Well, we did and Equation Research delivered–in spades! And just as promised, we’re getting first access to the report, before it’s promoted anywhere else: please click here to download the full report (PDF).
The 40-page report is jam-packed with findings and implications, results for each of the 10 questions that were selected from the community’s contributions and scores of relevant charts and graphs illustrating the key points, along with breakdowns by audience designations (i.e. B2B, B2C, Brand-side Marketers, Agency-side Marketers). It’s enough to make a data wonk out of you, too.
To our knowledge, this is the first marketing survey that was directed by the community, yet facilitated by a third-party research company. Some of the findings from over 1,450 respondents include:

• Adoption rates. The adoption of social media is well past critical mass–with nearly two thirds of brand marketers (59%) currently implementing social media in their marketing plans.
• Tools and platforms. Facebook, Twitter, online video and blogs are the 4 most popular social media tools. Yet none of these are being used in isolation–on average, there are 5 to 7 other social media tools being either actively used or dabbled with by marketers at the same time.
• Key barriers. Knowledge, measurement, and funding/time-resources pose the biggest barriers to social media adoption.
• Current marketing spend. While traditional media channels account for the largest proportion of marketing spend; Online, Search and Social Media as a group are approximately a third of all current spend. For smaller companies this increased to over 40%.
• Forecasts in spending. Looking towards 2010, brand marketers forecast a shift in spend towards digital tactics, feeling the areas most likely to increase will be Social Media (60%), Online Advertising (53%), Search Engine Advertising (49%) and Email Marketing (41%).
• Mobile marketing. While current adoption of Mobile Marketing is low (only 11% of brand and agency marketers had it as a line item), there is interest in experimentation.
• Corporate responsibility initiatives. The majority (87%) of brand marketers surveyed indicated their company was involved in some type of corporate responsibility initiative, most often in the form of environmentally/socially responsible business practices (58%). As a likely refection of the economic uncertainty, half have no plans for how their corporate responsibility projects will change in the coming year.

Also as promised, we are being given free access to Equation’s online reporting tool; so you can filter, cross-analyze, or cut the data up any way you want. To access the online tool: Please go here:

• For username type in: equation
• For password type in: trends09
• If you need any help with the tool, Chris Burke is happy to walk you through and answer questions; just drop Chris an email right here and he’ll get right back to you.

As explained in the original post, Equation Research is not a client of mine, this labor-of-love project signaled an opportunity to involve the community in a beneficial program and I got to play but one part. Though I do want to say I’m tremendously impressed at how thoughtful and thorough the report is (thanks Equation), how terrific Ann Handley has been to support this project (thanks MarketingProfs) and how prolific YOU were in brainstorming the questions–thanks marketers!
While we’ll learn through the report’s findings, I do want to point out the key lesson that I’ll be sharing with my clients and colleagues–because ironically, it doesn’t stem from data found inside the report, but from the core idea of the report itself. That is to say, creating a piece that was both for the community and directed by its members. Given social media’s growth tear, I hope businesses will leverage these tools in ways that engage audiences by providing new and creative types of value to their communities…rather than using these media as just another vehicle for broadcasting their marketing messages.
This program–via crowdsourcing the questions and preparing data that will help us in our work and learning curves–serves as an example of that practice. And I hope to see plenty more.
Enjoy your data, marketers and I’ll leave you on another exciting note: Equation Research wants to conduct a community-developed survey with us again in 2010. So it looks like we’ve started an annual tradition!
PS: If you’ve not already, download your copy of the report right here.

Historically we haven’t paid much attention to this practice. It was done outside of our backyards whether in a different country or by small non-threatening entities. But within the last decade, the web has facilitated the shift of many opportunities from outside to in. It’s done this by utilizing the easy access to the crowds.
Those crowds are not in some far off place anymore. They are among us and the opportunities they’re being presented with are being displayed in front of us. Those who are being pushed out of taking advantage of theses opportunities continue to argue against this practice. Whether it’s journalists, designers, or pretty much any “established” company that sells a product, the mindset of “the traditional way is still the best way” is still being fiercely promoted to would-be customers and the general public. But despite the heated debates and PR efforts, there is an important reality that needs to be acknowledged:
Anything that is legal, and that can somehow be leveraged by an entity to generate income, will be.
The arguments are not going to end, but there is going to come a point in time when organizations need to make one of the three choices.
1. Ignore the situation and try riding it out in hopes your consumer will come back to you.
2. Accept this now and begin to restructure to incorporate these types of functions.
3. Offer a service that overcomes the efficiency of crowds with uniqueness (while retaining competitive margins).
Ignore: Roll the dice. Regardless of price or product, sometimes it all comes down to economics. Certain industries are losing market share to crowdsourced services but perhaps the trend won’t be permanent. Something that is considered a commodity one day, might not be the next. There is a direct correlation between discretionary income and irrational spending. There is always the possibility the market will once again support this habit.
Accept and Embrace: If a company provides (some) goods or services that may soon be turned into a commodity, then embracing that fact may be the first step in building a business model that thrives under the upcoming business climate. Agency BBH took a big risk by using design site Crowdspring to create its new logo. BBH is an organization full of creative individuals (some of whom threatened to quit if the agency went through with this partnership) yet chose to reach out to the global designer community to meet its needs. This angered a LOT of people, but if the trend of making (some types of) design work a commodity continues, then BBH’s $1500 experiment may pay off big time.
We all got to see how this scenario played out outside of the company, but only the leaders of BBH got to see how this worked internally. They are the ones who now have the knowledge of how to adapt to this situation if it becomes increasingly common. They are also the ones who will know exactly which types of talent to grow in their company, and which they can slowly phase out. I’m not saying this isn’t an unfortunate reality, but it is one that people need to understand is very possible. Those who are in a potentially doomed situation can use the time they have now to prepare themselves for the future before it’s too late. (The newspaper industry had a significant head start but only now is starting to react).
Compete and Overcome: If accepting and embracing isn’t an option for your company (or your pride), then the only other avenue is to offer a product or service that is so unique and valuable that price becomes less of a deciding factor for your client. This isn’t impossible of course. If price were the only thing that mattered then everyone would shop at Walmart. But it’s going to mean that those who survive the commoditization of their product are the ones who offer a “remarkable” version of it (to quote Seth Godin). The other reality is that those who survive this change in economics are going to notice that the population of their peers is much smaller than it used to be. Afterall, not everyone can be remarkable, and not all clients are going to want anything except a low cost (even if what they’re buying is just “good”).

