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Comments

William

For over 20 years I have been working towards turing the pyramid right side up when it comes to the relationship that customers have with companies.

Along the way there have been many false starts as the tech to develop the needed set of services was not mature enough to develop an easy to use scalable application…One among many other issues was the difficulty in finding analogies/stories that would help me to explain the ideas and concepts that were central to a customer centric intention broadcasting platform. How do you explain that the pyramid is upside down and that the way supply and demand work are expensive wasteful and broken…..20 Years ago when I tired to explain the ideas that are now becoming the www. kleemi.com intention service ….I must have seemed like a mad tech scientist that escaped from an asylum….This was pre VRM…There was very little for me to point to as an example of what I wanted to build…..15 years ago I began to understand that I needed to build the app that I had in mind so that I could have a way to demonstrate the ideas of an intention broadcasting service…..The application was developed…there was some success and some failure….

Ralph Prado

I know this is an old post but perhaps you'll get this message. I agree with you 06 article here. There is an attention deficit market now. Also, companies have tried to increase it's relationships down a personal level. Apple has done a great job of reaching the masses by providing tailor fitted app solutios for every individuals needs. I don't think that any company, unless it's technological, has the same opportunity to be a one stop shop like Apple. And although many companies have tried to come into our homes and become part of the daily agenda, most companies have not succeeded in becoming the lifeline product, like Apple or Blackberry. The television, though pervasive, doesn't have one dominating company with such a person to product relationship. I believe that although companies know the potential rewards of establishing lifeline relationship, humans might always stand one arms lenghth away.

 buy new pc

Marketing practices have only modestly changed to reflect that new reality. There is still enormous opportunity to master the new marketing practices required to compete successfully in reverse markets.

bath and body

Realy nice post, There it is in your essay a backhand slap at "video displays above urinals. C'mon, that is truly one of the great innovations in attention marketing.

detox body

Thanks for the info. The migration required of vendors is how to co-evolve with reverse market facilitators, not how to become reverse market organisers.

Monavie

I think that's what Reichheld is getting at with his Net Promoter Scores. The very term customer immediately pigeon holes the buyer as being in a particular relationship with a particular seller.

Mesothelio

It was the one to one preachers that most vividly made those points a decade ago. You set them up as a straw men behind a conventional and walled garden approach to marketing.

Extenze

usual thing of the dangerously wrong bit is the assumption that individual vendors can, or should, be creating these reverse markets.

Catherine Moore

There are different ways to market a product or service on the web. However,the bottom line of any new product marketing strategy is to make targeted clients or customers visit or at least stumble the site that is being promoted. Online marketing can be done through emails, blogs, online advertisements, back linking, and other SEO techniques.

steven e. streight aka vaspers the grate, on the edge of evening

I go with Reverse Markets...or Self Marketing NeoMarkets, which are users sharing user products with other users via user distribution channels on paid networks, with or without ads, with or without sales hype.

Consumers are now, instantly: producers, editors, publishers, content developers, promoters, distributors, re-mixers, up and down loaders, and...anything else that used to be controlled by Them?

It's our world now, the reign of the anti-consumerism producer-consumer as individuals and in new hybrid complexes.

You, I, We can make our own music (audio editors and softsynths), movies (web video), radio show (internet podcast), art gallery (online exhibition-promotion sites), books (blogs and POD download e-pubs), etc.

Where do "corporations" and "CEOs" and "business models" and "ROI" fit into all this? Or do they? Will they?

Alan Mitchell

To me, this posting seems both wonderfully right and dangerously wrong.

The wonderfully right bit is the tectonic shift now transforming most, if not all consumer-facing markets. As John puts it: ‘Rather than viewing markets as places where vendors seek out customers and try to sell them as much stuff as possible, successful players will recognize that we are increasingly participating in “reverse markets” where customers seek out vendors when it is relevant and then negotiate to get as much value as possible from the vendors they deal with.’

The dangerously wrong bit is the assumption that individual vendors can, or should, be creating these reverse markets. In my view, the organisation and creation of these new reverse markets can only be achieved by new and separate businesses which are ‘buyer-centric’ (as opposed to ‘customer-centric’. The very term ‘customer’ immediately pigeon holes the buyer as being in a particular relationship with a particular seller. A key effect of reverse markets is to undermine this assumption).

These emerging buyer-centric business models will become pivotal players in a new commercial eco-system connecting buyers and sellers together in much more efficient and effective ways. The migration required of vendors is how to co-evolve with reverse market facilitators, not how to become reverse market organisers.

By the way, if this is right, the most fundamental challenge is not so much to vendor marketing strategies, which can adjust by viewing reverse markets as a new channel to market, but to retailers and media owners whose entire business models are threatened by these new developments.

Alan Mitchell

Jonathan Trenn

I still think the Intercept concept still has validity. But I don't see it as 'anywhere you can find them'. Intercepting can create name recognition. It's the companies that completely rely on this method that will fail.

Vladimir Orlt

A very good article. Thanks for the warning about the 3 Is... forewarned is forearmed :-) Where does selling on the basis of product value fit? Competition is good for the consumer (and bad for producers who can't keep up :-) I'd rather see more product-review websites...

And as for those urinal ads... how about installing them a bit lower?

Britton Manasco

John,

I'm shocked and dismayed that you have besmirched one of the great strategic opportunities that CMOs now have an opportunity to seize: "Urinary Marketing." There it is in your essay -- a backhand slap at "video displays above urinals." C'mon, that is truly one of the great innovations in attention marketing. I mean, what else are you going to do but watch the ad?

But seriously, I think you nailed it with your points about mobilizing third parties to drive collaborative marketing. That is the true frontier. How do we influence and reinforce the decisions of customers? I think that's what Reichheld is getting at with his "Net Promoter Scores." Who are the influencers? We need to know because customer are no longer going to decide in the vacuum of a "one-to-one" relationship. In fact, if we follow our customers too closely, we can follow them off the cliff (as Clayton Christensen has shown us quite eloquently).

On the other hand, I think you have been unfair to the promoters of the one-to-one philosophy. You set them up as a straw men behind a "conventional" and "walled garden" approach to marketing. But then, you, too, embraced lifetime value metrics and the Parento Principle (80/20 rule). It was the one-to-one preachers that most vividly made those points a decade ago.

That said, I am with you in your point about measuring Return on Information. Vendors need to be able to demonstrate that they can rapidly deliver value more quickly than their competitors. As you pointed out, "the more quickly a vendor can turn around and deliver tangible value in return for information from a customer, the more quickly and effectively the vendor will be able to build trust and willingness to provide even more information." Brother John, you can get an Amen.

Now, about those urinals... ;>)

Edward Cotton

Great post, as usual.

Any examples of companies that are close to getting it right?

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