Make Digital Marketing Work

In general I don’t think it’s an agency’s place to get involved in lawmaking.  We are a business who undertakes to act within the law and whilst we all have our own political opinions, the office is not a place for them.

The Digital Economy Bill makes this a bit difficult because it seeks to effect the environment in which we work.  Now I am not advocating piracy and copyright theft in any shape or form, I simply think that the bill as it stands is badly thought out and rushed.  I also think that rushed legislation makes bad law.

It stems from a group of copyright owners who do not really understand that technology has moved on and it is they that need to move on with it to produce legal ways for people to consume media, not for them to scream at government to legislate against digital media.  For a start it will make no difference whatsoever.  If a college kid can create a piece of software that enables the people of Iran to access banned sites then how long do you expect it will take another college kid to enable people to access download sites undetected?

Banning Napster only resulted in the creation of a multitude of other more complex download programs so the law is unlikely to be able to prevent committed pirates in any case.

What I am concerned about though is the effect that this could have when it is applied with a broad brush stroke on the Internet audience.  It is conceivable that a person could quite innocently trip an alarm at an ISP and have their Internet access taken away.  What if that Internet access was in a corporation or a university and the entire pipe was blocked?  The only result I see is that access to the internet is likely to be stifled and with it the development of the internet in this country.   That would be a great shame as we Brits tend to be rather good at this internet lark despite the comparative lack of funds available to startup companies.  I can see that a lot of Internet professionals will reach for their credit cards and quickly book plane tickets to go and work in an environment where a greater level of sanity persists.  I fear that the brain drain of the seventies will look like a quick trip to the shops at lunchtime compared to what could happen with the Internet industry.

Given that we have a wonderfully buoyant Internet industry here, surely we should be doing everything we can to enable it to grow and flourish not placing barriers on it.

My view is that the copyright owners who have persuaded Mr Mandelson to do this do not understand the media or the reality of the situation and are arguing from a position of ignorance.  They should be talking to Internet professionals to see how they can evolve their business to the digital economy not putting barriers up against it in order to protect traditional models which have the business equivalent of terminal cancer.

For those reasons we wrote a letter to our MP, and I would encourage everybody else to do the same thing.

Dear Emily Thornberry,

I’m writing to you today because I’m very worried that the Government is planning to rush the Digital Economy Bill into law without a full Parliamentary debate.

The law is controversial and contains many measures that concern me. I do not advocate copyright theft but the bill as it currently stands is extremely badly thought through in my view as an Internet professional.  Both my home and my company are in your constituency and therefore I feel compelled to write to you.  My experience is that legislation which is rushed and not debated properly leads to bad laws which cause more problems than they seek to address.

Other industry experts, internet service providers and huge internet companies like Google and Yahoo agree with me and are all opposing the bill – yet the Government seems intent on forcing it through without a real debate.

Any Bill deserves proper scrutiny let alone a controversial piece of legislation like this and so I urge you to do everything you can to prevent the government from rushing this through and deny us our democratic right to scrutiny and debate.

Many people think it will damage schools and businesses as well as innocent people who rely on the internet because it will allow the Government to disconnect people it suspects of copyright infringement. I believe it could also potentially stifle the internet industry in this country with a resultant loss of both talent and tax revenues.

Yours sincerely,

Aaron Savage

Managing Director

Interactive Mix Limited

There is a campaign that has recently launched that I think highlights many of the issues surrounding marketing at the moment.  It was developed by London Agency Rufus Leonard for Macmillan the cancer charity and features a viral campaign where celebrities talk about their most embarrassing experiences.

The aim is to bring out into the open the embarrassment that men feel about breaking their silence concerning cancer.

These sound bites have been edited and placed on Youtube.  The best one is provided by Ray Winstone who relates a wonderful story of getting drunk with a group of British soldiers during which he agrees to go to Afghanistan.  As someone who has had the pleasure of a drink with his dad (and if the ability to consume alcohol runs in the family) this story conjures up a truly impressive picture of drunkenness, and one which is brought round at the end to an on brand message that facing up to an embarrassment can change your life in a good way.

I don’t know if Ray Winstone was just better briefed or cared more than the other contributors or if they ignored the brief but the other celebrities didn’t manage to relate anything like the same level of interest or a brand message.  Ricky Gervais only manages to say that he has never regretted anything he has said or done which whilst I am sure he is telling the truth is hardly on brand at all (and some might say is completely off brand).  The opportunity was there for all of the others to add to the message but all of them fail.

