Why is it important to keep an open mind Posted by Tomi Heikkinen , Thursday, March 19, 2009 at 22:06, in Labels: creativity, learning, self-development

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. - Alvin Toffler

I had the opportunity to participate in an interesting lecture/conversation today that concerned the topics of learning and learning management. The lengthy discussion afterwards touched subjects like the current situation, form and drawbacks of the public education system, methodology of learning, possibilities what new (social) technology and pedagogic research have to offer to learning (from children to grownups) and so on. The actual opening lecture mainly took a look on the necessity of learning management in firms – management of how employees learn the abstract knowledge of the firm (strategy, values, working culture) and learn to do their work better. Basically the subject of learning was intrinsically tied to communication.

I was drawn to the sharing of opinions because of the X factor, or the human factor. This clip was presented last in the meeting, but I feel I should present it now, check this out before reading further.

It’s the inspirational 2008 Latest Edition of Did You Know 3.0, a presentation of interesting facts pooled by Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod.

Now I am a strong advocator of personal responsibility in the future world. An important aspect of this personal responsibility is continuous learning and self-development by reflection (hence this blog, for example). The Did You Know presentation sharply but implicitly points out how people from around the world have progressively better and increasingly equal chance to equip themselves with a proper knowledge base of their liking and how globalization allows them to compete for the most interesting jobs and other life opportunities the world has to offer. Take the view on future as you like.

Today’s discussion very much revolved around the matter of technology and the responsibility of the manager (in this case, the manager in a company or the teacher in a school) in the efficient and successful learning process of their “subordinates”. One participant however brought up the term of mindset – the mindset of an open mind, willing to learn new and unlearn past knowledge and habits. This mindset in my opinion is vital in learning – one has to have the personal motivation and the drive to develop oneself. Any technology or pedagogic breakthrough, a dramatic change in the schooling system for example, will not be enough to equip people to sustain themselves in the future world. It requires the right mindset, a childish point of view and a naïve belief that your mind is and always will be a tabula rasa that is always open for new knowledge, change, improvement and development. No matter how much you think you know about anything – your work, your modes of operation, your profession and so on. Combining the matter of creativity with a continuous open attitude towards learning and experiencing new a friend reminded me of one Pablo Picasso’s wisdom:

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.

In addition, it’s good to remember Socrates’ words:

The only thing I know is that I don't know anything.

As a professional of your own area, are you willing to work, learn and live with an open attitude? If so, you're a good step ahead.

Post-graduate studies: I chose Cranfield SOM, Strategic Marketing programme Posted by Tomi Heikkinen , Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 12:39, in Labels: cranfield university, GMAT, IELTS, marketing, post-graduate studies

A bit of personal reflection, and thoughts to young people in a similar situation.

For some time now I've been contemplating about continuing my Marketing studies. I already have a BBA on International b2b-marketing under my belt, but I've felt for some time that I want to deepen my knowledge and expertise in an academia, particularly abroad in order to hone my English.

I recently applied to three British universities, and was offered a place in each. My selection was Cranfield University's School of Management's Strategic Marketing programme. I'll explain my reasons later, after sharing my experiences of the application process itself.

The offers naturally didn't come without hard work, sweat (and almost tears). They required some test-taking, namely the IELTS English language test and the GMAT test. IELTS wasn't that difficult - I acquired the nearly-free preparation materials, went through them once or twice and got a very good average band score of 8 our of 9. GMAT on the other hand.. For those who don't know, GMAT is an originally American-developed test to evaluate prospective candidates applying to top-tier business schools. The exam evaluates your a) basic mathematics skills, b) your logical thinking and English language skills and c) ability to read and write on an academic level. I've never liked high school level maths, and hadn't practiced it properly for seven years, while I had trained my reasoning and English skills more or less daily. And considering the universities didn't care what the score for analytical writing was, my focus for preparing for the test was on practicing my long-lost (but quickly recalled!) mathematic skills.

I spent some month and a half training and training and calculating and calculating. And sooner than later the exam day arrived. I happily got an average score (logical thinking and English skills + maths) that topped the score required for an entry to Cranfield, but I was disappointed with my math score. Indeed, the exam proved once more that I'm more suitable for Marketing rather than hardcore Economics or Financing.. I was disappointed with my analytical writing score aswell, but needlessly to be honest, since my preparation and focus during the exam were not adequate, i.e. other areas prevailed.

