I’m grumbling to myself here about branding because we are about to launch a new product (a Media Center) in a new market (in this case Windows), and we all know that when you introduce a new product, you have to decide whether the product you’re introducing will enter the market under your business brand or as its own brand, with or without a visible link to your business brand. In simpler words, we have to decide our “Brand Architecture”.

In this case, we have decided to launch this new product brand under the strong business brand identity we already have. The reason for this is simple: we have a modest marketing department and budget. It is well known that if your resources are limited, you’ll be better off if you build one strong parent brand to represent your core business and then introduce each new offering under the umbrella of your business identity. By doing so, we will eliminate the need to create and manage the identity of multiple self-standing brands, which requires an intense investment of time, people, discipline, and money.

The risk of this strategy, though, is that any flaws or problems in the new product will be linked directly to the business brand itself, thus affecting the rest of the products. There’s no reason to believe this will happen to us, but it’s something to keep in mind.

The time to brand our way to the Windows market has come, and we are oh so looking forward to it!

At my office, we’re all excited because in this edition we’re presenting our DVD Player along with Intel (Wow!). Next Tuesday, I’ll be the one with the Intel team presenting our solution for their newest platform, which is mainly focused on Mobile Internet Devices, netbooks, and other small factor devices. We’ll be at the App Planet section, don’t miss out on this opportunity to meet our team and Intel’s team, and learn about the latest technologies available for mobile devices.

I was told they’ll tape an Interview of me presenting our DVD Player, which is a piece of software especially optimized to run on Intel’s platforms, and that offers a number of really cool features, such as angle support, language selection, subtitles, menus and many other.

Wish me luck, and I’ll tell you all about it in my next post.

First of all, as most of you have already noticed at this point in time, we’ve started a brand new year 11 days ago, so my best wishes to all of you and I really hope 2010 come full of excellent news and open brand new horizons to explore. That being said, I believe it’s time to make an annual review to understand what 2009 brought about, good and not so good, and try to figure out what 2010 has in store for us. A challenging task, I may add, but a necessary one. I’ll try my best to summarize and synthesize, so I don’t get lost in the details.

Here some of my thoughts:

2009

The Year of the Crisis

2009 was a difficult year for us all. Crisis and unemployment were at the center of the debate, and countries such as Spain -where I happen to live -still haven’t quite overcome the negative effects these two have brought about. At least in this country, thousands of jobs were lost to the economical crisis, limiting people’s purchasing power, slowing down the entire economy, and getting us into a vicious cycle that’s been really hard to break.  In the case of the company where I work, our primary market is the US, a country that during 2009 underwent one of the most profound economic and financial setbacks in its History. With a diminished purchasing power, more price-sensitive customers and lack of investors, marketing strategies had to adjust to smaller budgets to be competitive without foregoing quality. To give a concrete example, this difficult period meant that many of us (marketers) had to roll up our sleeves, and do the some of the dirty work we would normally delegate on advertising agencies and other personnel within and outside the company. One of the most common marketing expenses during the prosperity years was hiring advertisement agencies and paying big upfront fees for consultation and design when we weren’t really running large ad campaigns. This would save a lot of time that allowed us to focus our efforts on more strategic matters, while operational tasks were left in the hands of professionals who would report to us and give results. Given the circumstances, in 2009 we had quit the glam of bossing people around, and had to make do with good independent graphic designers, negotiate rates, and close deals with providers by ourselves.

However, even when 2009 meant a lot extra work and effort for those dedicated to marketing (and in general for everyone in the company), it also opened new opportunities to successfully put on the market new and more original solutions. Sad at is, big companies going out of business or losing a part of their market share opens new windows for those smaller and less well known companies offering alternative solutions for lower prices. It’s widely accepted that basing our marketing strategy on the sole fact that our prices are better than those of my competitors’ is a huge mistake. However, penetrating markets based on cost-effective solutions helps, at least in the short term and as a first stage in our marketing startegy, to seize opportunities that were previously out of our reach.

