Because we can.

Status updates about the latest news, check ins at our favourite cafes and random photos of people sleeping on trains flood into our news feeds every minute of the day. Why do we feel the need to share life's little moments with hundreds of our "friends"?

Because we can. 

Mobile technology has made sharing in each others lives a part of our everyday activities. There is no such thing as "you had to be there" anymore. Everyone is everywhere, involved in each others lives, whether they want to be or not.

For marketers this is an extremely sharp double edged sword. 

CONSUMER 2 CONSUMER

Consumers love to share. Back in dark ages, before mobile technology, the communication of a brand experience would usually only be shared well after the event happens, allowing the emotional intensity of the experience to subside. It would also have only been shared with a couple of people instead of a couple of hundred. Because of this, unsatisfied consumers who voice their bad experience at the time it happens can damage a brands reputation on a larger scale then offline word of mouth. However, positive experiences of a brand are extremely powerful word of mouth on the mobile medium.

As mentioned in our lecture, some brands have taken it upon themselves to respond to these brand outbursts. Do you think responding to each of these complaints individually is efficient and good for brand equity or just a waste of time?

MARKETER 2 CONSUMER

The mobile medium is being experimented with by many industries. One industry which has adapted this technology in their marketing strategy is the Cinema industry. Village was the first company to use the mobile ticketing system using a bar-code sent to the phone. I tried to use this a couple of weeks ago and could not get it to work, has anyone used it successfully? 

Link to bluezone at Hoyts: http://www.hoyts.com.au/Movies/Offers/BlueZone.aspx

Village's direct competitor Hoyt's has taken advantage of proximity marketing with their 'bluezone' area allowing consumers to access content via bluetooth when in the bluezone area. Has anyone ever recieved content from the bluezone? was it effective?

Google doesn't always have the answer.

who run the world?

According to Alexa, an online rating of the most visited sites (http://www.alexa.com/topsites), Google indeed does run the world, or at least the online world anyway, as much as Beyonce would hate to admit. Wherever there are people hungry for information, Google is always there, a trusted name to guide us through the vast amount of useless stuff which exists out there on the cloud, towards the answers to our problems.

 'Google it' has become ingrained in the vocab of ‘digital natives’ and is the best answer to the worlds hardest questions. Google gives us hope, allowing even the dumbest people to look smart at the click of a button. For map reading illiterate people like myself, Google allows me to pretend I know where the f I am, when in reality I am in fact very, very lost.

On reflection of my web use, Google is always the beginning of anything I do on the internet. Even when the URL is already in my history; I automatically search the site in Google first. Google lets us be lazy and that is why we love it. If Google disappeared I would be dumb and extremely lost, would you miss google if it one day disappeared?

This success of the reliance of consumers on Google has seemingly become the perfect platform for e-marketers to tap into. However, just by being on google does not ensure success. Advertising on Google has little credibility as Wags and the rest of MKF3381 discovered with the ineffective 'different' Monash ad. And just because you are on the top of a google search does that mean people will care  about what you have to say if it is not relevant to them? 

 I think that Google, although sounding like a no-fail strategy can not be a strategy in itself. It is extremely important for e-marketers to spend time evaluating and researching how to creatively use e-marketing tools (such as google) to increase overall value for the consumer. It is not the tool that will increase your sales, but the way in which you use the tool which really matters. Digital marketing, although an unavoidable huge craze, needs to have purpose and be supported by an integrated marketing campaign ( thankyou MKF3461) in order to add any value to the brand.

Being an emerging marketer I think that the fact that everyone else is doing it, is the best reason why you shouldn’t. If you do not have the resources to compete with other large businesses on google, there are many other low-cost (or even free) digital tools which can be just as effective if used appropriately. So in this case, Google doesn't always have the answer. I'm sure Beyonce would agree with me on that. What do you think?