Does social media help candidates in politics?

Help fo 587 000 fans on Facebook and 330 posted videos at Youtube was not enough to John McCain to become the president of the USA.

Help of 3 650 000 fans on Facebook and 1827 posted videos at Youtube was enough to Barack Obama to become the president of the USA. He had also Flickr, Twitter, Linkedin and all possible social network and services accounts.

There will be presidential elections also in Slovakia in 4 months. Let´compare the two most possible candidates in online space:

-> The current president, Ivan Gasparovic. He has no Facebook site and 8 videos at Youtube.

-> His rival, Iveta Radicova. She has Facebook fan site with already 7300 fans and growing and 11 videos at Youtube.

According to US model status Iveta Radicova should will win the election. I am not sure about it but definitely paying consistent focus on these services by posting speeches, react to fans or at least became a friend with them may bring additional % of voters. Today maybe only the minority, but those, which may decide.

If interested, another interesting politics marketing lessons you can find in Seth Godin´s post.

Biggest crisis ever?

I don´t dare to compare. There were brig economic downturns in the past too.

What changed is the fact, how it affected almost the whole world. And how quick it came.
But this is one of the hopes for the future. Because what makes us different from the past is that we have today means to deal more quicky and professionaly with informations. We can find out the roots of the crisis and start correction initiatives. All the informations are at our fingertips. CRM, BI, media, internet and all other information and reporting tools bring all necessary information in no time.

Let´s only hope, that right managers will handle them. Because right information makes only half of thes success. The remaining half makes the right decisions upon them.

Polls

There are thousands of polls, surveys as a baseline for decision on marketing strategy or tactic.
But do we act upon results?

Most of the time no. Or not enough.
Managers, usualy not experienced enough or less connected with marketing profession still prefer their personal opinions in the end. I feel that this would be better...

In this situation I love to use the words of marketing guru Sergio Zyman: If you buy all the production, I act upon your preferences. Until then, let´s respect the customer.

Jobs I don´t want to do

I wanted to work as a marketer for premium car maker or premium airline company. Their business is often about fullfiling people´s dream. They work with emotions and might charge higher fees for top service.

But today no company in car or aviation industry is safe in these turbulent times. Customers are reprioritizing their needs and cutting budgets. Cars and planes are also depending on oil price and this brought and even will bring hard times for them.

Toyota predicts loss for 2008 for the first time in history and gives 4200 discount per new vehicle in the US today (according to BusinessWeek). Czech carmaker Skoda is down by 37% y-o-y in UK market.There is said in 3 years only 2 major carmakers will remain in Europe. There is also said that only 3 - 5 low cost airline will survive this winter in Europe. There are 58 of them today.

In spite of all this facts I think this is a challenging time for marketers in these industries. They are facing some of problems for the first time, but this is exactly the situation, when they can prove our impact on business. And in close cooperations with production and sales try to find the easiest way back to the growth.

What is a successful event?

As the indicators of successful event is mostly mentioned numbers of participants.

Yes, I can agree, but need to add: where is the quality? Where is the subjective satisfaction of those participated? How many perspectives did it bring?

Because people participated and particulary events itself, are in general only one of the marketing vehicles. The targeted ratio invested dollar vs revenue out of satisfied participants should be the infitite indicator of success for a real marketing manager.

People don´t trust company blogs

According to Forrester research only 16% of respondents trust in information found on company sites. 77% believe in personal recommendation, even 28% believe in email and 25% dmail from a company or a brand. Does it mean that companies should give up blogging and get back to traditional communication vehicles?
I don´t think so.

First: a company shold be specific in expectation, topics to communicate and needs on the market and accordingly select the mean. I think for long term awareness blogs are very effective.

Second: get credibility. Depends if you want to build renome for the professionals in the company, or change/build awareness for your product or brand.

Example? In Spring 2008 we in Microsoft Slovakia also considered how to get closer to public with informal communications which may send traditional press releases to the past. There were 2 possibilities:

• create company blog on our platform feeded by our internal profesionals, or
• create external plaftorm to blog for selected external bloggers, specialists in the field.

Despite the fact that we employe skilled professionals and that it was more challenging from development and time perspective to choose the second option was right decision. Not only looking at the results on Forrester above, but based on figures and feedback.

Based on my experience I believe that company specialist after a year loose the consumer/business partner insight which makes engagement of external contributors particulary important. About this in one of my following posts.

After first day: Euro conversion in reality

So the Euro has arrived to Slovakia. The Slovak crown was supposed to be withdrawn from the market automatically by paying in Slovak crown but the change given back in Euro in the retail. Reality after first day? 2 times payed yesterday 2 times the change returned in Slovak crowns. If it continues like this in following days we may expect long ques in the banks after dual currency flow end on January 16th.

Cause? Uninteresting awareness campaing about Euro that was communicated in last 6 months which didn´t attired the attention enough?

I don´t think so and I guess it is much more simple. It is about the attitude of each person. It seemed too far away even couple of days ago but today it is here. That is why I think the learning curve in following days will exceed that in last couple of weeks by far. If not, let´s meet in the banks.