κάτι ξεχωριστό, διαφορετικό, "το καλυτερο logo ever!" πέφτω στην παγίδα να μου φαίνονται όλα όσα βλέπω απλά.
ΑΠΛΑ;
Μήπως τότε είμαι στο σωστό δρόμο;
Τα ΠΙΟ επιτυχημένα και αναγνωρίσιμα λογότυπα είναι και τα πιο ΑΠΛΑ!
Αντίθετα τα πολύπλοκα σχέδια έχει βρεθεί από έρευνες πως συσχετίζονται με αρνητική εντύπωση του κοινού-στόχου (An overly complex mark will offer a negative impression to your target audience).

Εδώ έχω 15 παραδείγματα από τα πιο επιτυχημένα και απλά logos όλων των εποχών:

WWFDesigned by Sir Peter Scott, in 1961.
ShellDesigned by Raymond Loewy, in 1971.
BayerDesigned by Bayer, in 1904.
MessageDesigned by Sam Dallyn, in 2001.
USA NetworkDesigned, in 2005.
InnocentDesigned by Deepend, in 1999.
British Golf MuseumDesigned by Tayburn, in 2004.
London UndergroundDesigned by Edward Johnston, in 1918.
Mitsubishi MotorsDesigned by Yataro Iwasaki, in 1870.
ShelterDesigned by Johnson Banks, in 2003.
3MDesigned by Siegal & Gale, in 1977.
AppleDesigned by Regis McKenna Advertising, in 1977.
PenguinDesigned by Edward Young, in 1935.
FamiliesDesigned by Herb Lubalin, in 1980.
Waterways TrustDesigned by Pentagram, in 2000.


Μπορεί όλα τα ονόματα αυτά να μήν σου λεν πολλά αλλά αν δείς τα λογότυπα (εδώ ) σίγουρα θα αναγνωρήσεις περισσότερες εταιρίες.
ΑΥΤΟ ΣΗΜΑΙΝΕΙ ΕΠΙΤΥΧΗΜΕΝΟ LOGO!


Άρα σε καλό δρόμο βρισκόμαστε παιδία!

How to Use Market Research in a Recession

by John Quelch (*)

Recession-challenged consumers are buying less, looking for deals, or switching to different brands, product categories, or stores. Some are even changing long-held attitudes toward consumption. To many folks, filling the home with more stuff or keeping up with the Joneses is no longer appealing.
As a result, the degree of uncertainty in business and consumer markets has soared. Yet, to conserve cash, most firms are reducing spending on the market research that would help manage that uncertainty. In the U.S., spending on market research has dipped for four consecutive quarters, and chief marketing officers don't expect the situation to turn around soon. Most big consumer marketers are seeking to shave 10 to 20% off of research budgets.
In flush times, a rising tide of consumption can compensate for less than optimal branding, positioning, pricing, or segmentation. That is certainly not the case now. At the same time that marketers must pare down research expenditures, they face added pressure to secure high-quality data and insights.
I recommend that CMOs take the following seven steps to minimize the impact of reduced spending.
Stay focused. Savvy marketers focus their research on the products, brands, and markets that are key to their marketing strategy. In a recession, it's essential to get a clear read on existing core customers, including those who are most loyal to the brand and those who are most profitable, rather than fritter away research resources on potential or peripheral consumers. When times are good, there is budget available for increased research on secondary products or customers. Now, nice-to-knows that are not essential will have to wait.
Enlist trusted partners. Marketers and research suppliers who trust each other and have established long-term relationships can jointly plan how to extract more insights and make better decisions based on fewer expenditures. For example, combining data sets may reveal new leading indicators of changes in consumer behavior. Tracking studies may have an edge over one-off projects. CMOs who trim costs by consolidating their budgets with an integrated research supplier should insist that the supplier aggressively explore synergies across its various component agencies as well as eliminate research redundancies.
Value experience and judgment. CMOs should tap the knowledge and intuitions of managers and researchers who've lived through previous recessions. In setting prices, for example, such insight can help calibrate the optimal level of price promotion offers. Experience also reveals proxies: in tough times, some marketers use research results from Sweden as a proxy for Scandinavia, rather than conducting the same research in all Scandinavian countries.
Seize opportunities overseas. Some large multinational marketers, such as Unilever, are shifting research expenditures away from Western Europe and toward emerging markets in Asia and Latin America. Relative to the developed economies, the costs of research in emerging economies are less and the payoff from incremental insight can often be greater. Brand preferences and consumption levels in emerging markets such as China, India and Brazil tend to be more fluid. Consumer research is therefore critical to aid marketers trying to cement brand preferences early on as these economies develop.
Go online with a dash of skepticism. Online research is cheap, fast, and the wave of the future. Tools like SurveyMonkey allow non-expert users to create custom surveys in minutes. As an alternative to offline focus groups, custom online panels of consumers can be formed for qualitative research on new product ideas or new ads. Taking the do-it-yourself approach rather than outsourcing to a market research firm is attractive in a cost-cutting era, but you risk getting no more than what you pay for. The opinions of convenience sample of an enthusiastic online brand community may not represent all users.
Don't cut across the board. Just as important as knowing where to cut research is knowing where not to cut. When marketers are creating fewer new ads and introducing fewer new products, it is doubly important to use rigorous pretesting to select the strongest alternatives. In categories where the bases for consumers' value judgments are changing, modest expenditures on copy research can prevent blowing much more money on ineffective messaging. Adding a few questions to standard tracking studies is a low-cost way to shed light on changes in customer attitudes and purchase behavior. For key products, running conjoint studies to check on shifts in price elasticities of demand and price-attribute tradeoffs can usefully improve the profitability of pricing decisions at a time when cash is king.
Keep an eye on the new consumer. No one has a perfect record of predicting the future, and the recession is making it harder for consumers to envision or articulate their needs. Even so, and despite budget pressures, smart marketers devote a portion of their market research to getting a handle on future changes in consumer behavior. Are consumers of your brand going to revert to previous consumption patterns when the recession ends? Or are they developing coping mechanisms that will endure, especially if the recession is lengthy? What new products and services will consumers be open to embracing? If, as in the financial services category, consumer confidence and trust in brands have been seriously eroded, how long and what steps will it take to regain them? Eventually, the recession will end, and future success depends on being well-positioned, based on sound research, when it does.

This post is based on an opinion column coauthored with Katherine Jocz that first appeared in Advertising Age at www.adage.com in May 2009.

(*) John Quelch was one of ten marketing experts profiled in the 2007 book, Conversations with Marketing Masters, authored by Laura Mazur and Louella Miles. A professor at Harvard Business School since 1979, he is known worldwide for his research on global marketing, global branding and marketing communications.
John is a non-executive director of WPP Group plc, the world’s second largest marketing services company, and of Pepsi Bottling Group. He served previously as a director of Reebok International.