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Matrix Commerce is Coming Will You Be Ready?

Early in January of 2012 I found myself struggling with the general terms around multi-channel, cross channel and omni-channel to adequately describe the rapidly evolving retail and e-commerce marketplace reality we all currently face.

Searching for a term that would better capture the full complexity and many drivers impacting the business, on January 3rd 2012 in a moment of epiphany I came up with the term and concept of Matrix Commerce on which topic this whitepaper is a primer.

Matrix Commerce describes the complex construct integrating marketing, sales, sourcing, pricing, profitability, service levels, delivery and consumer perceptions. Inherent in this is the notion of complete customer centricity from many of the above items extending to include customer desires for positive social outcomes relative to cause alignment and even the sustainability performance of companies they choose to do business with.

A mouthful for sure, but while you’re chewing on that start considering the types of real time and rapid processing systems which will be required to support such multi-facetted business decisions, not to mention the reams of big and not so big data that will be necessary for companies to collect in order to make them.

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In Praise of Slow Media

Slow media is patient. It’s not on a deadline. It isn’t measured in column inches. It can be calm instead of sensational, deep instead of superficial.

In the age of “Breaking news, Emmy nominations announced!” and 140 characters, it’s sort of surprising to realize that we are also living in the golden age of slow media.

For years, on Sunday mornings, you could find me sitting in my driveway, recently arrived home from one errand or another, listening to Krista Tippett’s extraordinary interviews on the radio. Thanks to the web, there’s no need to sit in your car any longer, and Krista’s groundbreaking approach is spreading. Spending 90 minutes in the studio with her to create this week’s show was, for me, one of the highlights of my career. (download).

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What Will Become Of The Lance Armstrong Brand?

The sordid tale of Lance Armstrong is unfolding right before our eyes across the web, social media and of course TV in addition to pretty much every other channel known to man.

AUSTIN, TX - JANUARY 14: In this handout phot...

Back in August of this year I wrote an article about Penn State and if their brand had received the death penalty. While obviously different on many fronts, there are some similarities between Penn State and Lance Armstrong when it comes to branding and there’s a lesson for all marketers and advertisers.

The opening two paragraphs of the aforementioned Penn State article fit like a glove when overlaid onto the Lance Armstrong saga:

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Return on Relationship, The Book, is a Reality!

Last year I embarked on a journey with my friend and co-author Kathryn Rose to put into words what Return on Relationship really means. And after months of hard work, I’m very excited that our new book, Return on Relationship: Relationships are the New Currency; Honor Them, Invest in Them, and Start Measuring Your ROR has finally come to fruition, and will be launched January 29th!

Now, you’ve heard me talking about ROR for years, but this is the first time that the concept has been thoroughly discussed from more than just my point of view. Kathryn brings a fresh, practical perspective, and together we explore the depth and breadth of relationship building for businesses.

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Hey CMOs, It’s Time To Get Disruptive

Many moons ago I wrote an article entitled simply Are You Disruptive? In that piece I openly questioned if marketers or business owners, brands, etc., were in fact, disruptive. As I wrote then which is still very true today. I myself am “disruptive” by nature, disruptive not in the breaking mom’s china manner, but rather questioning the accepted norms. Or as Howard Jones would put it, “challenging preconceived ideas.”

I was reminded of my earlier piece while reading something from Forrester Analyst Corinne Munchbach. In a blog post she used the term “Embrace digital disruption.” Now she was using it in the context of something CMOs need to do in 2013 and she was in fact referring specifically to B2C CMOs but I absolutely believe it applies to ALL CMOs – B2C and B2B CMOs alike.

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Twitter passes 200 million monthly active users; no longer a fad

I wrote my first in-depth post covering Twitter in March 2007 saying that Twitter would be the “message heard around the world.” Since then, we learned that Twitter has become a human seismograph where news no longer breaks it tweets. We learned to speak in 140 characters or less. We’ve witnessed Tweets erupt into revolutions. Hashtags are now a way of life. And, we now live in a world where if it wasn’t tweeted, it didn’t happen. Life unfolds in a digital river where experiences and common interests are the ties that bind us. Twitter is indeed part of the fabric of how our world communicates and connects and it contributes to the evolution of our #digitallifestyle.

