Another year, another OzCo Summit

I'm not in attendance this year at the Australia Council Marketing Summit, but participating from afar is almost as good. A few conference activities I have enjoyed include:

• Catching up on the You Tube stream from the conference at #msummit2010
• Reading the links referenced in various speaker's presentation. A particular post of interest has been the talk by Claire Eva - Head of Marketing and Audiences, at the Tate UK and links to the Tate Online Strategy 2010–12 and the idea of 'Your Tate Track'.
• Reading other's wrap up of the events....check out this great blog wrap up of several presentations.
• And of course, you can check out the OzCo site for all the presentations files, video and audio.

Happy reading! (from afar!)

From The Sagacious Friend...found after a long chat about experience versus academic research...

Ivory tower myopia ails marketing

LONG after marketing graduates have forgotten what the fourth P in the marketing mix - product, price, place and promotion - stands for (except when they look at the advertising agency's invoice and think it is profligacy), they remember Theodore Levitt.

Levitt changed marketing with his 1960 essay Marketing Myopia, which argued companies grow when they look beyond the products and services they sell to consider what the market needs.

But marketing academic Peter November, from Victoria University of Wellington, says no journal would accept it now: "It is a persuasive piece of writing but it's not a quantitative study." Hence, the title of November's 2004 essay, Seven Reasons Why Marketing Practitioners Should Ignore Marketing Academic Research.

Me tutor. You Student.

Who hoo I'm a tutor! I'm taking a semester of Marketing Foundations tutorials at UTS this Autumn. It's been a long time since I thought back on the fun that was this mandatory marketing subject...(and I did it at Sydney Uni, so there ends my comparison) but flicking through the textbook, ahh the memories! Hello product life cycle, consumer behaviour fundamentals, segmentation, qualitative market research and the joys of pricing strategies!

Somehow I think I'm going to really enjoy this! (perhaps a little too much!)

Navigating Facebook’s New Contest Rules

Ahhh one of those 'need to read' things...for anyone contemplating (or already) running competitions on Facebook, here is a round up of the new contest rules. Might be worth a look back into the the Twitter ones too. Play by the rules kids!

The new face of influencer: Look in the mirror

I like looking in the mirror...several friends would attest to the fact that my mirror face is usually me attempting to attain the perfect pout, but that's just the face I pull when applying mascara I promise! Who would of thought though that looking in the mirror was the answer to the age old question of 'who' is the 'who' behind 'word of mouth'. As young marketers we are told that 'word of mouth' is vital. As PR students we are told we need to target the 'influencers', we need to find the people that talk and talk to the group we want to target. Usually that means listening lots and acting less, until you find them. Have I influenced you enough to click this link to this tidbit with the story? Go on, you know you want to...*pouts*