“Follow the crowd” … But which crowd?



I’m getting senile so I may have mentioned this before. My favourite pub is The Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street.

I love it because Dr. Johnson used to drink there 250 years ago, and I love Dr. Johnson. Also, the food is not bad, the interior is fascinating, and they sell Samuel Smith’s – the only sanely priced beer in London.

Dr. Johnson said many fine things, one being that “man is a gregarious animal.” This has reached its apogee in the present social networks craze. We do like to flock together.

I have yet to understand the arrogance of people who ask me to be their “fan” when I have never met them, let alone the stupidity of those who ask me to be a fan of their company. Who wants to have a relationship with a company? Only a pervert or friendless drudge.

But one infinitely powerful medium has been slightly underestimated in the rush to make money on-line. Yet what do most people spend much of their time doing? What little instrument is likely to replace the PC?

Experts predict the rise of sms messaging would level off by 2010 and be overtaken by a new form of instant, low cost alternative. Not so. In the UK we send 11 million text messages an hour. In 2009 there was a daily average of 265 million text messages and 1.6 million picture messages. The annual text message total was 96.8 billion, with over 600 million picture messages sent.

This subject has interested me for a while, and I interviewed one of this country’s leading practitioners not long ago. What he had to say made me think a lot of people are missing a lot of business. More to come if you’re interested.

About the Author

In 2003, the Chartered Institute of Marketing named Drayton one of 50 living individuals who have shaped today’s marketing.

He has worked in 55 countries with many of the world’s greatest brands. These include American Express, Audi, Bentley, British Airways, Cisco, Columbia Business School, Deutsche Post, Ford, IBM, McKinsey, Mercedes, Microsoft, Nestle, Philips, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, Unilever, Visa and Volkswagen.

Drayton has helped sell everything from Airbus planes to Peppa Pig. His book, Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing, out in 17 languages, has been the UK’s best seller on the subject every year since 1982. He has also run his own businesses in the U.K., Portugal and Malaysia.

He was a main board member of the Ogilvy Group, a founding member of the Superbrands Organisation, one of the first eight Honorary Fellows of the Institute of Direct Marketing and one of the first three people named to the Hall of Fame of the Direct Marketing Association of India. He has also been given Lifetime Achievement Awards by the Caples Organisation in New York and Early To Rise in Florida.

3 Comments

  1. rezbi

    I'd definitely be interested.

    In fact, I remember beginning to look into this a couple of years ago, but somehow completely forgot to follow through.

    Rezbi
    http://directanddigitalmarketing.com/

  2. Hey Drayton:
    Remember a few years ago when I interviewed you on Social Media, and you told me something about computers not replacing books “Until people can take their computers into the loo with them…” or words to that effect?

    Granted, it's been a while and my recall memory is getting on the fuzzy side, but isn't that what mobile technology is allowing people to do? We carry our 3G networks everywhere–and the computer now fits in our pockets.

    The smart marketer will study this phenomenon and learn to take advantage of it–while he's got a semi-captive audience on the “throne.”

    Let's make a date to do another of those interviews, shall we? I think it's time for a follow up. 🙂

  3. cliffoa

    It's just a personal observation, but I seem to get more pissed off by companies who try to market me stuff on SMS than via other media. Somehow my mobile feels more personal to me than my landline or my letter box, and I generally only want and expect to receive social texts from people I know. So when companies try to flog me stuff, it usually has the opposite effect, of turning me off them, no matter how many free widgets they're offering me. No doubt you'll say (perhaps with some justification, 'well, phone and mail was like that once, and it all depends on what they're offering you and how compelling the offer is'), but I think companies who intend to flog stuff by SMS had better be pretty sure of their permissions and their relationship with their customers, or it could backfire.

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