For Those Marketers Out There
February 28, 2005 – 6:45 pmOkay, I guess it’s not just for the marketers. I found the following “manifesto” to be a very interesting read. The author (James Cherkoff) believes marketing, in general, should begin to change with the times and inherit more values traditionally associated with the open source movement. He talks about how modern consumers are more adept at filtering out annoying advertising from their lives. He also talks about recent projects in which big-name companies have used open source ideas to engage the public and generate more excitement and enthusiasm about a particular prodcut. Apple, Anheuser-Busch, General Electric, Mercedes-Benz…they’re all doing it. It sure is an interesting way to think about the world of marketing (at least for us non-business folk).
3 Responses to “For Those Marketers Out There”
That’s an interesting idea! Do you have any examples of the things that these companies are doing that count as “open source”?
By paul.za on Feb 28, 2005 at 11:55 pm
The companies I listed just came directly from Mr. Cherkoff’s presentation. The Apple example was of a school teacher who was a big fan of the iPod and made a video about it. He sent the video out to some online community, and it spread quickly throughout the community. The Anheuser-Busch example was a little different; Mr. Cherkoff just pointed out how popular the “Whassup!” commercials were, and many people started making their own versions of the commercial that quickly spread around the Internet. Anheuser-Busch didn’t start trying to sue everyone under the ground about it. General Electric and Mercedes-Benz both started campaigns in which they actively solicited community involvement, and both campaigns turned out to be successes. These ploys seem rather benign after you’ve been exposed to cyberspace for some time, but the point is that not all big-name companies embrace such strategies. If you give your community of potential (or current) customers the ability to participate in the lifecycle of the product they love (even if it’s just participation in the marketing end of the endeavor), people get very excited and like the idea of contributing something tangible to something to which they ascribe worth. It’s contagious. More companies should do this.
By jjk on Mar 1, 2005 at 1:04 am
I love Channel 9 (not the microsoft version, the United version). It is super fun and it is especially important when they are showing “shark Tale” for the 6th time on your trip and all the other channels are playing shania twain music. It is a very popular entertainment channel among nerds like me. (people actually sometimes ask the FAs to talk to the pilots to see whether they can talk the pilots into turnign channel 9 on. It is completely up to the pilot’s discretion. I mean, nothing is scarier when you are sitting in row 36 and your pilot is not responding to the ground instructions)
It’s time to fly
By UALboy on Mar 1, 2005 at 11:39 pm