Why Channel Planning is a Direct Disciplne

Channel Planning is about ensuring the right channels are selected and brought into play in the most powerful and compelling way to connect a brand, a product and an audience. And the key variable there? The audience.

Who can claim to best understand the consumer? Clearly, because of their historic focus, the direct agency, who better to get how consumer insight is used to drive a communications strategy, and how working collaboratively with disciplines, clients and partner agencies is critical to both success and the ability to track and measure that success?

Why:
The right message, at the right time, in the right place (based on the three dimensions of relevance - contextual, temporal and experiential). An understanding of lifestyle/stage, attitude and behaviour, coupled with the broadest possible understanding of what constitutes an influential communication touch-point will lead to more relevance and therefore to much more powerful audience engagement.

Data To Go

An interesting post from Marshall Kirkpatrick - Towards a Value-Added User Data Economy. Marshall applies network theory to data portability to show that all companies will be better off if they all allow data to be ported in and out.

It seems to me that the ultimate outcome of the data portability evolutions will be the "Personal data store", wherein the individual becomes his/her own data broker, where we allow or disallow access to that data depending on our current circumstances. For example, if I were in the market for a new car, I might want to share some data elements with car companies - once I choose one, I take back my data. And, of course I can share elements of my core data with the different social networks of which I am a part, only the core data stays in my personal data store, peripheral data can live in the social network...

Targeting

According to Collective Media's "Ad Network Study 2008, the vast majority of US advertisers are using some form of online ad targeting to minimize waste. Demographic targeting remains solidly the favorite with behavioural catching up. Bizarrely (from my perspective at least), re-targeting is slipping year over year.

It Doesn't Matter How Well You Say It...

... Because if you are saying it to the wrong people it simply won't make it past the first hurdle. I am fascinated by the disproportionate amount of time (and resource) we tend to spend in marketing thinking about the message rather than thinking about matching the message to the receiver... I guess this is the difference between coincidence marketing and targeted marketing...

Passion Pays

Max Kalehoff in his AttentionMax blog underlines the singular importance of passion for companies. His main tenet, excellently put, is that competence and flawless delivery are now table stakes and for the customer, passion is the difference maker.

When passion lets loose, you drive focus, cultivate mastery, leverage spontaneity, foster creativity, build intuition and live toward mission. The dots connect. Clarity emerges. Your own bar of excellence sets higher, and you become infatuated with exceeding it.

A great contribution to the debate...

Customer Centricity in Uncertain Times

When the economy slows, consumers become more discerning. As a result marketers need fight harder and smarter to gain advantage over their competitors. A recent survey on CRM (defined as a technological investment) from Gartner showed a 14% increase in spending year over year.

North America remains the largest market for CRM software, accounting for $4.3 billion in revenue in 2007 and projected to reach $7.6 billion in 2012. The strongest growth will come from Asia/Pacific markets, where revenue is forecast to rise from $410 million last year to $840 million in 2012.

Enhancing the customer experience is the key differentiator...