This blog will contain a series of thought particles that will become big thoughts in the future. They need time to germinate.

 
The book that I have been wanting to write for some time now -- having cast aside two different partially plotted novels with character sketchs drawn in outline -- has morphed into a marketing book about marketing communications. Here is the tentative outline as I see it today.

Integrated Marketing Communications
-- The traditional definition
-- What this would mean if translated onto the Web
-- Why we must work toward a new definition of integrated maketing that focuses on the integration of on-line and off-line communications

What Are the Building Blocks?
On-line
--Banner
--E-mail
--Search
--Affiliates

Off-line
-- TV
-- Radio
-- Print
-- Promotions
-- Outdoor




posted by amanda at 3:33 PM

 
"The Sock Puppet Did Not Die in Vain." He taught us lessons on market channels and the value of understanding market channel strategy. Even while Sock Puppet's creators were losing millions of dollars and building their brand with the puppet, deemed by none other than Advertising Age as the "first bona fide advertsing celebrity to be created in dotcom land," there were others who predicted that Web was in fact just a new channel. These individuals noted that the expected survivors would be clicks and mortar organizations, not the "pure play" dotcoms. This has been borne out in many instances. Although Amazon and eBay have become household names, it is directly attributeable to first mover status and the quality of the user's experience, not just because they are Web businesses.

This is because the Web is not "so totally new" as those caught up in it by their youthful enthusiasm and lack of understanding of marketing fundamentals would have led us to believe. It is simply another channel. It extends the reach of the organization beyond the walls of the store. It was no newer than the mail order catalog pioneered by Sears Roebuck a century before, just different. The challenge has been to harness the new channel and to clearly define what it offers.
posted by amanda at 3:20 PM

 
The Web has changed people's relationship with information. Search engines have made it possible for us to pursue areas of inquiry both broadly and deeply, all within the privacy of our own workspace and as fast as we can shape a query to find the information. This is wonderful yet it leads to problems. Most people do not frame their inquiry in the form of hypotheses for proof and disproof, actively looking for information across the whole frame of the inquiry. They look for information that will confirm their opinion. The very nature of how queries are formed means that the information they produce will typically confirm rather than broaden the inquiry. A skilled researcher can rapidly confirm beliefs by shaping queries that will yield hundreds of documents agreeing with the point of view sought. A truly skilled researcher can equally quickly find information with a opposing point of view.

The ready availability of data calls for even greater acuity of thought than was ever required in less information-rich environments. Nowhere is this more evident than in the relationship children and teens have with Web information. Today, a young teen can readily find recipes for dangerous chemical compounds and strongly worded polemics. They do not yet have the maturity or experience to understand how to filter the information for either appropriateness or for accuracy. The problem is not with the availability of the information, but rather with the critical thinking skills of the user. We teach very young children not to touch a hot stove, but we do not teach them how to know and understand hot "dangerous" information, instead we apply filters that attack a symptom not the problem. Students need to learn information evaluation skills as soon as they learn search skills.
posted by amanda at 8:37 PM

 
Common themes which emerge in every aspect of City Square Consulting's practice are (1) the selection of precise, appropriate and timely measures, (2) recognition of a data hierarchy (with confirmed primary sources at or near the top) and (3) the ethics of data collection and disclosure.
posted by Stand-Up Guy at 5:26 AM

 
This is a new way for me of keeping track in a very public way of the the thoughts that I am considering for additional research by City Square Consulting. It is my expectation that these thoughts will lead to a book. But, to make them real, they must be written in a coherent way. This is the start.
posted by amanda at 6:58 AM