That leads me to wonder where the viral element for this campaign actually is.  We rely so heavily on celebrity endorsement for much of our media communications now but simply placing a celebrity in front of the camera isn’t enough.  A campaign needs a concept which is delivered, and all good communications include a fundamental truth about the product.  In this case, one part (Mr Winstone’s communication) accomplishes, this whilst the others do not.

Having said that of course we certainly hope that the campaign is a success and the cause is certainly a deserving one.  We just think that with a little bit more thought it could have achieved a greater level of cut through and led to a viral campaign that would have had more life, and more relevance.

The season of good will is upon us and everyone in agency land is preparing for the annual assault upon the liver that goes along with client entertainment and a myriad of agency/client/industry parties. So far this year the highlight of our social calendar has got to be the lovely party that Stella McCartney threw a few weeks ago in Mayfair which we went to with Atiiva Diamonds.

It’s well known in the industry that a certain amount of drunkenness can ensue from Christmas Party time and it is not unusual for an account handler or receptionist to wake up the following morning with a few things to explain to their signifficant other, but below is a cautionary tale for how to guage when you have had enough. Thanks to Gavin Wheeler over at WDMP for sending it over and for bringing back a few memories of nights out we have had together. (We still on for next week Gav?)

Merry Christmas everyone!

I found the news waiting for me this morning that Media Week is to be removed from the newsstand and another of my favourite Haymarket Business Media titles, Revolution is to become a quarterly supplement giveaway with Marketing Magazine.

According to the story I read, Media Week is going to retain an online editor and utilise the staff of Brand Republic which is a several times a day destination for my browser.  The brand is also going to survive (at least for now) as the Media Week Awards and the Media Week Annual Conference but that must be slim solace for a brand I’ve known in the industry for a very long time, not to mention the staff who are being cut.

Revolution is going to be published as a supplement to Marketing Magazine which the press release says is unaffected by the changes and also backed by what the press release calls a “Blogging initiative in 2010”.  Not sure what that means, but along with New Media Age, Revolution acts as my compass in the industry and I for one am going to miss the title a lot.  When I worked in New York Revolution opened their offices at the same time as we did and the two ex pat crews had a drink or three on Bleeker Street several times.

It is the first of what I suspect are going to become more regular announcements from magazine and newspapers of layoffs, restructures, consolidations and new initiatives all aimed at cutting costs to make up the shortfall from falling circulations and advertising sales.  It’s a brutal world out there now if you are in publishing and we send our thoughts out to anyone at Haymarket who has been adversely affected.

We put our thoughts down about newspapers and magazines in previous blog posts, and we saw Nick Gregg offer his advice in a piece entitled The 5 key action points that might save publishers. Similarly  Robert Andrews gave out his advice in his piece Four Controversial Ways To Save Regional Papers Online, and that struck us as intrinsically the best way for publishers to think.  Utilise the assets you have in new markets to preserve funding for your product.  The move away from print to online is now pretty irresistible and unless publishers have got a strategy in place to meet it, more and more titles are going to disappear or be consolidated and it is going to happen very quickly.

Over the last few weeks I have been looking at publishing.  It’s too big a subject to fit into one or even a week’s posts and there is a lot going on in the rest of the agency but I did want to include a bit about magazine (periodical) publishers because whilst they do share things in common with newspapers it is a hybrid problem that they face and one which may require the most outlandish of solutions if profits are to be protected by the publishing companies.

First off I have been a dedicated magazine reader all my life.  When I was a child I read comics, and then at the age of 11 started reading titles such as ‘Skateboard Scene’ to go with my new found passion whilst trying to learn how to bowl ride.  Other titles that I have been devoted to have included The Face, NME, The Stage, Diver Magazine,  Which, Home and Garden, Private Eye, The Economist, Personal Computer World, , PC User, Computing, PC Week, Internet Magazine, Internet User, Wired, Marketing, Marketing Week, Revolution,  New Media Age.

The point is that I have read a lot of magazines.  They can loosely be split into titles I read for pleasure and titles I read for work.  Of the ones I read for pleasure I read them to find out what was new, what was cool, what to buy, what was a better buy, how to find the best price. I also read some of them to find out where to go and what to do.  I made sure I was in the know and that the kit and equipment I had was as up to date and as quality as I could afford.