The Year of Social Media

It goes without saying that no matter how deep the crisis, marketing actions are of great importance for those willing to do anything in their power to prevent the ship from sinking during the storm. No matter how little money we have, we must invest in letting our target know who we are, what we do and our advantages over our competitors. If we don’t do it, how are we supposed to sell anything in the first place? In this sense, the massification of Social Media helped many marketers to save money while targeting their desired audience. The increasing importance of Facebook, Twitter, My Space and many others led to the discovering of new ways of interacting with customers, spreading out the benefits of our products/services and engraving our brand or company name in the minds of thousands of people.

By now, we all acknowledge without reservations that the web has become a very necessary and powerful tool to developing marketing campaigns. But when it comes to technology and the Internet, I truly believe that this is just the beginning and that more pleasant surprises are still to come.

The Year of Connectivity

Either with their cells (mobiles for Brits!) or with their laptops, people like to be connected 24/7. They check their mail, text their friends, update their status, listen to music and watch videos everywhere, anytime. This behavior has become a great opportunity for marketers to profit from the ongoing online activities of hundreds of thousands of people who spend most of their time connected and, more importantly, are receptive to our message if the message is right, of course. Designing advertising campaigns especially suited for portable devices seems to be the promised land, and finding the right approach to engage people has become the objective of marketing professionals around the globe. Embedding publicity in videos, sending text and video messages with promotions to mobile phones, and designing shared revenue campaigns are among the many original ways of advertising via small factor devices.

Two important rules, though. First, not being intrusive and spamming people with countless messages or obtrusive ads that interfere with what they are doing. Second, make your ad as interactive as possible. People are tired of just being passive receptors: whatever you’re doing, they want to participate.

2010

I’m sure that many other important events occurred in 2009, and I’ll gladly welcome comments in that respect. But it’s time to move on and take a look at what 2010 has got to offer. After such a difficult year, we all hope 2010 arrive with more prosperity and enhanced horizons, but for some economies this is still wishful thinking.  The truth is that this crisis was a major setback, and some still are suffering the consequences. Our budgets will still suffer from the recent setback, and we’ll have to be careful on how we allocate resources, always keeping in mind long and medium term objectives.

This year, in the post-crisis world, marketers need to deliver customer value and differentiate from their competitors. Consumer spending, even on sale items, will continue to be replaced by a reason-to-buy at all. This spells trouble for brands with no authentic meaning, whether high-end or low.

Marketing is getting more personal and emotional, trying to engage increasingly disloyal customers who are more sophisticated, better informed and opinionated. Social Media will keep on being a key to attracting new customers and designing strategies to maintaining the loyalty of existing ones: it’s all about improving their experience with our products/services, and making them feel their contributions are an important part of what we are doing. This will help the company boost the word of mouth, but not just any word of mouth, but the right word of mouth within the community. This means the coming of a new era of customer care. We have to be prepared to listen to them, and listen hard. They will certainly give us a lot of ideas, positive feedback and invaluable inputs, but we must be prepared to accept critics and, more importantly, do something about it. Interactive marketing is more relevant than ever, and the more we succeed in having our customers participate in our marketing actions, the more we will be able to strengthen our brand, our company name and our image.

Modern marketing has become a two way conversation that utilizes traditional, digital and social mediums to connect with existing and potential customers. For those dedicated to online marketing, mastering analytics and customer intelligence is a must. Analytical skills are paramount to making complex fact based decisions and generate relevant insights from available data.

Mobile advertisement is gaining popularity and delivering results. It is expected that in 2010 this trend continues, or even grows, spanning new consumers that, up until this day, didn’t have access to small factor devices. The massification of mobiles, laptops, MIDs, etc. is leading advertisers to adjust their ads to this new formats, where contents and messages have to be strongly appealing, brief and personalized.

A challenging year, 2010, but also full of perspectives and hope!

Social media, social media, social media… and, have I mentioned social media already? OMExpo’s conferences went on and on about this phenomenon, ceaselessly underlying its importance. Of course all mighty Google was also mentioned, but social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, were at the center of the debate. New paradigms are being built around them, and users have become advisors who recommend other members within their virtual community the products and services they like. Nothing we don’t know or haven’t discussed so far. Contents are being created by the same people who read them, and communication is getting more and more interactive and bidirectional. It’s not only about spreading out a message; it’s about having your target participate in the creation of the message itself. It’s about listening hard to what your clients have to say… and doing something about it!