About Cranfield. I'm thrilled! The teaching staff, the programme structure and the location were the winning combination that made me choose Cranfield over two other British universities offering great Marketing programmes. Cranfield, if I understand correctly, is more or less in the middle of nowhere in rural England. At first glance, this sounds bad, right? On the contrary! My goal is to focus on self-development, to learn new and seek new perspectives as much as possible, and what is better than to do so in an environment that is calm, peaceful and away from distracting temptations like continuous clubbing and partying associated with student life? Afterall, Cranfield is a university geared strictly to post-graduates, so I expect a laid-back, mature environment.

The Strategic Marketing programme structure struck my nerve in a good way when I was searching information about interesting post-graduate courses. It's logical, seems efficient and discusses all the topics I'm personally interested in regarding the wide theme of marketing, including themes like brand, key account and sales management. Of course I could be missing out on important topics which are of utmost relevance but of which I'm not aware of, but the programme content ensures my initial motivation level is at its peak.

And last but not least, the faculty in Cranfield SOM's Marketing programme is respected, experienced and professional - their books crowd my marketing knowledge source library!

So, off I go next September. Hopefully by then the overall quality of these blog writings will start to improve..

Delicious internet memes Posted by Tomi Heikkinen , Friday, March 13, 2009 at 12:46, in Labels: internet memes, marketing, microsegmentation, relating to customers

A brief thought about one of my new favourite little themes of current marketing: internet memes.

Internet memes, as you know, are catch-phrases or neologisms (newly emerging words that might become part of mainstream language) circulating in the Web and used mainly by youth and young adults - active web users. Some forerunner marketers use them in their viral marketing efforts, often trying to introduce a new meme with a purpose of enhancing the promotion of their service or product. Best memes however are not created by marketers, but rather by "users" themselves.

Internet memes concern two other favourite marketing subjects of mine, microsegmenting and microtargeting in a social web context, e.g. tiny sub-cultures like specialized discussion forums that are numerous in the Web. I'll cover these in more detail in another post in the future. But in regard to these microsegments, rather than trying to innovate their own internet memes, marketers should actively scan the Web for the particular memes that are popular among their target segments, and pay homage to these, co-incidentally being careful not appearing as trying to rip off and commercialize the original, uncommercialized meme. Instead the purpose is to communicate to the target segment that the marketer is relating to it.

A fictional, very simplificated case-example: A current very popular internet meme is the (mostly) picture-based "rage" or FFFFFF- meme, used when something goes wrong or is negatively unexpected and causes anger, or rage as it is. A laptop manufacturer X, the marketer in this case, is trying to develop its brand recognition among young, 16 to 25 y-o men with certain other characteristics. The marketer's strategy includes campaign and a TV commercial. The ad has two guys sitting in a park, using their PCs without direct power supply, relying on their batteries. Both are happily going about the business, enjoying the sun etc. Suddenly, the other guy's laptop beeps, signalling imminent battery depletion before going off totally. The guy blinks and starts to curse "FFFFFFFFFFFFUUU-". Cut the audio before the -ck and show a black screen with a text: No need to rage: laptop X model Y now with a next-gen battery. And cut back to the other guy, smiling sappily, using his laptop X.

To a consumer, who is outside of the target segment and does not recognize this particular meme, the ad might seem odd, albeit usual piece of marketing, since funny ads have been around for ages. However, when targeted correctly, I'd wager this ad would cause some very positive reactions among the target segment. By recognizing the used meme and understanding that X is using the same language as they are, the target audience would feel that the big, corporate laptop manufacturer X is really relating to it.

Of course, this kind of marketing strategy requires a very quick process of meme identification, advertising production and finally implementation - the marketers need to be on the edge and enjoy the services of very lean and efficient suppliers to make the marketing efforts work in time, when the meme is still active and used. Also, the target segment in these cases would most likely always be very limited, so a full TV ad wouldn't be cost-efficient. But user-created internet memes could be a key instrument when companies seek mediums to relate to young consumers in general, and specified microsegments or internet sub-cultures in particular.

