Friday, April 9, 2010

Comment responses

From Nick:
"You mentioned Email, but lets be honest, most spam filters are advanced enough to filter most ads out, I cant remember the last Ad I got on GMail, nigerian king or otherwise...we are going to have to step up our game to create a better relationship with our customers, more direct communication, deals for long term clients etc. A direction I feel we should be heading in anyway. The real trick is how to be both effective but subtle in how we communicate, phone calls are invasive, emails are annoying etc."

The point I was making with the E-mail comment has more to do with direct communication wherein the recipient's e-mail address wasn't obtained from random e-mail lists, but from somewhere the user actually signed up to receive e-mails as a form of communication from a company.  While it likely wouldn't change a lot, it has plenty of potential for change.  Additionally, because I am assuming you are relatively young and because you are a fellow farker I am assuming you are pretty comfortable with technology so you may not be aware of how many people out there still receive piles and piles of spam in their inbox everyday.  While I don't think it's an effective method of marcom either, its a very real option for a large number of marketers out there trying to reach the largest number of people possible with ease and a low budget.  Also, I completely agree with your comment about what it means for how marketers will have to function in the future, while an uncomfortable adjustment period will no doubt be involved it may very well help marketers create a better working relationship with their existent and potential customers.

From Rob:
"the idea of net neutrality is clearly just a way to protect consumers, is it not?"

Well, yes and no.  The fact is both sides of the argument tend to put consumers first, but have many other aspects to their side that is also very self-serving (think democrats vs. republicans, both look out for American citizens' interests first, but also have many other personal things they look at in legislation).  Partially it is as it is designed to give the FCC control over the internet as a communication medium similar to telephones (but likely managed in a way more similarly to television).  Much of what the FCC does is look out for the public's best interest in these situations, however there would be much more room for them over-stepping their bounds with no real legislative language (that I've seen yet) giving different levels of control over different content (i.e. broadcast television has to answer to the FCC, but cable and premium content only answers to its customers and advertisers).

There are many many underlying issues as to why the FCC, the current White House administration and various companies like Google and Yahoo are behind net neutrality, but one of the biggest the FCC falls back on is their plan for expansion of broadband (another topic I will delve into quite a bit more heavily in the future).  Essentially they want to push the increase of broadband capability as well as subsidize it in a way that makes it available to 100% of Americans no matter their geographic or economic status (which has some very positive potential for marketers, but again I will get into this more in the future)

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