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In Our industry, Video content

New YouTube channel for The Rubicon Agency

The Rubicon Agency YouTube Channel

With video content now playing an important part in the majority of technology marketing programmes, we thought it was about time that we assembled all the greatest hits of our agency in one place - and where better than YouTube.

With videos across a number of genres including explainer, teaser and vision – and with topics covered as broad as IoT, diversity, selling skills, SDN/network-on-demand and DDoS – there’s sure to be a reference project in there for most occasions.

Take a look at the channel to discover how using a specialist technology marketing agency can be a more integrated and efficient route to rich content production. While you’re there, why not subscribe to keep up to date with the latest uploads and instalments from The Rubicon Agency.

Visit our channel
The Rubicon Agency
In Our industry, Video content

Video focus #1: Insights and ideas for impactful tech marketing videos

insights and ideas for impactful tech marketing videos

Establishing the format for a video is the first step that makes the rest of the process easier to manage by setting expectations about purpose, content and budget.

Broadly speaking there are seven formats which can accommodate most tech marketing objectives. Here’s how they compare:

The teaser video

As the name suggests, its purpose is to draw early attention and interest to a product, service, solution, proposition, event. The teaser is usually followed by a more detailed communication with a specific call-to-action. Teaser videos have the shortest possible running time. Typical running time: 5 to 15 seconds.

The trailer video

The trailer goes one step further than the teaser with more detail and a clear call-to-action. Trailers are usually constructed from a highly edited version of content from assets (including explainer/promo/vision/documentary videos) that are part of a marketing campaign or programme. Typical running time: 15 seconds to 45 seconds.

The explainer video

One of the more commonly used formats for tech marketing. The explainer is usually aimed at an audience that has influence or a decision-making role in a business or technical capacity. While not as detailed as a demo video, it can alternate between ‘lite’ explanation of a technology solution (for example) and the translation of features into business benefits/advantages. Typical running time: 1.5 to 3.5 minutes.

The demo video

This format will guide the audience through a user experience or journey for a product, solution or service. With careful content editing, the demo video should ideally balance the explanation of features, functions and options with examples of use cases that create context and demonstrate value. Above all, the demo video should not attempt to replace a weighty user manual. Typical running time: 3.5 to 5 minutes.

The showcase video

Not all tech marketing is about the ‘tech’. The showcase video enables tech companies to promote all aspects of the business- from talent diversity to sector expertise. Video is a particularly powerful medium for this purpose but care must be taken to balance achievements with facts and success with evidence. Typical running time: 1.5 to 3.5 minutes.

The documentary video

This video format is more about content than concept. Like all other formats it has to have a clear purpose or message but will ultimately be driven by the ability to obtain insights, observations, commentary, testimonials, access to record products, services or solutions in action or document the progress and success of other aspects of a technology business. Typical running time: 2.5 to 5 minutes.

The vision video

Video is the perfect medium for a tech business to present a vision for a future state, a thought leadership concept or an innovative direction. A successful vision video strikes the right balance between articulating that vision and showing evidence of the ability to achieve it. And if that vision requires commitment from an audience, the video will also set out a clear path for involvement. Typical running time: 1.5 to 5 mins.

Mixing formats

The majority of what needs to be conveyed in a video project will determine which of these formats will best serve your purpose. However, don’t be afraid to mix formats when it suits. For example, a demo video may benefit from the inclusion of documentary testimonials about the ease of using a particular product, service or solution. The key to avoiding complication or dilution is to establish the main purpose and format first.

Go to The Rubicon Video Gallery to see examples of these formats.

The Rubicon Agency
In Digital lead generation, Miscellaneous, Our industry, Proposition development

Fast Marketing fails: bland ingredients

Fast Marketing fails 3

Fast marketing happens when marketers are institutionally influenced to choose quantity over quality, and convenience over content.

When engagement assets, landing pages, outreach or conversations are simply quickfried with little culinary skill, the results can leave customers feeling hungry or, worse still, with a bad aftertaste.

Like fast food, fast marketing can suffer from bland, artificial ingredients.