Reality Check
The point of this post is not to debate write or wrong, or to question the ethics of certain sides. That is a pointless exercise because as I alluded to earlier, if money is involved, SOMEONE is going to take advantage. This post is meant to serve as a friendly reminder that the argument needs to stop all together. The energy that is being expended towards fighting a growing trend needs to be directed elsewhere. There are many routes organizations can take in effort to save themselves from potential extinction, the key is to start evolving as soon as possible. Take risks. Try something that is completely foreign. The more chances you get to experiment between now and your potential extinction, the more chances you’ll have to discover something that proves more valuable than a simple commodity.

We launched a contest on Facebook to gather the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ on how businesses can become more environmentally conscious in their operations. Facebook users can contribute their ideas and pass them along to their friends and the larger Facebook community to vote on by Nov. 15. (And yes, the winner gets a green prize!)
While a contest or giveaway on Facebook is not new, the use of Facebook as a method of crowdsourcing is. The contest hopes to unearth some new approaches that businesses can take to increase their environmental efforts while also increasing their bottom line.
Here is how you can contribute your ideas on how businesses can be more green.
Full Disclosure – I work for BearingPoint and this is a campaign I am working on – wanted to expose my audience to this concept and would love for you to participate but only if you wanted.

Mathematics has left the ivory tower of academia for a marketing department near you. Are you ready for this massive paradigm shift?
Let’s be clear. I hate the phrase, “paradigm shift“. The words are close to meaningless due to overuse.

However, in this rare instance, where the world of mathematics is invading the marketing kingdom, it makes sense to emphasize a new way of thinking that is radically changing the way marketers do business.

Marketers have always wanted to know more about customers–after all, better segmentation and targeting of a customer base helps improve marketing ROI and ultimately increases satisfaction as customers are not bombarded with irrelevant offers.

Fortunately for marketers, advances in technology (both applications and infrastructure) have made it easier to capture, manage and analyze data so as to piece together a more complete picture of customer behavior and of enterprise operations.

Case in point, an article from Business Week, published in 2006 titled, “Math Will Rock Your World“, highlights companies such as Google, Aetna, Harrah’s and others that are using mathematics via analytical applications to sort out “swelling oceans of data” and mine data for insights to better understand customers.

While arguably a bit dated, the Business Week article showcases how companies are using customer data to build profiles and formulate models of both customers and employees that they believe will allow them to simulate and predict how to, “sell us things, steer us clear of diseases, and ramp up (employee) productivity.”

Other examples in the article show how companies are using advanced algorithms to make sense of unstructured data (emails, documents, call center notes), and optimize online advertising campaigns through the refinement and selection of keywords for search.

Using mathematics to better understand customers is serious business–just ask Netflix. According to a recent Wired magazine article, this online movie rental company is offering a $1 million dollar prize to any one person or team that can improve its current movie recommendation algorithm.

By opening access to one of the largest data sets available of online behavior–100 million customer movie ratings–Netflix is ultimately hoping to “crowdsource” improvements to Cinematch, its engine that essentially recommends, “If you liked this movie, you’ll also like this one.”

The Wired article details how different teams from across the globe have attempted to help Netflix improve its recommendation algorithm, and how difficult a challenge this is turning out to be. The contest is two years running and still a 10% predictive improvement remains elusive.

However, even minor improvements to Cinematch have thus far helped Netflix utilize more of its DVD inventory and improved customer loyalty as subscribers find movies of interest that perhaps they might have previously overlooked.

In another article, “Guessing the Online Customer’s Next Want”, Barney’s New York is mentioned as a company that’s seen dramatic marketing ROI improvement from using sophisticated analytical applications based on complex mathematics.
Through the use of technology, Barney’s is able to collect and analyze the online behavior of its customers and then craft smarter and more appropriate responses to interested audiences.

For example, the article notes, “An e-mail message announcing sales might go to those Web site visitors who had purchased certain products or types of products in the past, but who had done so only when the items were on sale. In the simplest terms, if someone buys only when something is on sale, but never buys anything in December, then the e-mail sale flier might not be sent to that customer in December.”

Just as in the early 1980s, when the financial industry was upended by the flight of quants from academia to Wall Street, marketers are starting to reap the brainpower of mathematicians, physicists and others as they codify their expertise and knowledge into sophisticated information technology systems and analytical applications. These innovative systems are helping marketers leverage information to better connect with customers and drive the business forward.

Paradigm shift? Absolutely. The world of marketing will likely never be the same again.
Questions:
* Are you seeing these trends in your particular industry? If so, how so?
* The companies mentioned above are starting to treat data as one of their most valuable assets. Is your company on that path?
* Are you concerned with the potential “dark side” of simulating and modeling customer behavior–i.e. privacy issues?
* What skill sets will marketers need in the future to be able to compete in this new world of mathematics and marketing?
I’d love to hear from you!