Social media’s rather simple role
in integrated marketing

Wherever prospects gather, marketers have an opportunity to peddle their wares. The places where audiences assemble have, throughout history, been dictated by technology.

In the early days, people gathered within earshot of the town crier or in front of freshly printed newspapers thanks to Johannes Gutenberg. Later, electronic media from telegraph and telephone to radio and television played roles. Today, different flavors of Internet technology are capturing marketers’ interests.

“There will always be another ‘next big thing’ in advertising and marketing, but the rules never change and should not,” says Tim Coco, COCO+CO. president and chief executive officer. Coco is widely credited with creating the modern integrated marketing paradigm. “Marketers must deliver relevant messages to receptive audiences wherever they assemble. The key words are ‘relevant’ and ‘receptive,’” he explains. There have been public backlashes against telephone solicitation and urban-cluttering billboards. The former regulated by “Do Not Call” lists and the latter by zoning ordinances.

Similarly, if advertising is to be accepted on social media Web sites (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.), it must not be intrusive or deceptive. Evidence suggests people using social networking sites are singularly focused on engaging with their peers. In the July 6, 2009 issue of COCO COntact, the use of social media sites as tools for augmenting word-of-mouth efforts was discussed.

“Marketing leaders must work with their teams, agencies, and media partners to update their vision of integrated marketing in order to counter the effects of the (media) meltdown and to harness social media,” says David Card of Forrester Research.

Social media is nothing more than the latest “next big thing” in marketers’ tool boxes. Technologies that help people better use these tools, such as Web applications that allow Twitter posts to be displayed in more convenient locations, hold promise.

Submit your comments to creative@cocoboston.com.

Speaking of the ‘next big thing’
Seemingly world changing concepts fall by the wayside

Before you get caught up in the hype of the latest technology, consider some flops.

Concepts such as “e-currency,” “push” and “peer-to-peer” technology have received their comeuppances in recent years. Flooz.com and Beenz.com somehow thought people would trust and use fake “e-money” instead of the real thing, while Pointcast.com hyped “pushing” advertising scrolling across users’ computer screens day and night. Most peer-to-peer programs such as KaZaA and the original Napster simply resulted in lawsuits over copyright infringement.

Some other names that were touted as changing everything were Pets.com, AltaVista. Lycos, Friendster, Netscape and Excite.

Submit your comments to creative@cocoboston.com.

Why is this bank unregulated?
PayPal abuse not an act marketers should follow

How would you feel if your bank prevented you from accessing your money for days at a time or prevented you from receiving your well-earned paycheck?

This happens frequently to patrons of PayPal. PayPal, owned by eBay, is effectively an unregulated bank. It seems, when eBay suffers lower margins than it would like, PayPal users are prevented from withdrawing their own funds. eBay, for example, recently instituted a practice that it claims protects buyers at its auction site by escrowing certain PayPal payments between willing buyers and sellers. Of course, eBay and PayPal pocket the interest on these funds which can be held for weeks even when there are no consumer complaints.

Further, PayPal has a seemingly arbitrary policy where it will restrict account holder withdrawals for unspecified security reasons. Without explanation, consumers are prevented from accessing their accounts for days at a time while waiting for new “verification” deposits to appear on their bank statements.  Patrons who do not have e-statements sometimes have to wait a month to find and report the penny deposits.

But for a captive audience (eBay frowns on any payment method other than PayPal) and a corrupt or incompetent government, it might never have been permitted to pull off such a coup.

This is not an act other businesses should follow. These kinds of abuses give marketers bad names. If there was justice, John Donahoe, eBay’s president, and Scott Thompson, PayPal’s president, would be the new prison “girlfriends” of a man named Bubba.

Submit your comments to creative@cocoboston.com.