That crazy IPad

I've been having fun playing with laddering/segmentation with the IPad since last week. I posted a new example of laddering for the ipad on Prezi - this is a great place to fool around with how different ideas relate to one another both causally and in terms of scale. It is free and you are encouraged to work publicly so the community can benefit from your work. Great collaboration tool...

Today we are moving into execution - product and communications. On Wednesday I travel to U of Colorado to share with the faculty and students how we are approaching Social Marketing here at Ross. I'm looking forward to sharing the blogs and the approach - lots of great blogging going on...

Segmentation - Before and After

As we move into the area of market segmentation, I want to emphasize a point that often is not clearly understood in this area. It is quite common for marketers and market researchers to make an assumption that our target audience is sitting out there, all neatly segmented, and it is just a matter of leveraging the right research and analytical tools to identify the segments. This assumption doesn't reflect the fact that, in almost all cases of (social) marketing success, segmentation occurs as a result of good marketing. In other words, people show up in neat little (or ideally large) clumps not because that's the way they are but because that's the way they could be.

Of course, if you are thinking of segmentation as solely demographic then there is not much we can do with marketing tools to affect the nature/size of the segments. But all marketers now recognize that segmentation should be attitudinal/behavioral. This is because these are attributes we can affect with marketing. So as you think through your segmentation process, you must do 2 things: 1) consider where people currently are in terms of their attitudes and behaviors, and 2) consider where they could be given your marketing efforts. Your ability to perform this assessment is a good measure of your skill as a marketer.

communities of production

There is a somewhat popular marketing concept known as communities of consumption originally inspired by Marshall McLuhan. As I am reading through the various blogs and comments, I'm thinking about the more interesting concept of communities of production, networks of creative individuals working together to produce value. This is of course Wikipedia and all its offshoots, and this is the basic goal of this course. The goal of most classes is, and will remain, learning. However, the nature of that learning has changed over time. The old concept of the Professor essentially creating obstacles in the form of assignments and tests that the student must overcome in order to earn a grade is inefficient. There is no reason that the work done by the Professor and the students shouldn't have inherent value that extends beyond the classroom. Furthermore, there is no reason not to take advantage of the fact that we have gathered all these intelligent individuals with diverse backgrounds together.

It is interesting (at least to me) that as I think about how to leverage this course to create value I find that the ideas that arise might be resisted by members of the class. For example, as I move through the various blogs I find it difficult to adjust to the different formats the students have chosen. For anyone attempting to leverage this "blog cluster" it would be much easier if all blogs used the same template. This is marketing 101 - simplicity and consistency of "look and feel" enhances learning and memorability. But how many of you would consider a rule limiting your template choice as a constraint on your creative expression? In for-profit marketing we are all willing to "toe the line" in service of our profit objective - hence all Apple ads look essentially the same. But somehow as we move to the social marketing work restrictions on creativity become sacrosanct. And this makes us less efficient, and ultimately less effective as a community of production. Just a thought...

Challenges of new media

Well, some of us in this class are more comfortable than others blogging...this is fine, but in the end we want to get full participation from the class on this aspect. Please blog, link to the main blog, comment, choose a couple of other blogs to follow...join in! It is starting to develop into a rich source of information.

up and running

Kay, it looks as if we are up and running - still lots of folks need to post, but already some great links and thoughts, and lots of different approaches. Like the link to R Crai Lefebvre. Notice I ignored my own advice and went back and re-formatted the blog. Sooo - do as I say not as I do...

As you continue to think about your project, don't forget to think about the answer to the "what is good?" question...

Getting ready for the first meeting of Social Marketing 614. Very excited to see how this blogging thing works for increasing involvement and enabling fast information sharing. As I was re-reading the articles for today and thinking about this hairy issue of how to decide "what is good" I was reminded of an article I read in Harper's magazine in 1993. It is posted on ctools - very interesting example of people setting out to do good and not getting there. I think the trick in this area is to develop a clear cause-effect model of planned actions and intended consequences, and then to track outcomes and adjust the model as quickly as possible when necessary. More this evening in class...

Marketing 614

We are starting a new set of Blogs here at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, for the Social Marketing class. Students will be blogging re their projects for the class. If you are interested in tracking any of these blogs please post a comment and we'll connect you.