Targeted marketing and innovation support
for knowledge organizations

Welcome to Targeted marketing and innovation support: for knowledge organizations. As an innovation professional, you have received this quarterly newsletter because you have either participated in a Calibre activity or you have requested information from us or from one of our associates on marketing and innovation support. Subscribers get discounts to Calibre events and regular free work tools. If you do not wish to receive our innovation alerts, please unsubscribe below. Feel free to pass on the newsletter to colleagues, but note they must email us at calibre.consulting@bigpond.com if they wish to receive alerts from us on a regular basis.

Digital Interactive Marketing: Is it for Knowledge Organizations?

Innovation professionals are increasingly wondering if digital interactive web-based marketing is suitable for their knoweldge organization. Investment in online marketing is growing rapidly. It is expected to reach US$2B by 2010. Online marketers tell us many people spend as much or more time in front of their computers as they do their televisions and newspapers. They say market insights we used to pay for are available on free review sites. They say forget the 4 P's; the information preferences of the SMS generation are reshaping the principles of marketing. So does it make sense to invest  primarily in print and broadcast promotions?

Are wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds, review sites and blogs stable and effective media? With the typical heavy user under 30, do they reach our audiences? And importantly, for organizations that rely heavily on quality control, how do you handle media that are controlled, not by you, but by the user?

If you think bloggers are irrelevant self-promoting celebrity-stalking e-faddists, try searching Technorati (link below) for blog postings for your own organization. I got 1116 for CSIRO, Australia's largest R&D oranization,  an organization to the best of my knowledge rarely visited by Paris or Britney!

For more on this subject, attend a ‘Marketing Communications from Prospect to Client’ workshop near you. The workshop goes beyond a focus on traditional marketing promotions to offer a unique opportunity to learn skills that will ensure your marketing communications program is cost-effective and genuinely strategic. Participants will explore how knowledge organization can use online digital interactive media and viral marketing as well as traditional channels to find prospects and turn them into clients and partners.

The workshop introduces Calibre Communications’ six-stage project management approach to planning, using the example of website development or enhancement, an approach that has been proven to significantly improve users’ ability to get the most from project teams and resources. It includes a special 65 pp workbook to ensure new skills can be taken back and applied in participants’ own organizations.

On 23 April, the 2008 TII-Calibre Science Marketing Clinic will offer the workshop in Valencia, Spain( http://www.tii.org/2008Workshop_Valencia).

Sharp sites: Websites we recommend:

• www.technorati.com to research blog postings.
• http://us.mentos for a branding activity that went viral, attracting 282,667 clicks in 3 mos. To go viral, you need to titillate, provoke, amuse, alert, or educate (or stalk Paris, if you're so inclined).
• www.studentreviews.com for a university review site that lets students choose the review criteria.
• http://digg.com/ for a technology news site that should be added to your press release distribution list.