IT prefigures marketing by 20 years

The IT industry has seen massive change in the past 20 years. Clearly the technology has advanced in all directions. But I think the biggest change has been the role that IT plays in business. There are few firms, big or small, than function without some form of IT. Some industries, such as financial services, are now completely dependent upon it. It is now typically regarded as a strategic asset underpinning operations, sometime even offering competitive advantage.

It wasn’t always thus. IT argued its importance for most of the eighties and nineties. Should the IT director have a seat on the board? Is IT just a cost centre, or can it add business value? Why does IT cost so much, yet appear to deliver so little?

Most firms adopting technology did so with blind faith, many projects failed to deliver benefits (other than to the vendors), and the industry’s reputation was low.

Most of these issues are now solvable, due to increased professionalism, better measurement and improved management. Importantly, there is also a wider understanding of the benefits and limitations of IT throughout business, not just within the IT industry. It’s not that these issues have gone away –

PR votes to carry on lying

I’ve recently been writing and blogging on the Insanity of Marketing. But can there be a more insane branch of marketing than PR?

Martin Moore’s blog directs us to a debate held at Westminster University, the motion of which was that “PR has a duty to tell the truth.” I don’t know whether to laugh at the fact that the motion was defeated, or at the fact they had to debate the issue at all. Can anyone suggest another profession that would hold such a debate?

The majority view amongst PR is that their duty of care is towards their clients, and that this sometimes (often?) conflicts with the truth. In these cases, it seems permissible to lie.

The trouble I have with this admission is not that PR has to wrestle with conflicts of interest and ethics. It is that, once you know a PR firm lies, how can you ever tell if it’s telling the truth? And if the majority of the industry admits to the practice, doesn’t this undermine the whole industry?

As it happens, I know many PR professionals, and professional they are. I’m sure they’ll be dismayed by the results of the vote, and hopefully of the debate itself.

I think that PR has shot itself in the foot. It could do with appointing a PR firm to limit the damage, lie a little, and put PR in a positive spin.

The influence of LinkedIn

We’re hiring at the moment at Influencer50. Having exhausted my small network of sales people I've worked with that I would hire, I thought I’d give LinkedIn a go. I’ve never really invested much time and effort in it (though I know others that swear by it).

I knocked up a quick job description and sent it, via LinkedIn, to 20 people that I thought might have some useful contacts. I could have sent it by ordinary email, but since LinkedIn’s purpose is networking, I thought recipients would (a) read it and (b) mind less than an email out of the blue.

I had eight responses. Not bad return on 20 emails. What’s more, each came with a personal recommendation from someone I trust. I was really impressed by the quality and interest of the people that came forward – presumably they’d checked us out on the web before making contact.

It’s how the web is supposed to work. It’s also how influence works, much better than blogs. The best blogs are those written collaboratively between friends or colleagues. Influence is localised around communities, or issues, or some other common ground. Like a personal network.

We hope to make a hire in the next few weeks. But I’m converted. If you’ve met me at some point in the past, watch out. Prepare to be linked.

New blogs on the blog roll

Perhaps not newsworthy to everyone, but I've added three new blogs to the roll.

Nilofer Merchant's WinMarkets blog - Nick (I50's founder) and Nilofer met up last week, and Nilofer blogs on the meeting. I can assure you that Nick is not zany (for a Brit anyway) but then the meeting was in the ultra-conservative California...

Ian McKee's The Power of Influence. Ian is CEO of Vocanic, an influencer marketing firm based in Singapore. You should check them out - really interesting stuff.

Marc Duke. Marc is ex-Text100 and Lewis, on the Analyst Relations side. Marc really gets Influencer Marketing. Blog more often, Marc.

More on the influence of blogging

Who’s got time to blog? It’s been 2 weeks since my last post (forgive me for I have sinned…). But I’ve been busy doing … errr … work. Two major deliveries coinciding, plus recruitment and web site redesign has distracted me somewhat, and diverted me from the blog task (which I tend to fit in where I can anyway).

Importantly, I haven’t had the time to read other people’s stuff, which is how I form opinions, so nothing to rant about.

I’m coming to the impression that people who blog either don’t have regular (or full) jobs, or that blogging is their job. It’s no coincidence that most blogger give up after six months – they just don’t have the time. When Scoble et al tell us that you’ve got to blog often (= daily) it’s no wonder that most succumb to normality.

This then limits the influence that blogs can have. It’s the people who have “proper” jobs – consultants, analysts, regulators, academics, etc - that carry most influence. From Influencer50 research, we see that few blogs have influence, and those that do come from other sources. Influencers blog, more than bloggers influence.

PR moves from awareness to influence

I noted with interest Chime’s results announcement on March 14th. Lord Bell, the group chief, says that, “We have no evidence that the growth won't continue through 2007...business continues to move from awareness to influence, which is good news for PR.”

There are two points worth comment. The first is that the PR industry (or Chime at least) recognises that awareness is insufficient – it’s influence that matters. Chime has tangible activity to back this up: for example, it owns Sunesis and Insight, which talk about influencer relations, and it owns Opinion Leader Research, which conducts influencer research for BT among others.

Does this mark the formal shift of PR into Influencer Relations? We’ll see. Though nearly all PR firms think influence stops at analysts and journalists.

The second point is the assertion that the news is good for PR. Actually, I think it’s very bad news for PR. PR is an industry measured in “air cover” – broad coverage measured in column inches. Influence is measured in impact on sales. The two are at complete ends of the targeted communications spectrum.

If you were a small vendor with limited budget, would you spend your meagre market budget on unfocused coverage in any trade title that will carry your copy? Or would you spend it on knowing who is directly influencing your target market, and then getting those influencers to carry your message?

I believe that the PR wave is heading for a crash. It’s good news for vendors, but not for PR firms.

More marketing madness

On my occasional “Insanity of Marketing” theme, spot the non sequeter in these two sentences:

- “On aggregate, (marketing) agencies score a dismal Net Promoter rating of -21%.”
- “Agencies still wield a great degree of influence in the marketing organization.”

According to a new Forrester report - Help Wanted: 21st Century Agency – in-house marketers are extremely unlikely to recommend their agency to a peer or colleague (as measured by NPS). This is due to agencies’ weaknesses in emerging digital channels, over-estimation of their own importance, and lack of accountability in their performance.

A jaw-dropping 76% of marketers do not measure the ROI of their lead agency. 69% think ROI is too hard to measure.

Why is this situation allowed to continue? If we were talking about IT the CIO would have been fired and the CFO installed as overseer of spend. Indeed this was the case in the 1999-2002 period.

Sadly, says Forrester, “Although marketers claim they are unwilling to recommend agency services, few alternatives exist. Marketers need as much help as they can get to reach customers who increasingly tune out marketing communications.”

In other words, marketers know they are being screwed by agencies, yet feel powerless to do anything about it. Is marketing insane, or just deeply depressed?

Forrester points to “left brain” tactics to implement marketing metrics as part of the solution. I suspect this is only half the story – once metrics are used we’ll find out that much of traditional marketing is considerably less effective than agencies have us believe.