Traditional advertising design, of course. I have written several times about the revolution that is taking place in the advertising industry, specially online advertising. In the last years, hundreds of thousands of micro and small companies have started to advertise online through contextual advertising or pay per click programs like Google Adwords, Yahoo! or Microsoft AdCenter.

And they will be millions of professionals and small companies in the years to come. You can find their advertisements in the search results of these different search engines and in millions of websites or blogs that have found a revenue stream or a way to pay web hosting through affiliating to these advertise networks.

Internet advertising has found a completely new industry configuration, were traditional industry players don't play the main role anymore. Big advertisers, big publishers, big agencies and big media planning companies are loosing their control over this market. The main players of this new market are micro and small advertisers, micro and small advertising supports and the companies that supply with the technological platform for creating a market among them. We could say that everybody wins with this new configuration (except traditional players, of course) and that the market is more perfect, transparent and distributes the value in a fairly manner than before. I will analyze this revolution in more depth in the future, but for now I would say that this industry sector is already working on 21st century parameters.

However, other related markets have not made this revolution yet. Advertising design is one of them.

As stated, hundreds of thousands of advertisers around the world, small and big, are already used to planning and controlling their advertising campaigns in "self-managed" form and with a total immediateness (creating a campaign and have it online takes less than ten minutes) through systems like Google Adwords, Yahoo or Microsoft.

However, up to know now all this process has focused on text advertisements, since the elaboration of advertising creativities (gif, flash, advergames, videos, etc) is still being driven in the traditional way. Management of online campaigns has become simple and efficient, but the process of making and distributing creative pieces for that campaigns remains slow, inefficient and expensive.

For having i.e. an image ad to upload to her online campaigns, an advertiser still has to find and hire a professional designer or a creative agency, define a briefing for the communication approach with them, wait for their creative proposals, choose among them and finally tune the details. It is a slow process, expensive, with little variety of choice and inaccessible to the major part of micro and small companies that have started to advertise online. It is too expensive for them and they are not used to this process. It is a traditional process for the traditional advertisers: medium to large companies. But these will not be the big part of the business anymore. Additionally, it does not have the immediateness (tests can not be made and act immediately according to the results), the main advantage of Internet for marketers and advertisers.

Advertising design, as we know it, is becoming totally obsolete and there are starting to appear innovative business models in this industry that will change it radically. In further posts I will analyze some of them.

Posted by Francesc Llobet at 4:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the last posts I've been writing about people management in a knowledge based economy and how companies need to innovate in their people management policies in order to succeed. So let me tell you, in a more humorous manner, 10 things you can do if what you want is losing your best employees and collaborators and retaining the worst.

1. Hire them promising an appealing job that has nothing to do with what they will do in the reality

That's the beginning of this strategy. Hire talented people for jobs where they have to switch their brains to an stand-by position.

2. Think that they will be motivated just by their salary

Everybody knows that smart and creative people just care about money. They don't care about challenging jobs, appealing projects or start-ups, having flexibility to develop their jobs or being part of an outstanding team.

3. Never explain them the companies overall strategy.

They need just to know what they have to do. After all, who needs to know the global strategy, besides the CEO and a few other?.

4. Don't be transparent.

Never show them the companies performance, the retribution policies and how much their colleagues are earning for the same job.

Avoid being you who explains company's changes or bad news. It is always better they know through rumors.

5. Never pay attention to their suggestions or ideas

Just tell them it is a great suggestion and you will think about it, and of course do nothing. Or better, tell them that it's not their job to think about how things have to be done, but doing what the have been told to do.

6. Enhance competitiveness among team members

It is the right path to get people engagement with the company and a great working environment that will retain the best employees.

7. Avoid they have any control or responsibility over the work they are doing

If she is a software engineer, just let her know about the code she is writing, not the overall project. If she's a content reviewer just let her know about the articles she has to review.
Don't set up medium term goals over which employees can plan their work and achieve their goals.

8. Never tell them how good they are

That's a terrible mistake. They could believe it and maybe ask for a better job, a salary increase, or worse, going to the competition (anyway that's what you are trying to do with this advise isn't it?)

9. Control them

Everybody knows that you cannot trust people and strict control is necessary. Set innovative rules as being at work at a certain hour, or not having the possibility to solve personnel issues while being at work, so they will increase their stress and obviously work better, etc.

10. Support yes-man and isolate people with a critical sense

That's the definitive one. Because as you are the smarter guy in the company you only need people to tell you how good you and your company are. Don't let those newcomers tell where and when your are going to crash.

There are a lot of other things you can do too, but for now just do these 10 and be sure you'll retain only those guys than can't find a better place to go. That is what you are trying to do, isn't it?.

Posted by Francesc Llobet at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It only takes some imagination and an open-minded attitude to drive innovation to all industry sectors, even those we think are really stuck to traditional ways of doing things.

If we talk about company acquisitions, we think in those big (and those not so big) consulting firms specialized in corporate finance and mergers & acquisitions, which are supposed to really know the market, and that will advise us in the process of finding a buyer for our company and negotiating the deal. Everything serious and formal. As it always has been.

Nevertheless, it seems this is starting to change a little bit, as in the last months, several so called Web 2.0 start-up companies have been posted to be auctioned on eBay.

Some of them, like Kiko, an online calendar that can be used in the web browser, had a successful result, as they sold for more than 250.000 $, an amount far higher than the reserve price. Other were not so lucky or they are in the middle of the auction process, as CrispAds.

Anyway, regardless of the specific results of these pioneers, what this trend shows is a need for a different way of cashing out some projects or companies. Maybe we will see very soon a site specialized in start-up auctions, a place where founders that want to sell their recently launched projects, whatever reason they have, can follow a more efficient process to do it.

It does not seem the best alternative for all kind of companies, but I am sure this is the beginning of a process that will lead us to new ways of carrying out acquisition processes. A more transparent, standardized and effective way for all the people participating in the deal. It's not new, it has already happened to other sectors that were inefficient and have been fully transformed.

And you, would you sell your company on eBay?

Posted by Francesc Llobet at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Organizations that create teams of motivated and collaborating people, involved with the company's long term goals, are companies that have defined and developed a very concrete organizational culture and that, systematically, reinforce certain corporate values.

We are talking about companies that understand they are not isolated, that they are part of an environment, a society, and that this is not neutral and trigger consequences. They know that in order to succeed they have to contribute value to all the stakeholders of the company, that is to say, all people and organizations or social institutions interested in certain manner in the company's future (employees, shareholders, collaborators, value network or suppliers and distributors, society, etc.).

They are value centered companies and they make a lot of efforts to motivate and coach their employees and collaborators. They are transparent organizations, so they communicate their vision and strategy to those who have to implement it, regardless the degree of responsibility, and they disclose other aspects of the company's policies (as remuneration policy). The lack of such transparency is usually the source of a lot of problems (explicit or not) in companies with a more traditional culture.

They are companies that establish rewards and bonuses based in collaboration and team work, more than in individual basis, thus reinforcing cooperation and collaboration instead of internal competition among employees. Companies where management is focused in leading, coordinating and coaching, not controlling.

Summarizing, they are companies that have defined an developed an innovative organizational culture, that will allow them to be more competitive in a knowledge based economy that requires people talent.

Posted by Francesc Llobet at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)