4 ways to improve your web advertising Posted by Tomi Heikkinen , Wednesday, March 11, 2009 at 18:31, in Labels: web advertising, web marketing

One of the big issues, forgive the latent pun, of current web marketing/advertising are physically large web adverts that crowd popular web pages. By large we mean either the pop-upish ads that fill the entire web browser when you enter, say the front page of your favourite financial news website, or the pop-under that enlargens to fill half your web browser when you happen to bring your mouse pointer over it (especially annoying while it happens to cover an interesting article you were trying to read). Big ads like these are supposed to be flashy, interesting and attention-stealing but often wound up being just obtrusive like traditional pop-ups back in the day. OPA, or Online Publishers Association (a prestigious not-for-profit trade organization for online content providers), released an announcement conserning a new set of principles for web advertising, especially in regard to physical ad sizes. While setting up the foundation for web advertising of good taste is generally a good idea, here are some quick ideas on how to improve your web advertising.

1) You have a second to make me interested. That's about the time I need to realize you've bombarded me with a big, browser-filling message and to move my mouse cursor over the big X on the top-right corner. Many ads, especially those that resemble TV commercials, are little stories that require five to fifteen seconds of viewing to be appreciated. But guess what? I've been educated by the marketing forces that big ads, like pop-ups, are distractive, a no-no. You need to change my mind, every time, in a second or so. Make me interested in your message during the first frames.

2) Make it work without sound. Often your flashy, expensive website commercial includes a well-produced live film with sound. How many times your prospective customer is going to stumble on your commercial during his working hours, on his/her office computer, and end up informing the boss and the rest of the office that he/she isn't working by the sound of your commercial booming through his/her audio speakers? If you had thought you had a second to grab your customer's attention, it'll now take him only half a second to dismiss your message while he frantically kills the audio and closes the ad simultaneously. The advise is thus obvious: either make it so that your commercial is shown online on non-working hours or design your message to function without audio.

3) Continuity: a lost jewel of print media. Remember the day when you still read newspapers ;)? Often they had series of ads, distributed evenly across the pages, so that when you first noticed the first ad on the front page, a supporting ad, or two or three, followed in the later pages. These together created a commercial "story" or just communicated a certain message effectively by means of nifty, alternating albeit repetitive ads. How come I haven't seen one single attempt to bring this popular mechanism to the world of web advertising? Consider a situation. You load the front page of your favorite news website. On the front page you notice a very interesting, perhaps funny, but not yet convincing ad from BMW. You continue by clicking on a link of an interesting article and proceed to the article page. The website registers what you saw on the first page, and presents you with an again-interesting follow-up ad for the original BMW ad, next to the full article you proceeded to read. BMW grabs your attention again, and makes you laugh/smile again. Interested this time?

4) Educate the customers how big ads really work. Rather than bringing my mouse cursor over the pop-under and consequently messing up my browser I'd love to know that every time I decide to click on that same ad, it'd just enlargen rather than forwarding me to another web page. Educate net users that its "safe" to interact with commercial messages. Get them to know that showing an iota of interest on your message won't end up disrupting their browsing, or clicking on an ad merely brings up more info, i.e. enlargens the ad. This naturally isn't the task of a single advertiser or content provider, but the work of the entire community.

Next up: thoughts on how internet memes can enhance your marketing.

***

A summer update to this March post (3rd Aug):

Reactive Marketing coined by Gustav Martner and Gustav von Sydow pretty much sums up my thoughts on point #3

.. and something else. Posted by Tomi Heikkinen , Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 16:24, in Labels: creativity, emotion, marketing, strategy

Curious about the name of this new blog?

Admittedly, marketing is not only a limbic thing - limbic system being the part of the human brain concerning itself with things like emotion and intuition. Marketing is about affecting people's emotions, but it has its other foot on reason: strategies, processes, planning and rational decision-making. A good marketer needs to be best of both worlds, a combination of a sound strategic mind and a creative, intuitive vision. A certain very practical marketing professional, CEO of Ezpa Jussi Liimatainen put it well in a presentation today when he considered marketing "a marriage of emotion and reason". Blunt and simple? Perhaps. Do I agree? Totally.

But back to the topic: what's this blog about?

The purpose of this blog is to act as a virtual learning diary of sorts. I aim to develop and discuss my thoughts and experiences conserning marketing, marketing strategy, commercialization, new businesses, creative problem-solving and multilateral thinking in business. The one constant is the blog's bipolar point of view of creativity and intuition vs. strategic, rational thinking.

Of course, the author will try to maintain an interesting style of writing, that is, to draw comments and conversation from you, dear reader. After all, they are good ways to learn, both listening and explaining.