Andrew Armour's Benchstone Blog
On Coaching, Marketing, Partnerships, Innovation & Collaboration – From Andrew Armour
Don’t take my word for it. After a comprehensive global study partnerships and collaborations have just been identified as the most important ingredient to successful marketing and innovation by one of the most powerful marketers on earth – Beth Comstock, CMO of General Electric.
Continue reading “86% of Top Marketers Say Partnerships Are The Key To Innovation”
An interesting piece on brand licensing but nothing really new here: Walt Disney first licensed the iconic Ingersol Mickey Mouse watch in the 1930’s. The areas that I find increasingly interesting is the development of brands x-platform. Computer games become movies, events become TV shows; sports brands become computer games. The kind of TV show – event brand extensions mentioned in this article are interesting. And for me strike a chord, as I proposed, pioneered and launched a 3-day live event based on a tv show back in 1995! It was one of my first introductions to marketing collaboration and inspired me to focus on marketing partnerships.
See below for a great piece by Kevin Kelly on the meaning of innovation which in his view has to be slightly on the edge of danger. This is tricky for marketers when they are under pressure for proven results, revenues, retention and profits. ( ” oh and be more creative too – you know, we should be more like errr, Apple or Google. OK?”). Interestingly Kelly does not expouse that innovation has to be huge leaps either – and seems to share in the belief of ‘exaptation’ (see my earlier post re Steven Johnson’s great book – ‘where good ideas come from’).
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/kklifestream/~3/ysZT9oDBZNw/in-a-poetic-sense-the-prime-go.php
It’s tough being in the rock and saussage rolls business these days. In this interesting piece from The Economist they paint an interesting picture. Most entertainment people have been suggesting live is the new old music business. Big tours, summer festivals selling everything but singular recordings. But The Economist suggests that globally, the live music scene (at least at the top50 worldwide acts end) is in decline -0 by 12% since 2008. This follows on from reports last year that acts like Celine Dion and Sting were cancelling concerts, something unheard of with acts of that status. What to do if you’re a rock star eh? As they said in the 90’s – comedy is the new rock n roll.
via Live music: Pricing the piper.
The mad, brilliant and socially awkward scientist. The artist shivering quietly in the studio. The maverick hyper competitive marketer, alone in their spreadsheet. It is a dominant image – explaining the great steps forward being huge individual and innovative leaps, driven by one dynamic individual. Continue reading “More Exaptation Marketing – And Less Innovation”
A startling blog from Harvard Business Review. Will the rise of iPods and Tablets leave Microsoft looking like yesterdays news?
via The Fall of Wintel and the Rise of Armdroid.
From the Harvard Business Review Blog – this is a great piece on the importance of ‘scarcity’ to innovative thinking. This reminds me of a great excercise one of my old agency bosses did one day. As part of our own agency marketing plan, she briefed me and the creative team to come up with a great relaunch campaign and gave us what we thought was an exciting budget- of around $50K. We attacked the brief with gusto can came back with a fantastic and multi layered cool promotion that spent all the budget. She loved the idea and then said “Now – lets deliver it within three weeks and make it work for less than $25K – not $50K”. At first, we naturally got grumpy and said it was impossible. But – as we worked the problem, looked at the campaign again, with fresher sharper eyes – we actualy were able to delete certain aspects of the original idea, developed a better campaign, for less budget. In other words, the budget scarcity had made us explore smarter and more cost effective solution. Scarcity of budget was the driver. I have also commented before on the problems with the entire ‘brainstorming’ creative myth – something that has been highlighted by Richard Wiseman among others. And in the article below, the importance of focusing on a problem rather than going off on tangents is really clear: ” that innovation managers will more often create businesses, services, or products that are successful in the marketplace when they intentionally impose constraints during the development process.” True. Sometimes, less is more.
via The Number One Key to Innovation: Scarcity.
Has technology made rights management redundant? Just because I can copy and distribute without paying for contetnt – is it right? Can music companies survive on income streams other than unit sales & publishing? When I first worked in music publishing an old hand once said “just because I have the technology to break into your car, and I really like it, does that mean I have the moral OK to use it?”. But in a world of endless distribution everyone now has the car alarm bleeper to everyones musical car. My head tells me that rights owners can longer control their work and they have to adapt to a new model (whatever that may be) – but my heart tells me that too many technology companies are happy to exploit the work, investment and talent of the creative industries upon which they feast whilst expecting nice clear and traditional (retail, licenses, patents, top price for new products) – revenue streams for their own businesses.
This is a great piece describing what 2011 – the year of the tablet may look like. Whilst Apple helped kickstart desire and media interest in tablet computing (like they did with smartphones) – the likes of Samsung, HTC, Asus, Moto, Sony et al now unleash hundreds of variations, types, price points and sizes. Having owned my own Samsung Galaxy Tab since December – I cannot imagine living without one now. As easy as a mobile to use and as powerful as a laptop – these devices are genuine game changers. With iPad2 and all these others to come 2011 is the year of the Tablet.
And how did I make this post? By tab of course.
http://www.emarketer.com/blog/index.php/year-
tablet-marketers/
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