Fast food and fast marketing may be predicated on convenience but both come with compromise.

One significant compromise is typically a lack of quality ingredients in content that lacks distinctive flavours. The compromise is compounded when fast marketing means offering a limited menu of formulaic food for thought – with little choice other than ‘supersizing’ – or in other words, quantity over quality.

The Tech sector can be particularly prone to the ‘McMessaging’ approach. With access to the content equivalent of a beef herd the size of Texas, it can be very tempting to simply throw it into the marketing mincer and churn out a patty of generic messages with a side order of undifferentiated propositions.

Fresh, carefully selected ingredients are key to whetting an audience appetite for tech marketing content. Rather than re-heat a stale white paper or de-frost content that can be found in any competitor’s digital deep freezer, it pays to source and prepare your own content ingredients for a menu that offers more distinctive flavouring and ultimately a more satisfying meal to an audience that has an appetite for quality over convenience.

Fast Marketing fails:
– The all-you-can-eat buffet
– The cold take-away
– Bland ingredients

To make your marketing more enduring and sustainable, contact The Rubicon Agency for your personalised workshop.

This article compliments ‘McMarketing in the tech sector – Does fast marketing just create indigestion?’

The Rubicon Agency
In Digital lead generation, Miscellaneous, Our industry, Proposition development

Fast Marketing fails: the cold take-away

Fast Marketing fails 2

Fast marketing happens when marketers are institutionally influenced to choose quantity over quality, and convenience over content.

This article compliments ‘McMarketing in the tech sector – Does fast marketing just create indigestion?’

When engagement assets, landing pages, outreach or conversations are simply quickfried with little culinary skill, the results can leave customers feeling hungry or, worse still, with a bad aftertaste.

Like fast food, fast marketing can run the risk of being disposable.

Fast food and fast marketing may be a quick, convenient solution but if either is served cold then they’re likely to be quickly discarded.

Rather than satisfy a hunger for information; without a clear and relevant call-to-action or a next-step, the fast marketing meal turns into a cold offering. When that happens, customer audiences are inclined to look for the nearest waste bin.

The cold take-away is a common fail in sales enablement assets. So, why do thought leadership, business case, use case and other assets typically offer a next-step to an audience when sales enablement assets are often left without any clear call-to-action?

The answer lies in planning. Rather than expect sales to keep the heat under prospects by providing the critical next-step, it makes more sense to give it to them on a plate. Building the offer of an integrated presentation, webinar, white paper, or good old-fashioned conversation into the menu not only keeps your audience at the table but also satisfies their appetite for information without the indigestion.

Fast marketing fails:

– The all-you-can-eat buffet
– The cold take-away
– Bland ingredients

To make your marketing more enduring and sustainable, contact The Rubicon Agency for your personalised workshop.

The Rubicon Agency
In Digital lead generation, Miscellaneous, Our industry, Proposition development

Fast Marketing fails: the all-you-can-eat buffet

Fast Marketing fails 1

Fast marketing happens when marketers are institutionally influenced to choose quantity over quality, and convenience over content.

When engagement assets, landing pages, outreach or conversations are simply quickfried with little culinary skill, the results can leave customers feeling hungry or, worse still, with a bad aftertaste.

Like fast food, fast marketing can be served up in a number of ways.

Take the all-you-can-eat buffet for example. With everything you might like to taste, there’s no menu required. You can fill your plate to the brim, tuck in, and go back for more as often as you like. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

But how satisfying can a meal be when it’s a confusion of cuisine? With so much on offer, do you grab a bit of everything but ultimately leave most of it untouched.

The all-you-can-eat content buffet is the result of marketers forgetting that buyers have developed particular tastes for the content that they are prepared to digest. Yesterday’s buyer may have been fed the equivalent of meat and potatoes, with a menu restricted tech features rather than business benefits, but today’s buyer is far more discerning.

The fast marketing buffet fails because it offers too much, with copious amounts of unstructured content simply being poured into multiple paid, owned and earned content channels and spread across digital marketing platforms. And if too many ingredients are simply too bland; stale or reheated, then covering them with a thick gravy of ‘brand character’ doesn’t make the buffet any more palatable.