Apparently, if you want to sell something you must have common people, unrelated to your company, telling their audience that your products are good. What interest could the guy next door have in recommending the use of a certain product? None. If he says something is good it’s probably because he’s tried it out and thinks that it’s worth every penny. What better credentials? People take for granted that companies will always advertise their brands as the best there is, but are common people going to do the same unless they are really convinced? No way! And that, my friend, is called credibility, one of the most precious assets you could ever have. Viral marketing has never been so within reach, and at the same time, it has never been so complex. As in any promised paradise, social media have some advertising rules that restrict the access to heaven.  Facebook creators, for instance, are still thinking about non-intrusive ways to monetize ads without disturbing their members.

The Fun Factor

We are all tired of boring emails, ugly banners and intrusive pup-ups. Our time and attention have become priceless and we don’t want to be interrupted unless there’s something important to learn or amusing to do. Yes, amusing: this has been called “the fun factor”. Today, when everything is about passion and creativity, fun has become a big element in business marketing strategies. Take Audi as an example. They were launching the latest model of a sports car and thought about making a video that was to be posted on their website. We all know that in the past few years multimedia has become essential for on line marketing campaigns, and that visual and audio stimulus wisely combined can capture anyone’s attention. But instead of posting a common video of the car speeding away on a beautiful highway, Audi went one step further. They captured footage and made it available to their target as unedited material. The objective was having the people who visit their website download this footage into their computers and edit the images and sounds all by themselves. The participants who dared take this challenge were competing against each other and the winning edition was to become the official video of Audi’s latest model. Clever, uh?

And what about B2B?

This has always been my concern. Most marketing conferences are focused on consumers, leaving businesses aside: what people would say, what people would be interested in, what people would buy. What about companies? Can B2B marketing profit from social media as much as B2C? The answer is SOMETIMES and only up to a certain extent. Imagine you are in the syringe manufacture industry. How could you possibly profit from social media, let alone from what we have so joyfully identified as “the fun factor”? Impossible! You ought to focus on more traditional B2B marketing strategies and keep visiting hospitals and doctor offices, handing out samples and doing whatever it is that you do to sell your needles. Of course having a neat and professional-looking website will help you create a favorable image, maybe even find medical communities who have websites on which you can post the benefits of your products. But I just cannot imagine the guy next door posting a comment on his Facebook on how great his experience was the last time he got an injection. This is of course an extreme case, but very real and very common nonetheless.

Social Media for Business to Business

Fortunately, not every industry focused on business to business faces such restrictions. Some of the companies in the B2B marketing sell products and services that can actually be related to fun, spare time and technological interaction. That is at least my case. As mentioned in some previous post, we develop multimedia software to playback movies and music, two of the most popular recreational activities among computer users nowadays. In these cases, how could social media (including Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, etc.) and “the fun factor” help us boost our sales?

Basically, our sales channels target hardware manufacturers (such as Dell or HP) who can embed our software into their products, offering their clients computers and devices with our solutions pre-installed in their basic pack. Big companies like these sell thousands of units a day, and having a small share of this business would certainly translate into prosperity for us. But why would a company like Toshiba or Sony decide in favor of our products instead of going for the more traditional solutions already swarming around the market? The answer to this question could have many different approaches, some of them being that our products offer quality software ruling out reverse engineering, or that we have come up with a different approach to multimedia with innovative ideas, or that we offer the most cost effective solutions available. All these arguments are valid, but what if we could include a more irrefutable line by telling them that their potential clients just love our software? What if these big companies suddenly realized that in the decision making progress of people buying a computer the fact that our software is “inside” these devices is actually taken into consideration?

There is yet another desired target for our B2B marketing strategy: Software resellers and distributions. It is obvious that the more people talk about our software and the more they want it, the better placement our products are going to have on the resellers’ and distributors’ web shops.

We need to create a virtuous circle in alliance with the final users and we will only be able to achieve it by communicating directly with them. And hence the triumphal entrance of Social Media.

But, are we really up to this titanic challenge? In my opinion we have no choice. We have to communicate with the people susceptible of using our products to find out what they like, what they think, what they need and, while doing it, make a lot of buzz so the big shots notice our presence and acknowledge our importance. This is where we contact people who blog and twit, especially well recognized experts who prescribe our solutions through social media. Also, this is the moment to encourage people to talk about us using tools such as Facebook and when we stimulate the debate and open an ongoing communication channel.

