"Observations and Predictions"

-The gurus will more obviously sell people their own preconcieved notions about sales and marketing on the (secret) premise that people will buy validation. The gurus will make money. Purchasers of their information will not. But buyers will feel better about themselves. (No cynicism intended). Comment: It's the quest to 'be somebody' that drives this market. You already are somebody. But can you sell something?

-We can measure the effectiveness of advertising on sales using Multiple Regression. Multiple Regression and econometrics is used to measure the separate effects of many variables (explanatory variables) on one variable (dependent variable). In a marketing context the dependent variable might be environmental factors such as the weather, consumers' income and confidence in our (US) President. (See next entry).

-President Bush has begun plotting and testing a strategy to withdraw from Iraq. (My opinion). I believe he'll start testing it during the first quarter of the new year. As momentum of the withdrawal process grows, so will sales. I'm suggesting there's a relationship between sales volume and the President's confidence/approval ratings.

-In 1994, Ken McCarthy (TheSystemSeminar.com) warned that the primary challenge ahead, for those marketing on the Web would not be technological, but providing content. The new wave of video will accentuate this content crisis like nothing else could. (Permission marketing ['spam' - a reference to the quality of information in my inbox] in technicolor).

-Because of the lack of comprehensive indexing and inconsistent format, quality of information, etc., blogs will lose broad appeal. I'm saying momentum will slow, not that they will become extinct.

-Jumping, flipping, spinning, java-based, corporate advertising will proliferate, because the only way to sell advertising to a corporation is to tell them that ads must, above all else, be preemtory. (They still don't get it). "Your honor...when I asked him why he smacked me in the head with that 2X4, he said it was to get my attention...".

-There is money to be made on the Internet when it's used as a sales channel. However, it excels as a communication medium when used to establish relationships (a list). Call it lead-gen, if you like. ROI becomes rediculously 'phat' when these relationships are serviced using multiple channels.

I hope you realize that God is on your side this holiday season. Merry Christmas.

Peter

Comments

[Mike Sigers]

Peter,

I don't see how real blogs, as opposed to splogs, can slow down in their creation and use when only a small portion of the world has seen them as of yet.

The CEO of one of the companies I work for has never seen one. He heads a $100 million/year company and has never, ever read one. That's the case with 90% of the English speaking world.

BTW - he will see one next week as my staff is building a test model that I will sell and service for him ;-)

I personally think their usefulness has not even been touched yet, as we're only in the early adopters stage as of now. They will, my prediction, continue to grow for another 3-5 years.

Static sites are whats on their last legs.

Blogs are just sites that are frequently updated. Frequent updates are what people want, not static sites, so even though we may call the method something else someday, the daily, hourly, or whatever, method of updating content is here to stay.

Easy to produce video is a horrible thing and will make the internet ugly, more unsafe and stupider than stupid.

Content is a problem for newspapers, TV, magazines, books and blogs. Always has been and always will be.

Somebody probably said it in the 1800's and they'll still be saying it in 2525.