Coldwell Banker: Embracing New Media

Coldwell Banker may be the first Real Estate company to fully embrace New Media marketing. Their new campaign makes use of humor, a Youtube.com channel and a blog.

Read all about it on Joel Burslem's Future of Real Estate Marketing blog.

New Study: Tell customers less

I read about an interesting new study over at brand expert Guy Kawasaki's blog. Researchers found that the more product information a potential customer has, the less likely they are to engage in "wishful thinking" about your offering and the less likely they are to be satisfied. Happy customers, it appears, are blissfully ignorant.

The study was based on consumer perceptions of hand lotion and chocolate. The more people learned about these products, the less they happy they became.

But is this really a endorsement of keeping your customers in the dark, or is it really about having a good story to tell them in the first place. I know lots of folks who get all excited about organic foods and vegetarian dishes because they've heard all the great health benefits and how no animals or plants were harmed in the making of the dishes. But most of it tastes pretty crappy, IMHO. Doesn't make them less happy though.

If you have a good product and you don't have to be ashamed of the way its made or what it contains or what the production does to your workers, then you're probably going to do better by sharing your story with your prospects.

BTW, I'm not disagreeing with Guy. He didn't specifically endorse the study's findings in his blog either.

A New Podcast Series

If you haven't signed up to be a guest on our new Business & Technology podcast, you should drop us a line soon. The show focuses on technologies that business leaders are leveraging now to do things better, cheaper and faster.

The tools don't have to apply to any specific businesses segment. In fact, we want to have a good cross section of markets so that creative executives can learn from what's happening in other industries.

The shows last only five minutes and always include the answers to three important questions:

1) What is the technology and who does it serve?
2) What is the value proposition to the user?
3) Why is this better than other currently available alternatives?

Want to get on the show? It's easy. Just send us an e-mail and we'll give you a call.

Broadcast Yourself

I've been telling companies in the Financial Services space for some time now that they must begin thinking like publishers if they want to get their stories told. But not traditional, paper-based publishers. They must embrace every new way their prospects choose to receive information. Increasingly, those methods involve New Media.

This story on Boing Boing is an excellent example of how clever marketers can utilize new consumer technologies to get their information out there. The CharmingBurka is likely to be a bit hit in the West as it allows Muslim women to stay true to their religion without sacrificing the ability to interact with society on our terms. And everyone wants to know what's underneath.

Businesses will have to be more clever than that. Consumers will quickly lose patience with firms that force advertisements onto their handsets. But what about those people at the trade shows who are interested but don't want to get caught up in a lengthy sales pitch. Wouldn't it be nice to just point a cell phone and get the basics?

Just one more reason that every marketing department needs to have someone who is spending time out on the cutting edge of the New Media frontier.

Destroying assumptions

Excellent post over at the Brand Builder Blog on breaking through old assumptions. In this post, Olivier Blanchard talks about Seven Considerations that are Changing the Game.

Excellent work. I particularly like the part about how News is changing. Definitely.