We hope to develop a strong community of users at Alice.com. Step one of that effort kicks off today with the launch of our Alice community blog. If you are interested in the strategy behind this effort, please keep reading. If not, this is a really short post–I hope you use your extra time to check out the Alice blog, start following us on Twitter, and learn more about why we love toilet paper. 
Marketing is about doing something for people
I watched a very interesting presentation by John V Willshire yesterday that captures a lot of what Brian and I think about the future of advertising, especially for start-up companies. The presentation is here (thanks to paul isakson for the find). I’d sum up my view of this presentation as follows:
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Marketing has always been about connecting people with companies
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In the pre-Internet days of mass produced, broadcast media, the easiest way to make that connection was with interruptive advertising
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Then the Internet arrived, and marketing started to lose the mega-phone it held to yell at people to buy stuff
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Without that mega-phone, marketing now has to add value to get people to pay attention
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The result: if you actually do something useful for people with your marketing budget, they have the power to make more meaningful connections for you
This is especially true for the start-up. If you’ve got the next great product, the best way to introduce yourself isn’t with mass marketed, interruptive advertising. You’ll lose that game to a big company. The best way forward is to work really hard to be useful to a targeted community of users that will respond to what you are doing and will use their connections to spread your message.
The Alice community blog is our first step in this process. It’s an effort to spend our marketing resources engaging with people on their terms and in ways that (hopefully) enrich their lives. Please let us know what you think.
February 28th, 2009 at 12:26 am
Great post. Spokes Marketing is doing many of the things you discuss here. One of our first clients is up and running at http://www.couponkatie.com
Spokes Marketing goal is to Create Conversations with businesses and their POTENTIAL customers.
Here’s an article that explains more about Spokes Marketing
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2009/feb/27/harrington-web-savvy-duo-enliven-businesses/
March 1st, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Well said. I wish you guys the best with Alice. Keep the great posts coming!
March 2nd, 2009 at 8:58 am
@shawn-thanks for the blog spam
I think you are doing the opposite of what I mentioned in this post.
@Jess–thanks for the well wishes. I wish we had more time for this blog, but it is nice to know that people enjoy what we are able to post.
March 23rd, 2009 at 12:55 am
Hello Mark,
Good presentation recap post as it was a good watch, and the Cadbury ad is really addictive. I think in the presentation, John could have also mentioned how internet has also taken the reach on a global level. For cadburys ad campaign, although centered in UK, it has been getting great feedback from US and other countries on youtube and other blogs too. So they have increased their market reach without a substantial spending increase. I will be following your blog and hopefully learn and get inspired from Alice and your past endeavors,
Best wishes,
Mayank Nega