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Behold The Untapped Big Data Gap

As we close out 2012, one topic that got a lot of “airtime” in 2012 will surely stay on top of many marketers minds as we enter 2013: Big Data.

The title of my article is a paraphrase of sorts as it comes directly from a study done by IDC which revealed, among other things that in “2012, 23% of the digital universe would be useful for Big Data if tagged and analyzed. However, currently only 3% of the potentially useful data is tagged, and even less is analyzed.”

The “even less” part comes out to less than 1%, 0.5% to be precise.

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The Decline of Machines – Why Social Media is not Technology and Vice Versa

Originally posted at Collective Bias Blog 

by 

Most of today’s senior business leaders and marketers developed much of their perspective during the dot com boom of the late 90s and early 2000s. It is little wonder then that when approaching social marketing the solution for most folks is rooted in technology.  The same with most start-ups that are still pursuing the model of aggregating a huge audience, using “Big Data” to spot patterns of groups and selling ads. People buy more stuff and we get a ridiculous valuation.

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Learning how to see

If you want to make something new, start with understanding. Understanding what’s already present, and understanding the opportunities in what’s not. Most of all, understanding how it all fits together.

Watch the last two minutes of the classic film, 2001. Today’s technology would allow someone to make a short film like this with very little effort. But could you? The making isn’t the hard part, in fact. It’s the seeing.

Would you have the guts to go this slow? To use music this boldy? To combine iconography from three different centuries over two millenia?

Where is the explosion of the death star and where are the hackneyed tropes of a hundred or a thousand prior sci-fi movies?

Stanley Kubrick, the film’s director, saw. He saw images and stories that were available to anyone who chose to see them, but others averted their eyes, grabbed for the easy or the quick or the work that would satisfy the boss in closest proximity.

When everyone has the same Mac and the same internet, the difference between hackneyed graphic design and extraordinary graphic design is just one thing—the ability to see.

Seeing, despite the name, isn’t merely visual. I worked briefly with Arthur C. Clarke thirty years ago, and he saw, but he saw in words, and in concepts. The people who built the internet, the one you’re using right now, saw how circuits and simple computer code could be connected to build something new and bigger. Others had the same tools, but not the same vision.

And all around us, we’re surrounded by limits, by disasters (natural and otherwise) and by pessimism. Some people see in this opportunity and a chance to draw (with any sort of metaphorical pen) something. Others see in it a chance to hide, to settle and to sigh.

The same confidence and hubris that Kubrick and Clarke brought to their movie is available to anyone who decides to give more than they ‘should’ to a charity that has the audacity to change things. While others believe they can (and must) merely settle.

In our best possible future together, I hope we’ll do a better job of learning to see one another.

Some people see a struggling person and turn away. Others see a human being and work to open a door or lend a hand. There are possiblities all around us. Not just the clicks of recycling a tired cliche, but the opportunity to be brave. If we only had the guts.

Seth Godin

 

When It Comes To Social CEOs One Group Is The Clear Winner

There are many – myself included, who believe in the adage “it starts from the top down” when it comes to leadership in a company or business. I don’t care if it’s a professional sports team or a business that has just a few employees. How the leader of that company acts, thinks and carries his or herself on a daily basis goes a long way to ensuring the overall success or failure of that company.

And when it comes to the use of social media – or lack thereof,  it appears one group of CEOs is not doing their part or carrying their load or whatever catch phrase you happen to prefer.

As a follow up to their report done earlier this year on CEOs and social media, Domo and CEO.com just released the findings of another report or study. However, unlike their earlier report which focused squarely on the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, this one was “designed to compare and contrast social media habits among leaders of America’s largest companies (Fortune 500) and America’s fastest-growing companies (Inc. 500).”

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