Of the titles which I read for professional reasons I was able to keep my knowledge up to date and current, abreast of new trends and thought processes, aware of competitors and what they were doing and saying.  I was able to get good deals for equipment I wanted the company to buy and I was able to check my salary against similar jobs when it was leading up to a wage review and I was able to find new job opportunities when it was time to move on.  I read them on the train, at home and in the office.  I read them early in the morning in the evening at weekends and at lunchtime.  They were informing, entertaining and reference material.  They were an invaluable part of my life.

That’s a pretty exhaustive list and my memory fails me at what point I learned that these were actually termed as business to business and business to consumer titles.  I suspect that my experience of magazines is not so dissimilar to that of other people.  They provide in depth knowledge and resources for niche audiences.  The more information and stats it was able to provide me with the better I liked it.

These days I have a single resource for pretty much all these things and that is the Internet.  The Internet is extremely good at providing resources to niche audiences at a low cost which is bad news for the B2C titles.  It is also the greatest information resource yet conceived by man which is bad news for B2C titles.  Blogging provides more analysis and news than I can ever consume in a single sitting and Google provides me with lots of research material to base purchases on.  It seems that advertisers, the bedrock of all periodical publication agree with Ad revenues down for the entire industry.

It’s a problem that publishers have seen coming but now it is here most seem to be no nearer a solution and ill prepared for the shift.  Instead of tooling up and preparing for this well in advance there is suddenly a wealth of ads for digital directors and Heads of Digital.  Head hunters are on the phones screening candidates for their ‘gravitas’, knowledge, and willingness to explore any and all possibilities to find the correct solution for their business.  The sad thing is that if this is genuinely their first foray into this arena then it is probably already too late to find a business solution to the problem.

Fortunately that doesn’t include the majority, who have explored a number of possibilities over the years, from teasers and paywalls to new news free and value added services.  The trends and solutions have gone in cycles with the Economist recently announcing that more of their content will move to behind the paywall.  They are putting a lot of faith in the belief that news and commentary has value to the audience, especially as there are free alternatives available on blogs.  Their issues (certainly as far as some points go) are therefore the same as those facing newspapers and there are enough citizen journalists who will be more than willing to write the story and capture the audience whilst they come up with new and interesting ways to monetise their blog.  Most will fail and vanish after a few attempts but they will soon be replaced at the speed of Google and eventually someone will figure out the method that sticks.

One model I looked at some ten years ago now was for an independent magazine called SimplyCity.  It was aimed at the modern urban living woman and seemed to me to be perfect for the Carrie Bradshaws of New York which is where it was first issued.  The magazine provided content and ideas on where to go, what to buy, what to wear, and other lifestyle information.  It had a catchy title and an attitude that epitomised single women living in the city at that time.  The website then gave additional content but most importantly provided access to purchase the products and other items that the printed magazine had introduced its audience to.

There was also a theme that ran through the articles and follow up articles so that each subsequent version directed traffic to the next instalment.  If the previous instalment had been online then the next one would be offline and visa verse.  This was therefore a case of offline driving traffic online and online driving traffic offline.  You got some content free (online) and paid for other content (offline) and online supported itself with eCommerce.  It’s a model I loved but in amongst the dot com crash the cost of managing what was effectively two sets of publishing teams (offline and online) and carrying stock was too much for the company and its investors to bare.  We were all pretty young then and I know my knowledge wasn’t as rounded then as it is now and so I wasn’t able to give them as good advice as I could today.

If we were doing this today I would recommend that the magazine operate as an affiliate which would claim commissions back from products featured, and sell advertising to increase the visibility of lead products and services.  That would negate the need for stock and fulfilment whilst providing an online revenue stream and a reason for the site to co-exist alongside the printed version rather than cannibalising it.  The question of dual content is one that is still expensive but if the audience could be tapped into this a series of trackbacks to relevant blogs could also be integrated so that commentary and discussion was provided and boosted the audience’s own SEO efforts.

Another idea that has been suggested to me and which I agree with is providing access to tools and data to subscribers.  The content is therefore available to anyone online but methods to interact with the stored data of the publication are made available through applications.

I began by saying that this post was too long for a single article so I will pick it up again in another article.

