Ole Miss Ad Club Presentation4.7.08
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Southern Growth Studio
• Clients call on the Southern Growth Studio when they are ready to leap, create new markets, or redefine the marketplace with a new product.
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What Southern Growth Studio Does • Southern Growth Studio is the only
company in the Mid-South to blend brand marketing and product innovation. » Delivers a unique fusion of creative talent and
business analysis to commercialize ideas, products, and services.
» Validates ideas, concepts, and plans that have the power to create markets and eliminate those that are not worth growing.
» User experience, utility, useful content, clusters of play.
» Why?
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Missing word?
• One dollar for the keen mind who will raise their hand and shout out the missing word.
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Advertising
• We tell prospective clients that “the last thing we want to do is to sell you an ad.”
• Why say such a thing? » Dare to guess?
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Clutter?
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Broken model?
• Pick one
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Context: Post-industrial warp speed layers of information and interests
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Content = Context, a testList three images from last slide
1. ___________2. ___________3. ___________
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Heretic or realist? You decide.
“Advertising is the tax you pay for unremarkable thinking.”
“Google can advertise better than the best agency.”
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Bands doing better than many brands
• “If you just stood up in a crowd and said your story—‘I came home, and this girl I was dating wasn’t there, and I was wondering where she was’—it’s not interesting, but give it a melody, give it a beat, build it all the way up to a haircut. Now people pay attention.” Jack White
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Why? The chopping block.
• Unlike the Record Companies, bands make a point to stay in touch with their audience.
• Audience is, and always will be, the chopping block.
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Audience now own the experience.• Control: people choose content and medium.• Class: people expect usable, useful products
from ethical companies who strive to innovate for the better.
• Connect: people want to play with brands, have a say, interact, mash up, syndicate, and opine.
• Choice: consumers and business audiences will not tolerate poorly designed products, weak services, or lacking insight, relevance, and delight.
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Shift in media
• Push• Pull• Connect with clusters
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So, why do brands matter?
• Why do brands matter in this mashed up, post-industrial, post-post-modern landscape that is half digital and half physical?
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Drucker as prophet
• We are now living into the wise insight that Peter Drucker proclaimed years ago:» “Business has only two functions--
marketing and innovation.” » Let’s look at some recent examples of
brand turnarounds or strong launches thanks to marketing and innovation.• Key words: useful, usable, play.
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Products + Community = Cool
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Products & widgets as marketing
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Play: mixing media interactions
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Usability: respect the audience
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Transformations make money
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16 quarters of consecutive growth
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Uploads, ratings, and participation
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Join the conversation:http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8028397740
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Contact the Growth Engine
Michael Graber | Managing Partner662.236.8030 |
READY TO GROW?