Ultimately, the ‘feast’ offered by the fast marketing buffet can quickly turn to famine as it leaves dining customers feeling hungry for content that not only caters to their specific tastes but also has enough nutrition to feed a healthy decision-making process.

Fast Marketing fails:

– The all-you-can-eat buffet
– The cold take-away
– Bland ingredients

To make your marketing more enduring and sustainable, contact The Rubicon Agency for your personalised workshop.

This article compliments ‘McMarketing in the tech sector – Does fast marketing just create indigestion?’

The Rubicon Agency
In Our industry, Programme planning, Proposition development, Thought leadership

Dealing with disruption

Dealing with Disruption blog header

How to be a credible disruptee in your technology market.

To be in the tech industry is to continually be in the path of disruption.

In a relatively brief period, disruption has been frequent and rapid in the tech industry – from the demise of mainframe computing to the replacement of twisted copper pairs with fibre cable and onwards to the arrival of the Internet. From the growth of Big Data; the transition to cloud computing; mobile, and the Internet of Things (IoT) – disruptions have created a ripple effect that’s transformed businesses, markets, commerce, behaviour and culture.

When disruption arrives, it divides technology players into two camps: those who create it (the ‘disruptor’), and those who have to deal with it (the ‘disruptee’). And while it may seem that those who create it are assured a market advantage, history has shown that’s not always the case. Think back to Steve Jobs acquiring the fruit of someone else’s labours on personal computing technology and making it the first of many Apple market disruptions that changed the world.

Two responses are key for those tech businesses that are obliged to deal with disruption:

The first is recognition – of the true impact that disruption will have on your market, your customers and at a higher level – brand and future success.

Of course, analysts and commentators love a bit of disruption. With every claim of next-generation technology and ‘game-changing’ innovation we see a raft of five- and ten-year predictions around who will or won’t survive in their current form, and who tomorrow’s winners will be.

For some organisations disruption means rethinking the portfolio, delivery and the value chain – for others it’s more deep-rooted and about changing organisational behaviours, culture and skillsets. Whatever the level of ‘organisation reinvention’, the marketing function must consider what level of commitment it wants to invest to propel the cause:

  1. focus efforts on promoting and amplifying the effects of individual change projects around the business
  2. exert greater commitment and influence by supporting a broader programmatic transformation, together with other business functions sharing common beliefs
  3. prepared to lead the charge and act as a change agent and debate-generator for a more progressive model

Every level of commitment is not right for every business. But the point is that marketing leadership need a strong internal point of view about the stance they are taking and the role they should play.

The second response is authenticity – because you can’t ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ in the tech sector.

A thin veneer of IoT or a fluffy cloud proposition can cause more harm than good if it’s not credible, supported and sustainable. It’s not enough for the business to merely charge marketing with creating a quick fix – it needs more than a campaign or a sprinkle of ‘trouble-making’ on an existing portfolio.

Marketing is a key partner in propagating and communicating a culture of innovation – but the task needs to be around broader programmes that affect the value proposition, operating model and mindsets.

The process of recognition can benefit from impartial insight and an objective assessment and articulation of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. At this point, you begin to discover authenticity ie. what you and your technologies can truly offer now, and promise for the future.

Unless you’re able to match or even trump a technology disruption then your best strategy is to meet it with brand, marketing and ecosystem fire. But beware, a veneer of marketing won’t hide weaknesses such as a vision vacuum, unempowered sales people or a siloed portfolio.

Wherever your marketing leads, your portfolio, services and solutions must follow – with customer education, thought leadership and business-focussed benefits that demonstrate vision and a command of new disruptions. Those technology companies that can achieve this have the opportunity to catch the wave of disruption and leave others in their wake.

The Rubicon Agency
In Brand strategy, Miscellaneous, Our industry, Programme planning, Proposition development

McMarketing in the tech sector

McMarketing in the tech sector blog header

Does fast marketing simply create customer indigestion?

Like fast food, ‘fast marketing’ may appear to satisfy customers across the digital equivalent of a takeaway counter. But, with a limited menu and ingredients that may be lacking nutritional value, does it cater to the needs of marketers more than customers.

