Does your Business DNA cater for web 2.0?

The difference between an organization and a human being, it can be somehow explained by the DNA factor.

We are all born and somehow work and behave due to our DNA. That's why some people have blue eyes, dark brown hair, and pale skin. DNA also controls other facts, such as spots, allergies, fat-gaining-areas, diseases...

Technology nowadays and people's ideas and perceptions have made people alter their DNA, or at least make other people not aware of their original one: We see celebrities going for bigger boobs, eliminating their wrinkles etc., showing one day with a whitish skin and at the next 5 hours their skin is brown.. Cool ha?

A company is built with particular factors, a logo to start with, colours, etc. etc.. and allergies! They are able to "plastic surgery" themselves: they change logos, their colours and they use people's perceptions as an excuse for such changes. But at least they can do that, "plastic surgery" just costs money and time for researching about the change and waiting for it to go "live".

But allergies.. well.. they don't work that way: They just come out whenever; at different seasons, occasions, etc. As the digital world is evolving, allergies seems to spread out more with the most common ones being the "Web 2.0" with symptoms such as "social media" and "User generated content". Some suffer more and some less and the ones that are not able to handle them correctly and treat them properly might face the problem of having their allergies become death-threatening diseases.

But how do companies handle with allergies? Well.. Kind of similar to ordinary people, they have to visit a doctor, but not just ANY doctor a, specialized one to their allergy. That doctor cannot be found under the term "GP" but under the term "Digital Marketing specialist" and it can do a lot for them. And when I say a lot... I DO MEAN A LOT!

Web 2.0 is a jargon to state that companies do not longer operate online from their website but from different mediums, using social media and online intermediaries all depending on their current industry, sector and generally their mission and purpose.

Web 2.0 involves social media like Facebook, twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn etc., involves user generated content, Wikipedia, syndicating context and not just simple HTML. It involves SO SO SO many things and their usage is different and the way of integrating them is again different for different companies.

It is one thing to use all these as a way to overcome an allergy, but like a simple allergy, if the pill is not good, the dose is not as it should be or the brand or frequency of consuming it is not the correct one.. Then... what happens? You might be lucky... You might just have some side effect and are able to just get on track to the correct way of overcoming it or.. it might just be a little bit harder than that.

You wouldn't want your spots to go wild for long would you? Make-up does not help; it only covers up your spots and just makes them worse in the long-term. So you need to get good prescription and follow them. Don't just use the web 2.0, think about how to use each element, how does your already web elements work, if they need change to fit the 2011 digital era, if you need to alter or enhance a few elements, and have a reason and clear strategy for each of them.


How to handle allergies
- Have you checked what other companies are doing online that you are not doing?
- Have you ever wondered what other people are saying about you?
- Have you ever googled your name?
- Have you ever googled your industry sector? Yes? Well.. Were you on that list?
- Have you ever actually started to have those questions just recently? Why is it?
- What does your clientele say about your brand? about the fact that they are not allowed to buzz around your name as they buzz about Lady gaga doing plastic surgery, Acai berry as a weighting bill, yoga as a way for concentration and other staff..

The best cure is handling this from the start of any type of symptoms and just make sure that your DNA is healthy enough and ALWAYS up-to-date.

PS: Well.. I'm only blogging about this as I found it interested and hope you did too. Feel free to comment on my DNA ideas on companies and if you have an allergy yourself and want prescription for it feel free to email me

Sustainable Business

"Life is about trusting your feelings and taking chances, losing and finding happiness, appreciating the memories, learning from the past, and realizing people change"

Found this quote after studying about corporate strategy and it hit me th

at in order to design a proper strategy to being profitable you have to be able to do exactly as what life is all about:

Trust your feelings

You have to be able to go for it.. trust your feelings. Don't hesitate, JUST GO FOR IT! Have an idea? Did you evaluate it enough? If you evaluate it based on a background of situations then don't just leave it for yourself, defend it!

Taking Chances:

GO FOR IT! Incorporate it to your vision and pass it on to others. Want your company to have a low cost scheme. Then "LOW LOW LOW" should be your daily motto. Employees going "LOW LOW LOW" the same way they go "BAD BAD BAD ROMANCE" ( you know.. the chorus of Lady Gaga's last year hit[2010]) it will eventually lead everybody having the same vision to your company/idea.

Losing and Finding Happiness

Ok, you had an idea and it wasn't successful and you are not that happy. That's ok, no need to worry! Think: Why wasn't it succesful? Is it because you didn't do good evaluations? Is it because the environment around you is changing and you didn't change along with it? Find out why and then find "happiness" again by using the factors for not being "happy" to better evaluate your techniques.

Learning from the past

You need to learn from your mistakes, so that you won't do the same ones again. You also need to learn from the mistakes of others in the past. This might save you from doing the same mistakes.

Realizing people change

People are changing, they change their habits, their likes and dislikes and their way of communication: 10 years ago, I loved to wake up early morning and go to school because I would have the chance to talk, communicate and collaborate with my school friends. Now? Well.. now people use Facebook, Twitter, iPhone, BlackBerry, Android operating devices, mobiles in general and all sort of communication mediums to communicate. Video conferences bring people together from different parts of the world and anybody can watch global news from YouTube whenever and wherever and from whenever: You are on Facebook? You see YouTube videos in your wall, you are reading a recent article at timesonline.co.uk website:you see youtube links as well..

