DEC - Glimpse of the Future, 1994

Not that long ago, and look how far we've come since. No doubt there is much more to come in future as the web gets smarter.

Are you a Meatball Sundae?

For any business planning to start using web 2.0 tools, including blogging, I recommend a visit to Seth Godin or read his latest book "Meatball Sundae". Seth is one of the most experienced marketers who has worked with the web since the earliest days and a guy who knows what he's talking about.

Here's a short excerpt from the introduction:

What's a meatball sundae?

Maybe this is familiar. It is to me, anyway:

You go to a marketing meeting. There's a presentation from the new Internet marketing guy. He's brought a fancy (and expensive) blogging consultant with him. She starts talking about how blogs and the 'Web 2.0 social media infrastructure' are just waiting for your company to dive in. 'Try this stuff,' she seems to be saying, 'and the rest of your competitive/structural/profit issues will disappear.'"

Just grafting these new tools onto your organization is a recipe for disaster. The risk of cognitive dissonance by your customers is great. .

This is not really new, the same was true when websites first appeared on the scene about over a decade ago and most executives - after first ignoring the web - thought that having a site would be a panacea for all their marketing problems. After huge amounts wasted, we now know how wrong that assumption was.

The corporate culture and the brand have to be consistent to be believable and communications need to be consistent across all channels and touchpoints to be credible. There are no shortcuts to success.

THE EXPECTATION ECONOMY

reports Trendwatching in their latest newsletter is an umbrella trend that neatly captures the zeitgeist for mature (and rapidly maturing) consumer societies, while also incorporating and explaining many other subtrends. Yes, it will keep you busy. It's a rather long read, but as always contains a lot of food for thought for any marketer in any industry.

"The EXPECTATION ECONOMY is an economy inhabited by experienced, well-informed consumers from Canada to South Korea who have a long list of high expectations that they apply to each and every good, service and experience on offer.

Their expectations are based on years of self-training in hyperconsumption, and on the biblical flood of new-style, readily available information sources, curators and BS filters. Which all help them track down and expect not just basic standards of quality, but the 'best of the best'."

And here are just some of the those many sources that people have at their disposal in their permanent search for information to support their decision making.

Web 2.0 & Beyond

is the title of my latest presentation on this topic which pretty much affects anyone in travel and tourism today.





There is no voice over, so if anyone is interested in learning more about my take on this or to present to your group or meeting, please get in touch with me. I'll be glad to assist.

Test Post

Send this to my blog

Joe Buhler

11 Internet Marketing Trends to Ignore for 2008

Following a long tradition we established while living in Japan, I took a break between Christmas and New Year. This was welcome down time, although I've read more RSS feeds than I intended dealing with all things web and marketing.

Came across this interesting post in

Conversation Marketing: Internet Marketing Strategy Blog: ""

With the exception of the authors opinion on vertical search, which in my opinion will grow quite rapidly in travel with new innovations coming on stream, I quite agree with some of his trend predictions.

We shall see! Best wishes to all for a successful 2008.