Digital Photos Rock, Film Now Extinct

With the explosion of digital photography and most recently phone cameras I got to wondering about how many photos are taken today versus back when film was the only photo format.  Now film has gone the way of the dinosaurs and earlier this year the once mighty Kodak filed for bankruptcy.

I found an article by Jonathan Good “How Many Photos Have Ever Been Taken?”, Sept 15, 2011 http://ow.ly/bcqE2 with some answers to my questions.  Historically photos were first produced in the mid 1800’s.  These were made by commercial photographers, and featured topics such asd documentation of the Civil War and the American west, and portraits.  The first consumer consumer camera was the Kodak Brownie, introduced in 1901.

Most photos were of families, people, and babies.  Since film and processing were costly, people wanted to make “every shot count”, which discouraged taking random or spontaneous photos.  Digital photography changed all that!

Film photography peaked around the year 2000, when it was estimated that the world shot 85B photos.  Cheap disposable cameras made consumer photo taking easy and accessible.  But as the graphic above illustrates, shortly after 2000 film (or analog) photography abruptly disappeared.

First there were digital cameras, which simultaneously became more and more technically sophisticated and cheaper.  Then mobile phones started to appear with built in cameras, followed by smart phones that could instantaneously transmit photos via email and over the internet,

It’s estimated we took 85B photos in 2000, Today that number is 375B.  Almost 4.5 times larger than when film was being used!

Another staggering fact – users will post an estimated 70B photos on Facebook, which is 20% of all photos taken in the world!

Facebook already has 140B photos on its pages, which dwarfs Instagram and Flickr.  Now that Facebook owns Instagram it will be interesting to see how online photo sharing continues to grow.

Prioritization Insights

Prioritization

I’ve had lots of discussions with co-workers about prioritization and time management.  It’s an interesting challenge that all of us face.  The busier we all get, the more difficult it becomes to decide what’s important and needs attention, and what tasks could be ignored, deferred or delegated.

There’s been a lot written about this topic, from the Harvard Business School to the American Management Association to Steven Covey.  The details might vary a little bit from entity to entity, but the overall general concept is the same.

            Source:  RRResearch: Important but not urgent http://ow.ly/b8NIk

This graphic breaks issues and tasks into four quadrants.  Note the vertical axis is “Urgency”, the horizontal is “Importance”.

1.     Not Important And Not Urgent.  These are time wasters, interruptions, co-worker visits, social phone calls, etc.  These need to be managed and minimized so as to not waste valuable time.

2.     Not Important But Urgent.  These issues are the time wasters and attention diverters some people really get bogged down with.  They’re really not important in the greater scheme of things, but people get involved and sidetracked because of the urgency of the issue.  Delegate or disregard, or these kinds of non-important issues will consume too much valuable time.  I often use the rule that “if they won’t be important two weeks from now, they’re not important now….”

3.     Important and Urgent.  These issues do need attention.  Now.  Something’s “on fire”.  Today’s crisis.  Maybe you can delegate a response, but the importance of the situation requires your involvement, at least at a coordination level.  These are the kinds of issues that cause us to lose control of our day and all the tasks that we’d carefully organized to get done. 

4.     Important and Not Urgent.  This is arguably the most important quadrant, and the one most overlooked.  The other three boxes are reactive, this one is the only area that is proactive.  This is the place where long term organizing, planning, strategizing, and thinking takes place.  The problem here of course is that because it isn’t Urgent its so very easy to defer, postpone, reschedule, and put off.  Then tomorrow’s crisis comes along, and pretty soon these all-important tasks end up never happening.  You allowed all your time to be consumed by today’s interruptions and demands, and never found the time for the most important part of your job.  Proactively creating, managing, and innovating.

Sometimes managers appear too detached from the day-to-day crisises, and perhaps they are.  Or, they may be intentionally trying to disengage from all those urgent-but-not very-important issues that always seem to be taking place in deference to what is really much more important to the success of the operation and the business.

It’s very insightful to regularly ask yourself if you’re actually being proactive in your job as a manager, or just reactive.  Reactive actions are rarely the course of leaders.

(And then there’s delegation skills to master, and then PROCRASTINATION to overcome….)

Marketers: Keep It Simple!

I have edited and reformatted a recent case study from the Harvard Business Review that researches and analyzes consumer behavior and tests the premise that consumers today have abandoned brand loyalty in favor of the lowest price and the best deal.  This is part of an excellent series in the latest HBR issue, available online.

“To Keep Your Customers, Keep It Simple” - Harvard Business Review

      by Patrick Spenner and Karen Freeman  May 2012

http://ow.ly/b1QNY

Many marketers see today’s consumers as web-savvy, mobile-enabled data sifters who pounce on whichever brand or store offers the best deal. Brand loyalty, the thinking goes, is vanishing. In response, companies have ramped up their messaging, expecting that the more interaction and information they provide, the better the chances of holding on to these increasingly distracted and disloyal customers. But for many consumers, the rising volume of marketing messages isn’t empowering—it’s overwhelming. Rather than pulling customers into the fold, marketers are pushing them away with relentless and ill-conceived efforts to engage.