Scary isn't it? The scariest question though is: "Where is all of these going?". We see weather changing, with the tsunami of Japan as the most recent event showing that natural resources are going crazy.. Technology is going crazy.. People are going crazy! And as the craziness grows we need to grow with it. Don't be afraid of it, use it! Life is good, remember?

Overall.. Just wanted to say that business is life! If you want a good one, then be mature enough to enjoy it, support it and you'll be happy! Even when bad things happen along the way, learn from them, learn from others, collaborate with your life's friends and again: BE HAPPY!

Power of Jargon

Most of you do use jargon in your everyday language, even if you don't realise it. You may use plié to talk about a balance step in ballet, dig to talk about a defensive contact following an opponent's attack resulting in a playable ball in a volleyball game, CPR to talk about an emergency procedure which is attempted in an effort to return life in person in cardiac arrest. And again what is cardiac arrest? It is definitely not an arrest by an officer with a badge stating "cardiac". Words or phrases like them seem highly crucial to some fields, but talking to others that do not belong to that field does not help in making them understand exactly what you are talking about.

Lets use the following scenario: You are an athlete that is experiencing some health issues and you've decided to do some blood exams. After a week of waiting you get them in an envelope with red ink stating MVP.You suddenly feel great.. I mean, you have been recognised by your own doctor authority as the Most Valuable Player and you are unaware that what MVP means is actually Mitral Valve Prolapse: the most common heart valve abnormality, affecting five to ten percent of the world population.. That would have been a serious outcome.

What does this has to do with marketing? Just think of the ROI(marketing jargon for Return on Investment) of an advertising campaign stating that you have CRM, CMS systems for small-medium companies. This has the same outcome as advertising the "La vache qui rit" brand in French, in Thailand; they will never realize that the ad is not about a funny looking French cow but about a cheese in the shape of a triangle which is cool to consume. Jargon work as a foreign language, and those that are not native speakers or have not undertaken a course to learn that foreign language it will all sound like Greek to them.

But come on! CRM, and CMS are highly professional software that do aim to help an organisation excel better!!! You are right BUT that organisation may not know your language.. your jargon. They know that they need a system to manage their content (which translates to CMS- content management system) and an ad speaking the customer-language will have better results.

Summing up, before doing a campaign, contacting your potential customers by sending those millions of emails hoping that at least 10% will result in a sale, think about your CUSTOMER, their jargon language and then yours. If it is not at the same level then think about other ways to promote it: use your customer's language instead.

The power of marketing!

Baby Boomer's lifestyle: Escaping the norm..

"Jhon is stuck in Milano, he has to wait there 6 hours for the next available flights"
"Really? What is he doing in Milano?"
"I think he went to visit his daughter, he has been there for a week now, he posted that a week ago on Facebook.. It's too bad he got stuck in the airport. His wife already accepted the facebook party inviation for the community event we are going so I'm guessing now they won't be able to attend that."

Facebook? Community event on facebook? Live mobile updates from the airport? How? When? Where? I am amazed! I'm just sitting in the tube having in front of me two baby boomer representatives watching at their up-to-date-with-technology mobile phone doing conversations about online social networking.

Back home my grandmother hardly even knows how to send an SMS and whenever she tries to call me she ends up calling somebody else.. Maybe that's why she hasn't called me for a while.. The other "me" might have blocked her .. I don't blame him.. I would have done the same if somebody was mistaken me for their granddaughter and wanted to know whether I ate or if I'm wearing enough clothes so I don't get cold.. Ok.. That was just an irrelevant point, back to the story..

But she is after all a baby boomer, she was born between 1946 and 1964, she does own a mobile phone like the Gen X-ers and Gen Y-ers and the phone was chosen based on her technological lifestyle. She just wanted a phone who she can open quite easily, be able to see clearly and call up her friends and relatives with no hassle. After all.. "Boomers adopt technology as they need it" and my grandmother does need it. She use it to interact in her offline social networking. She phones her hairdresser for her normal Saturday blow dry and goes to the hairdresser and socialise. She calls up my cousin to ask him if he wants something for dinner and when at home she invites her neighbours for coffee..

Unless we want to consider the baby boomers as Gen-Xers with higher level of wrinkles, the difference of offline and online social networking in baby boomer's life makes if reasonable for a new generation segment to be introduced: the tech-savvy baby boomers and marketers selling products to this segment need to adapt in their different lifestyle.

That's what marketers needs to keep on doing: Catering for the different lifestyles.. The power of Marketing!

Power of segmentation

Would you ever sign up to a dating site? well.. most of you must say no.. come one? a dating site? Exactly.. why search for a friend or a partner when you have lots of friends..

When abroad though.. do you have a friend that play squash? cooks indian food? showers with Dove GO FRESH lime and lemon bath milk? Well.. you'll be amazed how dating sites differentiate themselfs.

So I was just refreshing my blog so as to see what kind of google ads actually exists when I came across this dating site.. fitness friends..

WOWWW! Did you know how many atributes does one needs to input just to sign up? Height.. weight.. most exercised body place.. horoscope.. language..what sports you are into!!!

and then you can just browse and select the man of your dreams.. the results can go as far as "spanish, aries, abs, squash, volleyba, dance, white" and you can put your postcode and you will find the ideal firness friend which is closer to your doorstep!

I never thought I could actually sign up for a fitness friend.. OMG this is hillarious, i'm just laughing out loud as I type.. but hey.. In terms of differentiation of the dating site big thumbs up! The power of segmentation!