Fast marketing happens when marketers are institutionally influenced to choose quantity over quality, and convenience over content. When engagement assets, landing pages, outreach or conversations are simply quickfried with little culinary skill, the results can leave customers feeling hungry or, worse still, with a bad aftertaste.

Across client-side and agency environments, four aspects appear to have contributed to a rise in fast marketing:

Professionalisation of Marketing Operations – introducing rigid, process driven leadership into marketing planning.

DevOps, Pivot and Agile Marketing – encouraging a ‘test/fail/learn/adapt’ approach to most disciplines in marketing.

Marketing from a platform – new build, automation and monitoring tools enable non-marketers to have marketing involvement.

Agency left-braining – agency culture and expertise has been skewed in favour of exploring tech possibilities ahead of – and often in absence of – content and creative considerations.

In an ‘all you can eat’ digital marketing age it would be wrong to imagine that markets and customers are so hungry for content that they’ll consume anything. It’s far better to assume they have the time and discernment to look for something more satisfying. And if you can feed them content that forms a healthy diet, they’ll not only be happy to digest but also keen to come back for more.

Extending the analogy further, imagine catering to an extended decision making group (typical of the tech sector). The CIO wants an appetiser of tempting strategic advantages, a main course that has an aroma of innovation and finally, a selection of tasty testimonials. IT tend to prefer meat and potatoes with a gravy of integration and lifecycle benefits. And the CFO? He or she may want to spend longer comparing menu prices before making a final selection.

Four fast marketing fails that create customer indigestion

McMarketing in the tech sector - Mystery menu

Mystery menu – brand and product marketing fail to describe what’s on offer and why it should whet the customer’s appetite.

McMarketing in the tech sector - Cold Takeaway

Cold takeaway – call-to-action and sales enablement assets lack the intellectual rigour that may be baked into thought leadership, business case, use case, and other assets.

McMarketing in the tech sector - Bland flavours

Bland flavours – marketing serves up undifferentiated messaging that lacks any distinctive flavour.

McMarketing in the tech sector - Confusion cuisine

Confusion cuisine – paid, owned and earned content programmes provide a baffling buffet of themes, arguments and messages.

Fast marketing may be perpetuated by the speed and immediacy of a digital marketing age which continues to mature. Compare this to the introduction of fast food some six or seven decades ago and you realise it may take some time yet before we fully realise the downsides of convenience over quality. In the meantime, let’s not be too pious about the occasional equivalent of a takeaway content kebab or a McMessaging proposition but continue to strive for quality over convenience.

Fast Marketing fails:
– The all-you-can-eat buffet
– The cold take-away
– Bland ingredients

‘For a balanced diet of marketing – and one that’s trusted by leading tech brands such as Cisco, AT&T and Xerox – contact The Rubicon Agency.

The Rubicon Agency
In Corporate comms, Miscellaneous, Our industry

Are the geeks now calling the marketing shots?

Geeks calling the marketing shots blog header

Information and insight has been widely recognised as the new oil within organisations, but has this movement towards ‘big data’ led to an evolution in the DNA of the modern marketer?

Historically, marketers hail back to the golden age of advertising, versed in the art of creativity, punchy headlines and establishing product USPs. The stack ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap philosophy of the early 20th Century spilled into the world of marketing as brands competed for market share.

The next wave of marketing evolution saw a more sophisticated approach to the buyer. Who are they? What are their purchasing triggers? What are their challenges and what do they want to see/hear from us? The birth of CRM saw a more consider approach to selling. Buyer journeys and sales funnels were more closely scrutinised. The age of analytics and accountability had well and truly arrived.

Fast forward to current day. Data has become invaluable and marketing is now a highly reactive and informed beast. Marketing communications are user led with interactions happening every few minutes, instead of weeks or months. Automation of marketing operations has meant content is predetermined and triggered by a set of rules. So, who sets these rules? Well marketers do.

But, here’s the rub, has the pendulum of the marketers skill set totally swung from right brain to left brain bias? On first glance, it appears so.

