As marketers and students we are continuously learning throughout life. Marcus Tullius Cicero said “Life without learning is death.”, we should be constantly striving to improve ourselves and push through fears by diving into the unknown, bravely making mistakes and striving to be wiser. When it comes to marketing it is important to understand the facts, statistics and strategies that influence our work, however i believe personal opinions do play a role within marketing. Our opinions are unique ideas that are driven from years of unique experiences that give us a gut feeling in what we are doing. It is important that we don’t blindly act on gut feeling by first ensuring we reflect and understand the theory. Acknowledging the opinions we have, being open with them to ourselves and others while expressing humbly what we do and don’t know for sure, and using them to find the solutions your looking for.

When it comes to marketing through digital channels its becoming increasingly easier to get lost in the shiny new tools used to deliver content and information. Its easy to forget that normal people are all different in how they consume media. It can be tempting to take the easy way by ignoring older forms of communication channels such as radio, newspapers, and television. Radio for example had over 10.5 million people listening each week in 2017. 79% of younger Australians aged 18-24-years-old would listen to the radio, indicating the media isn’t dying or solely used by the ageing generations before us. Its important to strategically incorporate real work marketing tools, integrating and enhancing them through social media, rather than aimlessly promoting meaningless ideas and opinions over the internet.

Most Users on the internet don’t want to hear what brands are doing. We are training ourselves how to avoid ads, only trusting what we hear from people we actually trust like friends. Over 47% of internet users use an ad-blocker, completely avoiding banner ads. We increasingly want more intimacy, something real and different.

Today marketing approaches should use real experiences built on integrated marketing plans to create memorable experiences and shareable memories through photos, on your choice of social media, create long term attitudes towards brands. I personally have fond memories of Samsung’s mobile phone launch in Melbourne central as they offered free coffee and rewards for completing activities. This included a photo booth where groups of people are friends would come together to claim free rewards, only to leave with a photo of a fun experience, watermarked with the Samsung logo and shared to social media. As friends tag each other it brings back memories of the physical event encouraging long term memories to be formed. Creating experiences we have with the brand and our friends.

As a result its important we don’t become content with our own understanding of marketing. That we constantly strive to be the best version of ourselves in order to truly create unique and special marketing promotions and experiences. Not putting too much of our trust into digital but analysing what we need to achieve, and the statistically best options to achieve it. Only then can we truly create something unique and special that meets our goals in marketing and in life.

The internet of things (IoT) refers to the nature of devices communicating and transmitting data between themselves. Its the shift in technology of seemingly dumb, previously isolated devices into merging with technology. Such technology ranges from sensors for weather, or bed side lamps that monitor your sleep (eg sleep phaser).

New devices have the capability of measuring the chemical intake of what you eat. While designed to alert doctors to problems and act as a preventative solution, its capabilities could be used within the marketing world to predict peoples eating habits and find correlations in areas seemingly unrelated areas through our habits.

Devices like Fridgecam connect previously offline devices to the internet, allowing them to communicate with your other devices servicing the end user. These types of devices use AI to identify what is visible to the camera within your home. This raises privacy concerns as these companies have access to audio and video recordings, often outsourcing the analysis and deep learning of this data to smaller companies. These companies have been known to leak this data, similar to Microsofts leaks, and apple. These products pose the risk of being hacked leaking personal information to the public.

There have been reports that the CIA developed a hack for smart TVs allowing them to record audio, and video within your living rooms. Taking a newly developed tool and using it to spy on its users. Adding to the complexity most users or manufacturers don’t understand how to create and manage networks, the importance of encryption, or how to create and store a safe password when managing IoT devices.

Smart devices and the IoT are able to collect from a wide source of big data allowing them to predict actions and desires before they physically manifest. Also known as the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, users paying attention to something are likely to see it more often. For this reason manufactures of Smart speakers and displays have taken precaution to design the device in such a way that its recording instruments can be physically disabled.

These IoT devices are evolving to be able to identify our needs, and deliver them to us as we need them. Common tools consumers may use to fill in some of the compatibility gaps include IFTTT, which takes commands from one device and forwards it to another. This could be as simple as opening the garage door when a sensor is tripped, or automatically texting you are safe when you get home.

These devices are growing in numbers, affordability, and capability making more of the tasks we do smart. Collecting more and more data of how we behave and interact within the digital and real world. In doing so our collection of big data makes marketing easier by identifying processes in the decision making process, allowing us to market products right when you need it. Beacon technology allows us to track users location (eg leaving or entering a store), map consumer paths for in shop displays and design, frequency of visits, tailed messaging, guiding people, gamification, cross-selling, and loyalty (eg Google Pay will remind you to use Woolworth rewards). This type of technology combined with IoT devices opens up a world of possibilities that will seem strangely magical to what we have today.

Do you believe your phone, tv, or alarm clock is listening, and if so do you trust the company behind it to manage your data?

Do you have any smart of IoT devices in your home, if so have they impacted your purchasing behaviour?

The world of mobile marketing and functionality continues to grow at an incredible rate as our idea of how to educate and inform through digital technology changes. In the early days of mobile marketing most forms of advertising had been ported from other platforms and media, while today its been focused directly on the consumers needs based on what their doing. As the world increasingly expects applications to be free, content creators need to deliver value in a form that also generates revenue. While at the same time social media tools rely on users generated content, initiating, integrating, individualising, and involving its users.