Research Methodology:  Over a three-month period, Corporate Executive Board conducted pre- and postpurchase surveys of more than 7,000 consumers in the U.S., the UK, and Australia, covering a wide range of ages, income levels, and ethnicities.

Respondents were asked dozens of questions about their attitudes and purchase experiences across a variety of price points and channels in categories including apparel, cars, luxury goods, onetime purchase items (such as airline tickets), and ongoing services (such as cell phones).

Questions explored shopping duration, effort required, purchase-related research, the consumer’s state of mind, his relationship with the brand, the frequency of his interactions with the brand, and the likelihood of repurchasing and recommending.

In addition, 200 CMOs, brand managers, and other marketing executives representing 125 consumer brands in 12 industries globally were interviewed. They were asked about their strategies and beliefs concerning the factors that lead to “stickiness”.

The study focused in on what makes consumers “sticky”.  This is defined as consumers who:

·       Are likely to follow through on an intended purchase

·       Buy the product repeatedly

·       Recommend the product to others

The impact on stickiness was evaluated on more than 40 variables, including price, customers’ perceptions of a brand, and how often consumers interacted with the brand. The single biggest driver of stickiness, by far, was “decision simplicity”— the ease with which consumers can gather trustworthy information about a product and confidently and efficiently weigh their purchase options.

GM Loses, Not FB

Two days ago, on the verge of Facebook's IPO stock launch, GM announced it was cancelling its Facebook $10M ad buy, inferring that the ads weren't effective.  The Wall Street Journal   (WSJ.com http://ow.ly/b1s9b) observed that GM pulled its ads "after deciding that paid ads on the site have little impact on consumers' car purchases, according to a GM official.  The move by GM, one of the largest advertisers in the U.S., puts a spotlight on an issue that many marketers have been raising: whether ads on Facebook help them sell more products." 


The announcement initially surprised advertising industry insiders as well as the business public, especially given the timing being so close to the IPO offering.  However, online comment soon emerged that GM was not a particularly savvy Facebook marketer, and the fact that it felt the FB ads were ineffective was due to GM's poor social media strategies.


In my last blog I described the new Consumer Decision Journey that social media has created.  As the Advertising Age article below details, GM has pretty much failed in its Facebook social media efforts.  I highlighted a key point of the story below.

Note that GM has 3.9M Facebook fans.  This pales to Ford's 10M.  And Ford has received accolades for its social media program featuring Scott Monty as their social media persona.  GM also appears to have a customer loyalty problem, as evidenced by the Consumer Reports ratings that were just published, and referenced by Ad Age.

The Sales Funnel Is Dead. Long Live The Loyalty Loop!

There has been a lot of recent discussion about how social media has changed the way that brands and consumers interact.  The Harvard Business Review featured an article in its December 2010 issue "Branding In The Digital Age - You're Spending All Your Money In The Wrong Places" by David C. Edelman.


This article articulated how today's consumers engage with brands, and asserts that the traditional ways of marketing and influencing the customer are no longer relevant.  This concept is not unique - it is echoed over and over by  marketing pundits who have seen how social media has literally changed the rules of the game.


Traditional marketing was based on targeted one-way communications. Identify the customer and impact his buying decisions with advertising messages.  There was no customer feedback, communication, or collaboration with the brand in this process.  The "buyers' funnel" was used to illustrate the purchase process.

(Source:  Harvard Business Review, December 2010, p 64)

Today, social media has created a new purchase mechanism and replaced the funnel model.  Now consumers typically utilize a more extended evaluation phase during which various brands are added and/or eliminated.  But most importantly, after purchase, consumers typically enter into an open-ended relationship with the brand and its advocates.  This typically happens online on various flatforms.  This new "Decision Journey" is shown below.  Note the all important Loyalty Loop.

(Source:  Harvard Business Review, December 2010, p 64)

This process is sometimes referred to an an "integrated purchasing experience".


Mr. Edelman then cites two very important implications to this change in the consumer decision process.

Know Your Customer!!

Sounds simple, doesn't it?  You'd think every business would know who their customers are and equally as important, what they want.  But unfortunately many do not.  And the consequence is that the brand and the products do not satisfy the customer's needs.


How many customers are new, and how many are repeat?  Where did they learn about your business?  Where are they from?  How did they enjoy your product or service?  Would they recommend you to a friend?


Not knowing answers to simple questions like these is akin to bowling in the dark!  You know you're hitting the pins, but........


Many so called customer surveys are of little value.  The hotel room comment card, the restaurant check wallet survey, the on-line comment card - they provide customer feedback, but they are not representative samples of the customer universe.  They may provide meaningful customer feedback, but that's about it.