To continue on the notes about the CMA digital marketing conference …
Post 1: Frank Trivieri talks about GM Canada
Post 2:
What are YOU Thinking?
Steve Levy, President, Canadian Market Research Eastern Canada, Ipsos Reid
Steve and the Ipsos Reid research really brought the marketing and agency staffers in the room into the spotlight. Not necessarily a good thing because the spotlight illuminated the fact that the majority of the people in the room were not well versed or experienced in digital marketing, and were not well read and/or had not researched or educated themselves on the field in which they apparently work. The alarming summary of the Ipsos-Reid study was that most Canadian marketers and agencies are in the same boat.
Steve put up an audience poll to see how many people in the audience had read at least one of these books:
The Long Tail by Chris Anderson
The Cluetrain Manifesto by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger
Life After the 30-Second Spot by Joseph Jaffe
Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel
I might have missed some titles. But the point is if you are working in the online space, pay attention to what the early adopters are telling you. These are seminal works. Please read them.
Steve gave a good presentation on what marketers and agencies are thinking about regarding online, what they are doing, and what they will be doing in the future. These numbers were, again, depressing. They are also proprietary so I’m going to wait until they are posted on the CMA site before I talk about them.
Steve’s main message was “get off the fence.” He said, 63% of the surveyed audience did not know what best online practices were, yet 90% believe the media mix has changed. He said basically that companies are spending silly amounts of money in ineffective media streams and yet are sitting on the fence about the whether to spend online.
More talk to come when the numbers are publicly available. But wow, if you are an online marketer or web design company or get the internet, there are companies out there that need help, and hopefully they paid attention and are willing to spend money in this space.