As for the future and developing landscape of mobile, the whole idea of using a phone is transitioning into using services that deliver everything for you no matter where you are. WeChat for example is designed to be one online destination that keeps you within the app. Similar to shopping in store the longer your within the application the more likely you are to make a purchase. The government promotes the product in an effort to create a powerful citizen identification system. Opening up many possibilities for big data and consumer individualisation.

WeChat essentially took the divide between various mobile platforms such as android / IOS and the separate individual apps and created a service where you could interact with friends, book dinner, hail a taxi, play games while you wait, pay in store and far more all without leaving the app. Yet the app gained its following and power through government subsidisation and the elimination of competition within their market.

The app offers businesses ways to pull in views through various marketing classifications such as patrons through subscriptions, and direct messages to consumers with coupons, discounts, reminders, and qr codes. With one of the major methods used including celebrity endorsement through influential individuals with wide reaches.

Is it possible for such services to arise in the western market?

Does competition and increasing consumer awareness to privacy slow western progress in developing mobile services, designed to simplify life while collecting and using big data to market to its users?

Is the global market likely to accept a world without privacy as it and its services grow in popularity and functionality, or will technology shift towards encrypting data, in an effort to differentiate itself from competition?

A growing area of marketing known as gamification is consistently breaking through the clutter, delivering a wide range of stories, ideas, and products. In most cases these games incorporate a sense of achievement through levels or competitive scores allowing for the user to compete with friends or globally.

Certain traits tend to contribute to the popularisation of these games mainly simple to learn yet difficult to master. These types of games catch the attention of all skill levels making it harder to put down by allowing for people to enter a state of flow.

However i believe that in most cases gamification should be avoided within marketing. The overhead costs and risks involved during develop can often lead to corners being cut, and poor quality mini games being produced. In which case users don’t want to associate themselves with poor rushed to market services / products.

Good examples of the success of gamification include Doritos crash course which incorporated what is known as hybridisation. Including highly interactive real time competitive race’s (experience) with the branded content in the title. Another well known marketing campaign includes Dumb ways to die, which used a competitive scoreboard system, encouraging users to compete with the friends. What worked really well for this campaign was its ability to deliver its message through the experience and interactions the users had throughout the game play, delivering a consistent underlining message, in an entertaining and thought provoking manner while consistent with the whole campaigns message, allowing it to reach over 200 million downloads. Games that fail to meet this level of quality become saturated in the market and drowned out by all the noise. Such failures are a massive liability both financially based on scale and for the reputation and image of the company.

I believe gamification can be an effective method to deliver a message, however i most of the time games that contain a product or a message age too fast, alienate consumers, and lack an underlining purpose driven through a well thought out marketing plan, instead of just using gamification as a second thought.

What does the future of this industry look like? Will more advertising agencies take the risk of developing this type of content? Will gamification of marketing shift from dedicated apps, directly onto social media and messaging platforms, and what might this look like?

I’m mainly going to focus on two topics today including privacy and Facebook users, and subscription service models.

Facebook’s users are mainly categorised into two groups: being rational and emotional with varying levels of creation and consumption. I personally consider myself a rational user. I tend to limit my use of social media to informational purposes, mainly communicating directly or collaborating with people on projects, rather than seeking entertainment, or personnel connection. I understand why people use social media to connect and express themselves in an effort to share ideas, however I believe the security and privacy tools we are provided are insufficient. I Believe users personal data should be inaccessible by companies without express permission, compensation for collected data, and the ability to use the service privately. Considering our personal data is valued around $240US a year, why is it we just give it away for free? How much would you charge for your data? There should be a clear and easy way to protect ourselves and our data ensuring our identity isn’t stolen through social engineering, or our reputation harmed through deep faked media, compensating us for the risk and time we put into the service.

Do you embrace the growing technology around us? How would you rate you creation and consumption habits? How much data are you willing to share? Will competition naturally filter out unethical practices?

On the Business model end one major shift taking part in the market at the moment is the shift towards subscription services. Most large companies are incorporating these subscriptions into their services including Youtube, Google Stadia, Netflix, Disney, Amazon and Microsoft office. Most of these services have multiple competitors with limited barriers preventing consumers from jumping ship. Netflix for example is using an unsustainable strategy that is expected to be challenged during the introduction of Disney’s streaming service, resulting in consumers becoming more confused and unable to find what they want in a saturated market. I believe the introduction of subscription services in all aspects of our lives including normal shopping, news, video, music, clothing, and hygiene on its current directory is unsustainable. It encourages people to unconsciously spend more money. Businesses will need to adjust their service or relationship with the consumer to prevent them from switching sides, devolving a deeper relationship through loyalty programs that reward consumers for being dedicated loyal members, similar to streaks on Snapchat. The longer you’re subscribed, the greater the rewards. We fear losing what we already have to an extent that we will forgo more profitable options to keep what we have. Known as loss aversion, the physiological loss of our loyalty rewards / discount provided through our streak will be perceived greater than the monetary incentive to cancel the subscription.

Do you like the convenience of subscriptions? What else do you think can incorporate this model? And how many is too many?

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Hello world,

My name is James and I am studying Digital Marketing at RMIT. For this course we have an assignment where we need to discuss one topic from our next class throughout the semester.

Would be great if people could comment on the posts encouraging a discussion, hopefully we can learn something from each other.