Heads Up Asses? Me Thinks So.

This just out in a report from Epsilon:

Marketing Execs Aren’t Sold on Social Nets.

The story is here and pasted below.

Not only are social networking site users less than thrilled about seeing ads,  it turns out that  corporate chief marketing officers share that lack of interest, judging from the results of a survey released yesterday.

Conducted late last month for Epsilon by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Media, the online poll quizzed CMOs of consumer and business-to-business brands with revenues ranging from $250 million to $10 billion. More than half of the 180 respondents said they’re “not too interested” (22 percent) or “not interested at all” (33 percent) in using Facebook and MySpace as part of their marketing strategy.

“Internet forums (52 percent), webcasts and podcasts (47 percent), e-mail (47 percent), blogs (37 percent) and webinars (52 percent) outscored Facebook and MySpace (35 percent) in terms of being social media elements that marketing executives said they are very interested or somewhat interested in using,” according to Epsilon’s summary of the findings.

The same survey found 70 percent of the marketing executives expecting to decrease their ad expenditures in 2009. Among those expecting reductions in their budgets, e-mail marketing is the area in which they’re least likely to make cuts.

Part of me says “good” to that. Go ahead and ignore social media and let the rest of us who get it gain the foothold these clowns are about to pass it up.

Social media isn’t just about spending money on advertising in a new channel. It’s about embracing the tools and using them to help build brands. If these CMOs are passing up the opportunity to examine and test all aspects of marketing in a new channel, they’re just asleep at the wheel.

I wonder if this is the same pack of CMOs who questioned the value of spending time and money building a website back in the late 90s and believed that no one would ever pay for connection speeds faster than dial-up.

Found Religion

Last week, I attended a one-day conference on the 10th anniversary of the Cluetrain Manefesto called There’s a New Conversation sponsored by The Conversation Group.

It was an early 8:30 am start. Normal for some, for me–not so much. And it was about a 75-90 minute commute provided I didn’t get lost. (For those who don’t know me, I was born without a sense of direction. I’ve been known to get lost even with a GPS device…Hopeless.) Thankfully, traffic was good, the traffic gods were watching over my every directional turn and I got there on time, unscathed. Even after finding a nearby Peet’s and stopping in for quick cup to go.

But I digress.

The event was really well done. Great speakers, content and interaction with the other attendees. When I was back at the office the next day giving Jen Pahlka, GM of Web 2.0 Expo, my quick review, she was so excited that I had finally “found religion” on the whole social media, conversation is the new marketing movement.

It wasn’t like I didn’t get it before. I understood it. I knew I had to embrace it. I just hadn’t been totally bitten by the bug. But now I am. Here’s a quick look at the tidbits of info I gleaned from the conference:

• The customer is the new platform
• Markets are relationships
• The medium is the relationship
• The era of the grand gesture is dead
• Connect on your similarities, profit on your diversities
• Often those with the most customer contact are the ones considered least strategic
• Break down silos, roles that traditional constituencies once played are collapsing
• What’s being said about your brands? Figure it out and join the conversation
• Old world: Messaging used to be given to a few to speak to the market.
• New world: Anyone is a spokesperson
• Customer Network Value: how much one customer can influence others
• Future outlook: people being able to reach companies as quickly and easily as they reach their friends
• Approach to social media should be equal to a product development program
• Have a crisis strategy in advance
• Measurement has changed. It’s not about page views anymore
• Evangelists often don’t have followers. Leaders have followers. Be a leader
• Act like the host of a party, not a cop
• Things that seem inconceivable today are the things you later do to thrive
• Social media is no longer about marketing, it’s how you do business

These are just the thoughts that resonated with me and got me thinking. The organizers did a full blown review of every speaker here.

Why Another Blog?

The last thing the world needs is another blog. But hey. The last thing the world needs is more frozen, high calorie concoctions from Starbucks, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to stop inventing new ones…Hence. My new blog.

Why Marketing Kitty? Because I’m a marketer who happens to have cats? Well, yeah, that’s true.

Hi Moneypenny.

But also because the name was available. And it’s a sort of play on words off my personal blog, Knit Kitty Knit, something started a few years ago when I learned how to knit and wanted to learn how to blog. It’s woefully abandoned at this point — work keeps me a bit too busy to knit, and if you’re not knitting, how do you maintain a blog about knitting?

I run the marketing department for a company that creates and produces conferences and trades shows in the technology space. Web 2.0 Expo, Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Interop, VoiceCon are some of the brands. My current challenge is figuring out what marketing in my group will look like over the next few years. We know what we do today will not be what we’ll do in 2011.

What’s the transition from Marketing 1.0 to Marketing 2.0? How do new social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, etc. get worked into the fabric of our marketing?

This blog is the start of my ramblings in making that transition, marketing in general and reaching out the community for suggestions and advice along the way. I hope you’ll take part.

If you want to follow me on twitter, I’m stacyo.