I can’t help feeling that life is all a bit desperate for publishers at the moment.  Just about every publishing house that doesn’t have a Director of Digital is frantically looking around for one those that do have a digital team are looking at their costs of content and weighing them up against shrinking ad revenues and dwindling circulation numbers whilst trying to figure out what to do to get more money out of consumers.  As for consumers, many of them (myself included) haven’t bought a newspaper in years, are devotees of mobile devices and are getting very excited by citizen journalism scoops.

It all looks a bit bleak.  Except that it is wrong to lump all published content together.  There is and always will be something comforting about a book that you can hold and feel the pages warm up in your hands as it transports you to as many imagined places as imaginations exist.   They thrill, they educate, they inspire, they entertain, they help and as far as most people are concerned they are of insignificant interest when compared to the television, games console or computer.  Those of us that do own a wall full of books are definitely in the minority.  Most people own more DVDs than books  but as those and CDs move on to hard drive storage, and everyone consumes media digitally does this mean that we are going to have nothing to put on bookshelves anymore and that Ikea will stop selling the Billy bookcase, favourite of the recent graduate?

I think not, or at least I hope not.  We may not be a book reading nation but the minority of people who do buy books buy a lot of books and have access to the internet and own game consoles and own mobile devices and still enjoy the feeling of printed paper beneath our finger tips.  There is also something incredibly disappointing about opening a Christmas parcel and finding a sim card e-book volume or download short code instead of a nice weighty copy of Jamie Oliver to pass round whilst you attempt the annual marathon that is Christmas dinner.

No I think that shares in Waterstone’s are safe for the minute (although anybody taking share tips from me should probably be considered reckless at the very least).  Reading a book is an experience that excites all your senses, not just your sense of sight, and I think people will continue to enjoy this.  At least I hope so.  I have however made a mental note to think of a new piece of furniture or household appliance which will fit where the unwanted bookshelves once stood.

I don’t watch much boxing, but when I do I like to watch a heavyweight bout.  There is something so engaging about two giants landing thundering blows on each other.  Any one of them would probably take your or my head off, but the recipient casually shrugs off the blow and jabs his way into his own point scoring punch.

Watching the Operating Systems marketplace is a bit like watching a boxing match at the moment.  Absolutely everyone is getting in on the act.  Sports fans may be interested in our facts thoughts and trivia on this

In the Blue Corner we have Microsoft Windows 7 with its snap too drag and drop.  The ad we saw is available at the link below:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1847321790?bctid=45901397001

The problem that we have with this is that we can’t see a compelling reason to upgrade from Windows XP (which we understand and are familiar with).  Neither could we see a compelling reason to upgrade to Windows Vista.  Now a lot of people agreed with us about Vista and we strongly suspect that a pretty large majority of those people will think the same about lucky number 7.  What we are not sure about is how many of the current Vista users will flock to purchase it.

Now on the same day that the Microsoft Ad was released Apple has filed a patent on an Operating System which has embedded advertising at its core.  The full story can be found on Brand Republic::

The upshot though is that Apple has sounded out their intention to release an operating system that can be ad funded and therefore given free to consumers.  Does this herald the crowning of a new heavyweight champion of the world?  Well no not quite, because the patent actually requires you to interact with the ads before you can use any applications.  If we think about this for a desktop computer then everyone having a coke and a smile or diet coke break before they can begin working is pretty intrusive and not terribly productive.   Apple’s alchemist though is never stupid.  If this was media that people wanted to interact with to find content through ads that were crucial to the applications then that would be a very different story.  The only question is where would Apple find this kind of content that you could advertise?  I mean you would need an entire library of publishing rights.  Oh hang on…………..

In the wings we of course can hear (not see) the new kid on the block in training in the form of Google Chrome OS.  We don’t know much about Chrome other than the fact that it is based around the concept of Cloud Computing where most of the work is done on the Internet using Internet tools rather than on the desktop.  Given Google’s experience with media funding projects we can also expect that the OS will be financed from other means than retail sales.  As an article on TechRadar notes:

“Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS,” says Google. “We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds.”

“People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up,” says Google.

“They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files.

“Even more importantly, they don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates.”

That’s pretty impressive talk if you (like me) booted a Windows computer this morning and then went to get a cup of tea and visit the men’s room whilst it went through all its checks and pre loads.  It’s probably pretty scary if you are Microsoft and even concerning if you are Apple.

