Understanding the effectiveness of events.

Most brand promotion initiatives, esp. the once that are done in an “event” format, have a very vague measurement matrix and most of it is anecdotal in nature.

Here is a tool which enables real time measurement of the success of the brand initiative on preset enabled parameters – EventPulse.

Never undertake another brand initiative without building in the required measurability. Watch the screencast above or visit here or visit www.pulsesuite.com for a demo and a conversation with experts.

The next level of b2b marketing strategies.

Every now and then one gets fascinated by the success of a particular marketing technique. Today was another such day (and there have not been too many of them recently :-))

Lead generation strategies for B2B clients is something that me and my agency has been involved in for the last 16 years, and have done tens of hundreds of end to end initiatives and yet for me to get goose bumps to see yet another lead gen initiative is quite remarkable.

I just witnessed my team undertake a purely online, by invitation, highly interactive, highly technical, yet cost effective session with over 254 (earlier twitted number was wrong) delegates from over 8 countries. While my team members have been doing this for a while, I had to be in the same room to understand and appreciate the success model.

The session had over 450 registrations a day prior and the session host had indicated to me that she would expect 50% attrition.

What was wonderful to see was;

Such a large number of participants / delegates, who were in for the “love” of the subject. They were not there to “network” but to “learn”. A lot of physical seminars turn out to be peer networking events.

The program format gave the option for the delegates to simply drop-off if the session is not of interest – and yet the attendance stayed constant. In the age of “conversational marketing” this session was a great example of a two way dialogue between the panel and the attendees and it was not forced.

The participation was from managers and sr. managers of large and medium enterprises and from major cities as well as the slightly distant locations. The entire rational of bandwidth were really a non-issue. (The experience of my team members has been that India and China have not just the highest delegates, but also the maximum questions come from these locations, although local language has to be used in China, Thailand & Korea)

The session lasted for over an hour and the drop rate was less than 6% from start to finish.

The 45 minutes of tech presentation was followed by 25 minutes of Q&A – better quality questions then most physical interactions. And guess what drop rates was still 6%!

The panel of speakers was the best of breed and from locations far away – they needed to spare only about 3 hours in all to reach out to audiences across 8 countries without ever having to get on a plane.

There were enough “I need to know more” and “get a rep to meet me” notes at the end of the session for me to assume that the ROI would be high on the investments in this session.

The format, bring with it huge advantages of reach, scale & interactivity, is also non-intrusive, the content has a much longer “shelf-life”, is more measurable and track able in terms of delegate interaction (pre, during and post) and at the same time far more cost effective as against other lead generation models for B2B marketing.

I believe the way we undertook / undertake the process is a b2b marketing best practice and I will create a process note and insights over the next few weeks and put it here for all to read / follow – in the meanwhile, if you need to understand more on this do drop in a line.

Marketing is like cricket.

Business Standard's Strategist is carrying one of my articles today. I had written this note (over two months of the IPL fever) on the similarities on the evolution of the game of cricket and the evolution of the behavior of the consumer.

You can read the article here.

The note is why a smart marketer has to evolve to stay relevant to the changed consumer and that you either play by the rules of the audience or you perish.

Do let me know your views.

Little Red Riding Hood - RETOLD

What a wonderful project.

""The brief told us to do a classic ad to be printed in the magazine "Filter". The target group was swedes in ages 15–30 years. After some thinking and researching, we realized that a small ad in a small magazine wouldn´t do that much of a difference.""

Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

The video takes you through the most memorable day in the life of Little Red Riding Hood and along the way, you learn all sorts of details. Like the air resistance experienced by a Volkswagen Type 2-61 Minibus at 43 MPH as measured by Volkswagen GmbH in 1955. Or the wildlife density of the Hundred Acre Wood, showing a surge in the rabbit population. Not to mention the nutrition facts of Grandma with a total caloric value of 10,000 kilocalories. :-)

Cost per contact is high. Really?

When compared to traditional advertising media, experiential is often overlooked and under-rated because of a perceived lack of reach, or high cost per contact. While there is the basic logic of "counting your reach" vs "reaching those who count" and the quality of the "engagement", even in terms of reach experiential engagement scores high.

Another bit from a research undertaken by EMF and IMI International in the US, shows that Experiential Marketing has effective reach well beyond consumers directly impacted. When considering sampling costs “per person impacted”, be sure to account for the amplification benefit.