Digital Lifescapes

I read the book “ Connecting the Dots ” by John Chambers from the perspective of an industry insider, having worked within the internet sector since the mid-90s, and also previously as an employee at Cisco Systems for six years. I believe that Mr. Chambers was instrumental in helping to make ‘strategic communications’ an essential part of the company’s high-growth culture. Therefore, I’ll elaborate on a key topic, highlighted in Chapter Four of the book -- “Embrace Your Purpose, Not Your Products.” Cisco is often referred to as a ‘bellwether’ stock, meaning it’s a leading indicator of the direction of the economy, or of a sector of the market, or the market as a whole. How did Cisco achieve that eminence with a remarkable internet-enabled worldview? It was partly via commercial storytelling . "Together, we did play a critical role in changing how the world works, lives, learns, and plays." - John T. Chambers Rise Above the Me-Too Vendor Noise In an industry that...

Informed management consultants and industry analysts agree, the digital transformation journey begins with the adoption of digital marketing practices that enable companies to evolve beyond obsolete advertising-centric thinking. Today's progressive marketers have embraced change. They've learned new skills and pushed past the fears that were once holding them back. Now, digital marketing is an imperative, and digital commerce is also a top priority, according to the latest market study by Gartner, Inc. The recent Gartner survey also found that marketing budgets increased by 10 percent in 2015, with 61 percent of respondents saying they expect budgets to increase once again in 2016. "There is little doubt that digital marketing is now mainstream," said Yvonne Genovese, group vice president at Gartner . "Marketers no longer make a clear distinction between offline and online marketing disciplines." Gartner believes that as more enterprise customers op...

The mobile marketing channel is gaining momentum in the UK. Why now? Over one in four British consumers owns a media tablet, as advertisers spent a record £6.3 billion in 2013 to reach people via the mobile internet, according to a market study for the Internet Advertising Bureau UK (IAB), conducted by PwC. Over one third (36%) of people accessing the internet are now doing so via their personal tablets, as tablet ownership grew 63% year-on-year from 11.0 million to 17.9 million Britons in February 2014. Almost six in 10 (57%) tablet owners online say it's their go-to device to browse the internet at home. Two-thirds of owners (66%) say it’s easier to go online using a tablet. Almost two-thirds (65%) like to use them while watching TV. Survey data shows that advertising on the internet and mobile phones overall increased, like-for-like, by 15.2% or £853 million to £6.30 billion in 2013 -- that's up from £5.45 billion in 2012. "Digital advertising continues to grow ...

Marketing leaders at multinational companies within the Technology, Media and Telecom (TMT) sectors have witnessed the slow but consistent decline of the trade publications that once dominated the marketplace -- as the go-to media for specific industry news and vendor insights. Today, many of these legacy trade media organizations within the TMT sectors are barely able to maintain solvency as advertising revenue continues to decline faster than they can find sponsors of their high-cost events. Ceasing their print publications did help to improve overall profitability, but losses have continued. Besides, the perpetual stream of displaced trade media senior editorial staff meant that most publishers lack the talent to research the marketplace and write meaningful or substantive stories. The remaining junior editors can barely keep up with re-purposing press releases into articles -- so that the few remaining advertisers are appeased with the promise that significant reader traffi...

Starting today, I'm evolving my Digital Lifescapes postings on a Saturday. First and foremost, my weekly summaries of research by eMarketer will now be posted on my Transmedia Newswire site. Going forward, my weekend posts will be different than in the past -- I'll be sharing more about that editorial transition in an upcoming post. The eMarketer study insights that I share will now be shorter, more frequent and include a link to the source webpage - here's an example from today. Moreover, that content will no longer appear on Digital Lifescapes. Note, I'm the editor and publisher of the Transmedia Newswire. If you subscribe to the Digital Lifescapes feed , then you may want to also subscribe to the Transmedia Newswire feed -- which now includes the eMarketer study summaries and noteworthy insights from numerous other sources. Perhaps you're wondering, why change the GeoActive Group daily publishing schedule? First, I've wanted to increase my ...

According to the findings from a recent market study, when generating new content from scratch, establishing prospective customer engagement is a common objective for business-to-business (B2B) marketers. But what constitutes meaningful engagement? Apparently, it's all about the inherent power of a good story. eMarketer reports that eighty-one percent of B2B technology marketers worldwide cited "engaging and compelling storytelling" as the most important elements of effective content marketing. Regardless, few actually practice what they profess -- given the content they routinely produce and distribute as marketing communications professionals. Within the highly technical or complex industry sectors, engagement and originality trumped professional writing when generating content marketing assets. Once again, indicating marketer recognition that customers and prospects will rely on substantive content to make their decisions, we know that people are initially draw...

Brand marketers in a variety of different industries are beginning to accelerate their multimedia production and distribution efforts. They're acting more like non-fiction storytellers and commercial publishers, as they create new forms of digital content. This established trend was one of the significant themes at South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) 2011. In addition, the early-adoption of Transmedia Storytelling techniques -- by a relative few forward-looking organizations -- was the noteworthy emerging theme. I attended several conference sessions on these topics. Here's my summary of the commentary shared at the event and the apparent implications to savvy marketers. Don't You Dare Call Them Journalists "Brave New World: Debating Brands' Role as Publishers" produced a lively discourse among panelists who believe that purchasing ad space in a trade publication is obsolete. Instead, now marketers just create their own site on the topic. Howev...