And how do we do it? We need to relate our website to the mentioned social media. Placing links to our site is a “must”. We have to be careful in keeping certain coherence between what we tell our prescribers and we offer in our web. People learning about us through our website will want to post comments on our Facebook page and follow our twits. Understanding the process from the other way around, people who follow our twits or post comments on our Facebook wall will need to visit our web page, and so forth.

SEO becomes one of the key players to achieving such an important task. Contents acquire relevance and people have to be able to find whatever they’re looking in a rapid and efficient way. Emailing campaigns are transformed into interactive experiences where the addressees are invited to interact in playful and cooperative ways. Marketing today is not only about communicating and advertising, it’s about entertaining, and that’s the key.

I’m still working hard to figure out an inexpensive and efficient way of improving our website. Also, I’ve been trying to locate all major bloggers and opinion leaders in the Open Source community so they talk about us… I love my work! Aside from that, there’s been a lot of analysis and dirty work (which I also love, by the way). Got a new Business Development Manager for our company, and he seems to be so the right person for the job. Really hope he manages to introduce our products at a corporate level. We’ll see. Our commercial director seems to be happy with him, so be it.

What else is new? Well, yesterday we decided I was attending the Online Marketing Expo Barcelona.  So, next October the 29th, I will be learning all about innovations and trends in digital marketing, SEO, digital interaction and so forth. Conveniently located (this conference is being held at World Trade Center Barcelona –the place where our offices are), looks like the Online Marketing Expo is going to be an interesting one. I’ll surly write all about it in this space.

Ya en años anteriores habíamos filmado un par de cortometrajes independientes, pero el resultado de este último es muchísimo más profesional y de verdad esperamos que nos abra las puertas para futuros proyectos.

Los dejo con una probadita de “Tarde, mal y nunca”. Ojalá que lo disfruten.

Another week has passed in the blink of an eye, so quickly I could cry. So many things to do in so little time!  But let’s stop whining and recapitulate the most important concepts mentioned in the previous post to continue developing more ideas.

First, we defined Facebook as a social network (we could say that it is in fact the social network par excellence) offering a set a software tools available on the Internet that create a space designed to host virtual communities integrated by different individuals who share common interests. We also established that Facebook is more suitable for entertaining than working, and also discussed its advisability for companies willing to create a corporate profile. We mentioned the subject of ‘Influencer Marketing’ and how this could be achieved via Facebook. Finally, we said that in the following post we’d discuss why this is a great tool for small companies, too.

From the marketing perspective, we could start by saying that Facebook offers to companies a whole lot more than corporate pages. Its marketing tools for businesses rely on three different foundations: the Facebook Pages (like the examples we mentioned with Aspirine and Coca-Cola), Social Ads, and Statistics.

Let’s analyze these foundations one by one:

1. Facebook Pages: companies can create Facebook pages which can be assimilated by other Facebook users (individual who are potential consumers). This way, such companies can interact directly with these individuals by posting videos, photos, texts, etc. All this movement will later be seen by users on their “News Feed”, which is a very efficient way of boosting viral marketing.

Needless to say that viral marketing is one of the most appreciated tools marketers have at their disposal, due to its efficiency in reaching the desired audience, its low cost and the fact that it gives credibility.

2. Social Ads: or simply ‘Social Advertisement’ has been around for years. According to Wikipedia, it ‘represents ad formats that engage the social context of the user viewing the ad. Whereas in traditional, non-social, advertising the ad is targeted based on what it knows about the individual person or the individual page, in social advertising the ad is targeted based on what it knows about the individual user’s social network’.

In this context, companies with Facebook Pages can benefit from it through actions taken outside the social network that later will generate a series of people who will recommend this company or its products/services to other users. A good example of this could be a company promoting a certain product by organizing an event where they hand out free products to opinion leaders who will later use them, confirm their benefits and spread out the word using Facebook. Either if they comment on their personal Facebook pages or if they enter the company website to write something about how fun the event was, how well the product worked, etc., this comments will appear on the user’s friends’ News Feed, awakening the curiosity of other members in their social network who will immediately relate such product or company with quality, fun, etc.

