Chisholm and Harper | Creating businesses of the future

Last night we hosted a wine, cheese at Twitter night at Chisholm & Harper for our clients. The idea of the session was to create a friendly and safe environment for clients to ask questions and share ideas about using Twitter in their businesses.

We had some fairly sophisticated Tweeters there, like our friends at Essendon Football Club (@Essendon_FC) who have 6,000 followers and use the medium to engage with fans in a variety of ways. However, the majority of our clients (and I think this represents the vast majority of Australian businesses) are still trying to get their heads around the value of Twitter, and those who do understand the value are stymied by senior leadership teams who don't allow them to use it.

Are you in this boat? Or have you successfully brought a sceptical leadership team around to the value of this and other social media tools? If so, we'd love to hear from you.

Check out the presentation given by Samantha Bell, Business and Internet Consultant (@samanthabell) last night:

Media Release

16 August 2010

The Reach Foundation engages Chisholm & Harper to enhance communications with key stakeholder groups

Chisholm & Harper has been engaged to develop a communication framework for two of Reach's important stakeholder groups; teachers and corporate funders.

This project will allow Reach to better understand the needs of teachers and schools and support them to engage and inspire their young students. It will also help Reach to promote their fantastic work to the Corporate sector and ensure that they remain sustainable and can continue to inspire young Australians into the future.

Chisholm & Harper’s consultative approach will deliver communication messages and activities that allow Reach to more effectively promote its life-changing work; through the right channel at the right time.

Last week we presented on the topic of Trends and Developments in Mobile Marketing at Frank Chamberlain's DM Forum.

One of the big topics for discussion was whether Apple or Google Android would win the race for consumers' hearts, minds and ultimately dollars.

Well, for the first time last quarter the Google-owned Android operating system (OS) exceeded Apple’s iPhone OS market share. A Gartner report released last week shows that smartphones accounted for 19% of all mobile phones sold in the second quarter for 2010, with devices using the Android OS showing rapid growth in market share.

The Android OS jumped from a 1.8% market share in the same quarter last year, to a 17.2% market share in Q2 2010. Compare this to the Apple iPhone's OS which had a 13% market share this time last year and has crept up to just 14.2% this year.

Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner attributes this growth to “a non-exclusive strategy that produces products selling across many communication service providers and the backing of so many device manufacturers, which are bringing more attractive devices to market at several different price points."

So, what does this all mean for marketers? Well, I would think twice about rushing out and comissioning that expensive iPhone app. It seems like Android could be where it's at.

Read the Gartner report here

View our Mobile Marketing presentation

Consider this: for people aged 13-30, the Internet is a highly interactive environment; so-called web 2.0 is either old hat or all they’ve ever known.

They know the Internet as a place to not only find information or go shopping, but primarily as a means of communicating with their physical social network, or with the online community more broadly.  They expect websites to cater to their every need; if not they’ll look elsewhere and only come back if something isn’t doing what you do better.  They will not buy, either online or in-store, if there aren’t peer reviews on products and services.  If your company doesn’t have an online presence, you’re probably entirely off their radar.   If they search for you but can’t find you, you’re out of their consideration set, and no amount of marketing spend can fix this because they don’t trust what you say about yourself.  Its not just 13-30 year olds who think like this – there are plenty of other Internet savvy people out there who don’t fit in this age bracket who have the same expectations.

The Internet is now a democratised environment full of everyone’s opinions, including opinions about your organisation, your products and your industry.  On a fundamental level, the biggest change the Internet has brought about is that you can’t get away with anything.  It challenges you to take your business to the next level if you want people to sing your praises online.

In the BRW Fast Starters edition (December 10 – January 20 2010) reporter Jane Lindhe profiles the most successful and resilient start-ups and ponders how they have thrived in a time of financial adversity.  In particular she comments ‘businesses with online strategies have an advantage over their competitors, and companies on the Fast Starters list are excelling in this area.’  She notes that:

• 26 per cent of these fast starters have a facility for online selling
• 56 per cent use social networking on websites such as Twitter & Facebook
• Most use their customer databases to distribute electronic newsletters

While these activities can be a part of an Online Strategy, they are just the tip of the iceberg of what organisations can do online.  Do you regularly monitor what people are saying about your brand and product in the online space and measure it?  Do you have a facility for one-on one interaction with customers who can give you fantastic feedback and a process for integrating that feedback into product development?  Do you empower your loyal customers to become advocates for your brand?  These are but a few of the incredibly valuable things that can be achieved through online that are not just valuable to your marketing department but integral to the way you do business and your bottom line.

While it may seem all a bit hard to figure out how your company can best make use of online, just remember that the Internet isn’t a fad so the hard work will have to be done sooner or later.  One day every company will have a comprehensive Online Strategy; if you are one of the first to adopt one you’ll find you’re streets ahead of the competition when everyone else catches up.