As 2008 comes to a close everyone is talking about what is next.  What is going to define 2009?  Is it going to be a new widget?  a new phone? Will Apple come out with a new device that is all the rage?  Will Dell win back its share of the laptop market?  Is Obama going to change the world?  The fact that everyone is talking about it and is excited about something new is exciting in and of itself.  To me, this means our creativity is firing and innovation is abound. 

As a marketer, I read David Mullen’s 5 PR Predictions and think he has some great points.  I want to focus on his point about measuring people.  I agree with David that we will start measuring people instead of impressions, but I think it will go a lot further than that.  I don’t think the economy is turning around so quickly, which will cause companies to be very “bottom line centric”.  Companies will want to show how their investment in Web 2.0 has paid off and that will mean qualifying the active users/visitors.  It will mean developing ways to report how effective social networking tools are, like managing a twitter account.  Yes, twitter allows the company to talk to it’s customers one-to-one, but did that person buy something?  Did they click on an ad?  Did they refer someone?  How long did the cycle take? 

I think 2009 is going to be the year of the number crunchers and web analysts.  Maybe it is time to take a statistics refresher course.

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This post is kind of a followup to my last post on marketing AI.  I have been thinking of other causes that have been expedited or have benefited from good marketing and global warming came to mind.   Read the rest of this entry »

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