3. Statistics: these will measure the ‘buzz level’ that any given product or service has reached among Facebook users. This tool will provide valuable information on how well or how badly our marketing campaigns are working and will allow us to react accordingly and in a timely fashion.

After reviewing these basic concepts, it is obvious why most of the big companies invest resources in keeping their Facebook accounts, regardless of the number of fans they have. Having a Facebook Page is helpful when they have the right connections and their pages attract the attention of those who actually have an influence over their community. But why should a small company spend time and money in something like that?

Here some of the reasons:

1. Opening a Facebook Page is free.
2. Maintaining the page updated does not consume that much time or resources.
3. You do not require highly skilled professionals to create and follow up your Facebook Page (anyone can do it).
4. The more extended your social network is, the stronger your presence will be. You can ask friends, coworkers, colleagues, etc. to join you community and invite others to join it as well.
5. If it does not work as you expected, you didn’t invest any money, so you don’t lose that much, and the fact that your company has Facebook page will not be negative for the company.

Well, I think the advantages of having a Facebook Page for companies are palpable. So, my friends, let’s not waste another second and get started! Hope to see your Facebook company profile very soon!

The social network phenomenon has caught the attention of marketers around the world because these sites represent an opportunity to reach out to literally millions of people providing invaluable information about their likes, dislikes, preferences, interests, age, gender, nationality, marital status, line of work, place of residence, schooling, and a very long etc., making it very easy for professional to accurately segment and target their desire audience. The debate on how real is the necessity of using such sites to advertise and promote our products and enhance the image of our company is everywhere on the Internet. But the truth of the matter is that, to assess Facebook advisability as a marketing tool, first we would have to start by understanding what social networks are.

Wikipedia defines social networks as social structures “made of individuals (or organizations) called ‘nodes’, which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige”.

To put it in simpler words, social networks are a set of software tools available on the Internet, which allow users to socialize and work within the framework of an interactive common space, regardless of their geographical location. In most cases, these social networks offer their services for free, and any individual with a computer and Internet connection can join (there are some age restrictions, though).

In this sense, it’s also advisable to understand what Facebook offers as a service, and from there recognize the advantages for marketers willing to promote and advertise their products, according to the type of business they represent. That being said, let’s start with the definitions:

According to Wikipedia, Facebook “is a global social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region”.

Besides this very brief definition, we would have to add that in Facebook, there are several applications profiting from the ‘communal’ essence of this site, which offer users the opportunity of interacting not only through texts and photographs, but also through games and other ludic functionalities (such as embedding videos on walls, taking funny tests, etc) which allow them to compete, share and compare themselves with other members of their virtual community. These applications provide this site with strongly recreational features, making it more suitable for entertaining than working purposes.

Nonetheless, it’s possible (and even advisable) for companies to create a Facebook account (different from that of individuals) and promote their products and services to consumers. Needless to say, these accounts are highly recommendable for companies whose products are directed to end users (B2C), especially if their products/services are strongly related to entertainment and recreational activities.

What happens, then, with products not directed to consumers or not having a clear bond with entertainment, fun and spare time? Should they discard the possibility of using Facebook as a marketing tool and forget about social media altogether? In some cases, the answer is NO, and hereafter I will try to explain why.

In a previous post (see entry on B2B and Social Media dated 08/23) I expressed my concerns about the limitations B2B marketers have to face when building a corporate image through social media. However, this challenge is not new: either on the Internet, TV, the press or the radio, it’s always been “more natural” to announce brands one can buy in the supermarket than explaining the benefits of products and services that consumers don’t even know they use or exist. In the case of Facebook, these inconveniences are even more extensive, spanning over products directed to consumers which are not associated to entertainment and recreational activities, such as those belonging to the chemical-pharmaceutical sector, energy, personal hygiene, etc.

For example, Coca-Cola, the most popular soda in the world (a name that’s always been related to a “fun” life-style), counts almost 4.000.000 fans in their Facebook page, while other huge products/companies such as Bayer’s Aspirine or Iberdrola count their fans only in a couple of hundreds.

Then why do companies such as Bayer and Iberdrola invest money and time in keeping their Facebook pages if the impact they have on Facebook users is so limited?