The next generation marketer

How many marketing jobs are now advertised specifying in-depth knowledge of CRM, automation and analytics platforms as an essential skill? How many marketing graduates are now equipped with some degree of coding acumen? The answer to both is the vast majority.

This begs the question, is there still a place for traditional know-how? Are skills such as the identifying the 7P’s, SOSTAC, acquisition and retention strategies, audience profiling and creative nous now redundant? Clearly not, but if left unchecked a decline in these skills can leave marketing campaigns exclusively dependant on data and low on ideas.

Machine learning, AI and Big data can’t be ignored and it would be foolhardy to do so. All provide organisations with unprecedented levels of customer insight that 20 years ago would have been impossible to collect, let alone analyse. This raft of information flooding into the business has, in its own right, cannibalised the role of the marketer. Being able to analyse and action data is a unique skill and one that should be embraced, but here is the million-dollar question. Should organisations be focusing exclusively on employing the new wave of marketing ‘geek’ at the expense of more traditional practitioners?

What’s the trade off?

A purely analytical approach to marketing will ultimately be number driven. The movement through the sales funnel is scoring based, attribution modelling can determine channel, persona and collateral hot beds and data can be mined to give the campaign the greatest chance of success, but does ‘all this science’ come at a cost? Ultimately yes, referring to the left brain, right brain balancing act, analytics informs and drives marketing but it doesn’t create the silver bullets that ultimately convert prospects to customers require a completely different type of marketer.

Yes, the ‘geek’ marketers are here to stay but it would be marketing suicide to give them exclusive power to call the marketing shots while ignoring or even replacing traditional skillsets.

Take a look at our quick guide to discover how content can be more ‘killer’ and less ‘filler’.

The Rubicon Agency
In Our industry, Thought leadership

Lessons from history for (disruptive) tech marketers

Retro Tech Marketing Advertising

Take a look back at the early days of technology marketing and you’ll discover a rich seam of material for amusement.

However, what might have passed for legal, decent and truthful may have been guilty of committing other crimes.

In the early 80s, print advertising was still a dominant media. So, imagine the scene when the geeks from the computer company met the creatives from the advertising agency. With the Account Director acting as referee, they would wrestle with the challenge of translating the client’s enthusiasm for bits and bytes into features and benefits that would spark ideas from the creative team.

Compared to today’s multi-media, multi-format, multi-message marketing, the classic format of advertising headline, image, copy and call-to-action seems limited. But with a team which included an Art Director, Writer, Photographer, Typesetter and Artworker, the agency would craft single or double page ads and billboard posters for the technology that would eventually disrupt the advertising industry itself.

By enabling and merging creative skills and processes, the all-conquering Apple Macintosh computer was the Trojan Horse welcomed into the confines of the creative industry to disgorge a cargo that created both threat and opportunity.

The early 80s saw the first ripening of Apple, primarily as a Technology Transformer and later, it could be said, as a Social Shaper. As an early mover, Apple was also an early victim of crimes perpetrated by the advertising industry. The evidence includes this press ad:

Retro Apple Computer Advert

Let’s start with the positioning. Side-stepping the headline (which borders on discriminatory) the copy is striking an uncomfortable balance between personal and business use and between independent entrepreneurialism and corporate captivity.

The marketing strategy seems to be based on convincing an individual, rather than a decision making group, to be persuaded to spend a ‘downright affordable’ $2500 on a personal computer rather than suffer the delays and ‘uncreative drudgery’ of using a big mainframe. This is slightly at odds with the subsequent suggestion that Apple makes things easy with three (count them) programming languages that ‘let you be your own software expert’. Not exactly the most compelling proposition for someone who was just beginning to warm to the idea of uncomplicating their life.

As the Internet was only a twinkle in Tim Berners Lee’s eye, the call to action had to rely on a toll free telephone number with an address (should the prospect prefer to put pen to paper) and the third option of a request for information via the magazine publisher. With a response mechanism like that, the agency must have had a few sleepless nights, waiting to count those inbound responses.

