Managing attention

My client this week is attending the largest conference in their industry. For this, I have been preparing materials and redesigning their website. As happens sometimes at the last minute with websites, software didn't come through in time (they aren't a start-up remember) and we missed the launch. Yet all of the executives and materials are at the conference. And the website launch goes into a list of Post-Conference Tasks. There is no contact form, no tracking, no optimized keywords, the list goes on. My demand generation dream just turned into a nightmare. I half want to go to the conference and tell everyone I see, yes I'm the marketing manager but that's NOT my design. Yes I have materials to send to you on their products. No, they won't look like anything you've seen from the company. Yes there is an 800 number, but no we can't post it yet. For a moment, I miss the light stepping start-ups, get-it-done-now environment. Not the 4 page change control document I was given here, which, funny enough, doesn't change a darn thing.

Ok, you see me. Now what?As a marketeer, managing the attention you are lucky enough to draw up is important. Digging up the interest is only half the war. What happens when the eyes or ears or fingers eagar to click the next exciting thing are sitting in front of you? I learned some lessons last week at the OnHollywood conference put on by Tony Perkins in this regard, after some kind words were wrapped around a spot-on critisism of me, that managing attention is something I could do better. Always have a backup plan, always be considering your offline channel mix, always use licensed software if your customers will be touched by your services and listen to smart people who say smart things.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Social network aggregator, a lot of dimes

Where is the aggregate social network, for Pete's sake! Not so long ago, I talked with John Merrells from sxip about unified registration and the compilation of user identities across the digital land but surely right behind that is the need to also aggregate other personal and professional information contained within the deeply specific preferences and data contained in social network services. I was so excited to see GoingOn get it on, and out and public, but when I come to the site, and few people are actually there or participating yet -- we must assume they are reading blogs from their various readers, writing their own blogs from their various blog publishing platforms, doing their 9 to 5 thing but not at, as the name leads us to want, "Always"-- and not at the same time, "On." Where is the social network aggregator? I log in once, it has multi access like individual systems do, but it's multi-system. I 'm abreast to the changes in blog and medi
Read more

ITU Conference

Image
This week I attend the largest technology conference I have seen to date. Typically held in Geneva, the International Telecommunication Union Conference (ITU) was held in Hong Kong December 2006. Held once every 4 years, this event has drawn over 150,000 attendees from all over the world. Those who know me will understand the sheer nirvana I am experiencing in connecting with people from so many countries all discussing and understand opportunities to extend technology and improve social conditions. Very few people I spoke with in the US before the event even knew what the ITU was, including me, so I learned that the ITU is the telecommunications committee for the United Nations (UN). This morning, among a diverse and experienced group of telecommunication leaders in a panel on this first official day of the event, were Andre Smit of Cisco and Didier Philippe , President of the Micro-Enterprise Acceleration Institute in Switzerland, who is working with HP. They spoke about the conver
Read more

Love hate relationships

Image
Rafe Needleman is one of my favorite reporters. I wonder instead of being hated, how he manages to stay relatively well-liked. The other ironic thing is that by writing about how much they are hated, those five people must like him even more. Ah, there's the real magic. I interviewed Rafe a while back about his initiative at CNET called Webware. Some insiders at CNET tell me that it doesn't directly make money (sounded a little paranoid actually), but I would tell CNET that Webware is great for it's own brand awareness, plus it raises visibility for all those companies and software applications.
Read more