Not long ago, I read an article on Influencer Marketing stating that “People have been recommending products, services, suppliers and contractors informally since the dawn of civilization”. If you think about it, what better way than Facebook to informally recommend a product or a service? By keeping their Facebook pages active, companies like Bayer or Iberdrola not only aim at building up an image among those users that either by interest or by accident drop in, but also use Facebook as a tool to keep in touch with the CTOs of other (targeted) companies who might actually recommend and influence, as leaders of opinion, others in their decision making process.

Well, this post is getting longer than I expected, and I will have to divide it into two parts. Next week I’ll keep getting deeper into the Facebook Case as a marketing tool and I’ll try to explain as clearly as I can the services it offers and why this particular social network is also interesting for small companies.

See you then!

Mobility: more than ever, consumers are into being connected everywhere at any time. Whether they’re on a train heading for work or in a sunny beach getting tanned, people just take their iPods or BlackBerries out of their bags and Twitter their mood away. It’s also amazing how all the people you see on the bus, walking on the street, shopping at the supermarket, are either listening to music (head phones plugged deep into their ears) or texting somebody, or even both. No wonder that companies like Acer, Apple, Dell, Nokia, HP, etc. have long realized the market is quickly moving towards mobility, and have developed the so called MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices) to meet the consumers’ demands. In this sense, coming up with applications and interfaces especially designed to run on them is a MUST. Leaving Apple aside (they create most of their software), hardware manufacturers need somebody to develop applications designed to fit small screens and run smoothly on devices with limited capacity. These gigantic companies are releasing new MIDs every other day, one lighter than the other, and offering them a cost-effective and CPU saving solution might be one of the answers.

Internet Connectivity:  Flickr, Picasa, YouTube… you name them! People want to access their photos, upload images and videos, and watch the last YouTube releases using their MIDs no matter where they are. Applications offering direct access to these programs and sites will doubtlessly add more value to multimedia software.

Social Networks: Given the outstanding success of Facebook, perhaps it is worth considering developing an application whose interface could be accessed from this site. I bet a lot of users would like to add an application that, when entering their Facebook account, offered them the possibility of browsing the web to find songs and videos. There could be a basic version for free available to all Facebook users, and another more sophisticated and complete that would be for sale. Patent licenses and legal issues should be considered nonetheless.

Environmentally Friendly: This has now become a MUST. Either you develop software or manufacture hardware, you now have to make sure your application or device does not require too much energy and the computer batteries do not need to be recharged very often. In the case of hardware manufacturers, they also have to consider the material they use to build their devices and and we all have to assure a clean production process.

Oh, and I almost forgot!:

3D: The web 3.0 promises 3D animations and interfaces for its applications. At IFA, I’ve already witnessed some of the advances made by Panasonic with their 3D screens: software developers have to think about applications able to support and reproduce 3D images, specially on larger devices.

No doubt 2010 presents itself as a very challenging year!

Berlín es como un latigazo de electricidad que te recorre la espalda. Sus construcciones están llenas de cicatrices –los restos de un muro que dividió el corazón de un pueblo, y ese karma inmenso que aún deambula por las calles, gritando que es cierto, que todo lo que hemos leído en los libros de historia realmente pasó, que lo que nos contaron nuestros abuelos es cierto y que los muertos, o lo que quede de ellos, nunca dejarán que los vivos los olvidemos–.

Y sin embargo, lo más impresionante de Berlín no son los edificios que tiene, sino los que ya no están. Casi puedes ver las magníficas construcciones hechas añicos con el fuego incendiario de las bombas; casi puedes oler la sangre de los que se dejaron la vida tratando de cruzar un muro del que sólo quedan pedazos; casi puedes llorar por los millones de crímenes que se gestaron en el seno de sus sedes de gobierno.

Pero más que todo, Berlín es una pregunta: ¿cómo pasó? Tal vez, en la medida en encontremos la respuesta, podremos evitar que una guerra como esta se repita.

¿Cómo pasó, cómo pasó, cómo pasó?

Quedé enamorada de Berlín porque ni siquiera ese lado oscuro y tenebroso puede ensombrecer la belleza de un pueblo que se reunifica.

Espero volver pronto.