That’s the words, what about the pictures?- a Benjamin Franklin character in full period costume? Looks like agency creatives suffered from the same affliction that drove 80s music video directors to plunder ideas from the nearest theatrical dressing-up box. It’s also interesting to see actual ‘product’ juxtaposed against the period furniture as if to say ‘here at last is that bright white shiny future we were promised by technology’. Today, it begs the question: when was the last time you actually saw a router or blade server in a marketing campaign?

Finally, it’s nice to see the copywriter couldn’t resist the line: ‘Apple is a real computer, right to the core’ though hardly surprising it didn’t make it to strapline status (probably over-ridden by SJ himself).

With the benefit of 20:20 hindsight it’s easy to criticise this early foray into tech marketing but we can also learn some lessons from it. Whether you’re a Market Maker, Technology Transformer or Social Shaper, it pays to understand where you are on your marketing roadmap , where you need to be and what needs to be said and to whom in order to get you there. Above and beyond the advantages of innovations such as digital media, the Internet and social strategies, we can employ the advantages of messaging and content that’s segmented for business and technical decision makers; realistically set against a clear adoption curve and single-minded in its proposition.

To paraphrase the ad, you may not have to be a wise man/person to own an Apple pc or any other technology for that matter, but it helps if you want to convince people to buy.

The Rubicon Agency
In Our industry, Thought leadership

Map of technology disruption

Blog: The path to Disruption

Disruptive technologies don’t just displace sustaining technologies, they can also unsettle or displace customer, partner and channel relationships and even business models.

Take a look at our  Map of Technology Disruption infographic below and you’ll see plenty of examples of technology disruptions that combined with other factors to offer ‘disruptive innovation’ and create new challenges for technology marketers. Take SMS for example: when the Short Messaging Service was introduced to mobile phones, who knew that the original strategy to market to business users would be overtaken by the mass adoption of ‘Txt Msg’ by a nascent market of socially active teenagers?

Disruptive Technology journey infographic
The Rubicon Agency
In Disruptive technology, Market development, Our industry, Thought leadership

Technology markets don’t buy disruption

Technology markets don’t buy disruption

In the world of technology, new or better doesn’t necessarily mean disruptive.

Unless ‘new’ means revolutionary and ‘better’ means businesses and markets have to think or behave differently, then it’s not true disruption.

Do an online search for  ‘disruptive technology’ or ‘disruptive innovation’ and you’ll see they stir up discussion and debate. Talking of Google, here’s a good example: the Google search engine algorithm was not in itself disruptive. It was AdWords, its advertising service. By offering a self-service ad product for as little as $1, it disrupted the previous model sustained by Yahoo who in turn had sustained the traditional advertising model of premium rates for display advertising.

Combine disruptive technology with business models, sales, market and economic dynamics and it becomes part of a bigger displacement which is disruptive innovation. Computers are a prime example of disruptive innovation. Whilst the original mainframe computers were a technology innovation, they only began to create significant, global disruption when the concept of ‘one computer, many users’ was overturned with the introduction of personal computers which enabled ‘one user, many computers’.

People don’t buy disruption, they buy ‘better’. Understanding what’s better can often be a challenge with disruptive technology. Sometimes, it doesn’t fall neatly into the categories of bigger, better, faster or even cheaper.

The first mobile phones were certainly bigger than we’re used to today and they could in no way claim to be cheaper than landline phones. Whilst they were seen as ‘desirable’ they were also open to derision, accusations of elitism and viewed by horrified company accountants as unnecessary and very expensive. And of course, early mobile phones also had limited, unreliable network coverage for the small minority of early adopters who used them.

Taking disruptive technology and innovation to market means communicating effectively with early adopters right through to laggards. It means harnessing enthusiasm and managing scepticism with neither being confined exclusively to users and buyers – internal sales forces and external channels can be evangelists and sceptics too. With clarity, context, joined up thinking and realistic timescales, it can be done. And when it does succeed, the prize is much bigger and longer lasting for those technology companies that aren’t afraid to cross the rubicon.

Find out how TRA takes disruption to market at the point where technologies and business models are being displaced – when opportunity and threat co-exist.

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