Of course posturing in the OS marketplace isn’t new.  They all do it all the time.  Apple quite famously aped the Microsoft Vista version and pricing model at their user’s conference a few years ago.

Although it still seems a bit confused according to a ZDNet article:

The standard retail pricing for Windows 7 will be £149.99 for Home Premium, £219.99 for Professional and £229.99 for Ultimate. The notional prices for the unobtainable upgrades for existing Windows owners are £79.99, £189.99 and £199.99 respectively.

However, UK shoppers will initially be able to buy the standalone product at upgrade prices for a limited period. “[The full retail price] is more than people would expect to pay,” said Painell. “We will be offering fully packaged product at upgrade prices from the launch to the beginning of next year.”

The Steve Jobs video above highlights exactly the problem and the dilemma for users of Microsoft.  Who needs which version and what will they pay for it.  £200+ price tags are pretty self flattering and quite possibly delusional when there are alternatives like OS X here now, and Chrome on the way.

I can’t help but feel that this is largely a marketing communications problem.  There won’t be too many tears though across the industry for Steve Ballmer who was quite happy to bully and punch his way through the industry in Microsoft’s hey day.  He had a genuine innovative thinker then in the form of Bill Gates.  These days if Ballmer thinks something is a bad idea, it generally means it will go on to great success.

It may also be a crucial sign that Microsoft without Bill Gates is a bit like a heavyweight boxer without a fist.

It’s everywhere at the moment.  Media agencies, marketing commentators and clients are all in the mood to change as the cry goes out for the marketing industry to re-invent itself.  Reinvention though is a big thing to undertake and there has to be a genuine will there to create something new and better if the pitfalls are going to be avoided and the new marketing just turns out to be the same marketing with whole host of different acronyms.

From my point of view I see the need to fundamentally change the view that ‘the message’ and ‘the big idea’ are not all powerful links in the chain.  This has to be replaced with the consumer and customer and engaging with them in a relationship.

Part of this is creating content that will facilitate two way communications and provoke discussion.   Another important part is how your overall Digital Marketing Strategy fits together.  These two elements will take you and your prospects on a journey together from the point of first contact right the way through to the point you have created relationships with regular customers who buy from you habitually and also refer you to others that they know.  This is the basis of the Interactive Mix.  It provides an end to end solution for acquiring, converting and retaining customers, and is proven to work.

I can see why a lot of offline and integrated agencies are going to have a few problems adapting to this new world.  It is because their disciplines have grown up with the idea that a message will be heard and picked up by consumers.  That they will identify with and accept the message and then rush to the shops to buy your product.  The problem is that consumers these days:

1)      Will not believe what you tell them

2)      Will not believe what you show them

3)      Will believe what a friend (no matter how little they actually know them) tells them

4)      Will go with the majority

5)      Will voice their concerns and dissatisfactions with you brand

6)      Will defect and find different alternatives

7)      Can stop you talking to them

8)      Expect you to treat them well in return for buying your product

9)      Will punish you for lying to them

10)   Expect you to listen to them

That is a world where suddenly the concept of message led communications feels a bit like a roman gladiator turning up on a modern battlefield with its smart bomb technology and automatic weapons – a bit inadequate. That is why changing the lyrics of an old, well known song to include your brand name, brand message, and creating an ad with a cute kid and a doting mother just doesn’t cut it anymore.  Consumers are too sophisticated for that now, and if that is what you serve them they will assume you are lying to them, won’t believe what you tell them and punish you for lying to them.  You could conceivably lose a whole swathe of customers.

For agencies, ingrained in this way of thinking, I can see problems, because the temptation will be to play lip service to this new world whilst egos demand that sooner or later everyone will get back into line and ‘the message’ will rule once more.  The problem is that clients won’t stand for that either now.

My personal view is that Online/Interactive/Digital agencies are better placed to deliver these strategies because they have grown out of the channels that consumers are now screaming for.  They haven’t had to adapt to them, it is a native language.  When I visited Egypt for the first time I contacted a local guide, when I learned how to dive I chose an instructor who had been diving since aqua lungs became recreationally available.  Its the same with Digital Marketing.  If you understand where the channels came from, how they developed and how to interact with people through them, then you have a much better idea of how to deliver a winning strategy to clients.

There have been several high profile instances of Citizen Journalism this week, at the same time as the established news media are talking about charging for their content.  I feel that these two examples of the former are perfect representations of why the latter won’t work.

