netactr

Mohan Sawhney, Kellogg marketing professor, keynoted the Microsoft Marketing Symposium in Seattle. Mohan’s submission was that marketing has remained marketing even if new digital and interactive technologies expanded our toolbox. He referred to the 1998 buzzword of the year – e-commerce – and compared it to today’s trends of paid search, social marketing etc.

Mohan’s making a good point in that the fundamental ways we marketers achieve our results have not changed. The tactics did change though. From hunters-gatherers using shotguns to targets our victims … oops, customers, we are evolving to gardeners tending relationships (all analogies are Mohan’s).

One of the good suggestions he made was to get your customers to do product concept and testing work. Netflix for example ran the Netflix prize, hoping to improve the quality of their movie recommendation algorithm. Three rocket scientists from Bell Labs won the “progress prize” of $100K for improving recommendations by “8.8%” (how do you measure this?). I wonder if they did this during their off-work time? Here’s a list of things you need to do:
1. Select the right customers (you don’t want a random Joe to define your products)
2. Provide tools for feedback (like forums, feedback button sending an email etc.)
3. Think of good incentives (Netflix will pay $1M for a 10% improvement)
4. Actually use customer input
5. Acquire the intellectual property