The first started with a an entry in The Guardian which read “The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.”

The popular myth is that this entry captured the imagination of many Twitter users who uncovered and published the story about oil company Trafigura which exposed a toxic dumping disaster inflicted on the Ivory Coast, which hospitalized up to 100,000 people.  This came about because Trafigura pulled what political Blog Wikileaks described as a legal parlour trick to prevent the reporting of this.

The full sequence of events is laid out in the  WikiLeaks article.  It shows that this isn’t a people’s journalism coup of Watergate proportions but rather a deliberate collaboration of a series of people to make use of the Internet in order to disseminate information in a game of cat and mouse.  It does however highlight the manner in which law and technology are engaging each other in an exchange similar to that of a great white shark and a killer whale, with the killer whale able to ram the shark, place it an a catatonic state and then devour it at will.  Technology is simply too clever for the existing law, especially where information is concerned.  If you want it hidden and people sont want it hidden, it wont be hidden.  If you want something silenced and people don’t want it silenced, it wont be silenced, if you want it paid for and people are not prepared to pay for it they won’t.  The point that is worth considering (from someone interested in online media’s point of view)  is that all that appeared in the press was a piece in the guardian saying they couldn’t print anything, after that it was the Internet all the way and websites which are free.  Its success was because it was free and it captured the imagination of hundreds of thousands of people who had never heard of Trafigura or Carter Ruck.  I include myself in this,

It was the players who orchestrated this and watched it go viral, and if they can do it once they can do it again.  Will they need or can they use a paid for online media with it’s limiting capabilities to achieve the same again or will they simply go back to Twitter with a good story?  I suspect the latter is true.

The second example is a bit more grass roots and an example of actual citizen journalism.  An every day commuter was travelling home when he witnessed a member of TFL staff blow up at a member of the public.  Its a very common thing and it has pissed commuters in London off for years.  There was never any point complaining so everyone subjected to it just got on with it whilst dreaming of excruciating death machines for the TFL staff concerned.  Yesterday though the commuter used his camera phone to video it and capture the sound.  The full story of Ian’s TFL abuse is on this blog entry.  It was posted yesterday evening.  By this morning it had gone viral on Twitter and Facebook.  By mid morning it had attracted the attention of the Mayor’s office, the Daily Telegraph and BBC lunchtime news carried extensive coverage of the incident complete with subtitles.  It is a clear example of a TFL employee losing it, and the chap concerned looks as though he is probably going to be hung out to dry.  His full name has been made public and links to his personal Facebook page are being circulated across the web at the speed of broadband.

This is a clear example of Citizen Journalism being picked up by the mainstream media, and if it originated on the internet how do the established media expect it to be suddenly worth paying for?  Do we?  All the commentary has already been made, and the Mayor has already got involved.  Interestingly enough he has voiced his opinion before anyone in TFL has responded.  They must know it has happened and that the cries outside Holborn station are getting louder. Their silence shows a company ill prepared to deal with their brand in a fast paced social media world.

One of his last entries was that he was “trying to get out of bed” yesterday.  After today he may well look back on that and wished he had not bothered.

This highlights the next point though, because this single employee who has (for all we know) made a single but significant error is now the focus for every Londoner who has ever suffered a similar experience from TFL staff.  The mob is baying and they want blood.  Unchecked it could get out of control and people could get hurt.  There is the need for a mainstream voice to keep thing in proportion and perspective.  In this case in particular if the employee was not removed from his platform the unrest and cries of the mob could easily turn into a tragedy.  The media does therefore have a part to play, I just don’t think we are prepared to pay for it.  They of course have the choice to not pick up a story of this nature, but that won’t stop the readership from creating their own news online.  Back to the drawing board then for Murdoch and the other media owners.

ust some useful reading about business and marketing that we recommend people read.  They informed a lot of our opinions and strategies and helped us develop the Interactive Mix model.

Survival is not enough, Shift Happens by Seth Godin

Permission Marketing by Seth Godin

The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott

Purple Cow by Seth Godin

The big Moo by Seth Godin

Search Engine Optimisation An Hour a day by Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin

Winning Results with Google Adwords by Andrew Goodman

The Big Red Fez, How to make any website bettr by Seth Godin

All Marketers are Liars by Seth Godin

The Dip.  What Winners know about Quitting by Seth Godin

Social Media Marketing for Dummies by Shiv Singh