ATDC is looking to hire an up and coming marketing guru to manage and lead its marketing efforts.
ATDC currently employs an online content marketing strategy. If you are hired you will be heavily focused on planning, developing, and managing website content. You will manage ATDC's email and social media marketing programs, create print marketing material and support marketing for ATDC events. You will also have the opportunity to attend technology startup events to grow awareness of ATDC and increase its reputation among customers, prospects, and, sponsors. If you want to learn the world of technology startups there are not many better places to be.
The ideal candidate will have a business or communications degree with about three years of related online marketing experience. You will need excellent written communication skills including past experience in the creation of case studies, collateral, press releases, and website content. You need to be a little bit of a geek, but just a little, with knowledge and use of Windows/Mac, WordPress, social media platforms (Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube), and web analytics tools. Knowledge of HTML, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop are big pluses.
To be considered for the job you have to officially apply. You can do so here. Entering job number 0164162 will take you to the promised land.
2010 is the year of Facebook and BLiNQ Media has been on fire drafting off their platform. In the video below Dave Williams and Charles Lumpkin discuss some of the contrasts between search and Facebook that marketers should consider when using the different mediums.
This article was derived from my opening comments at the Tech Marketing Awards.
I’ve been involved in Georgia’s marketing and technology communities for about 15 years now. When I was asked to take part in the Tech Marketing Awards I was honored. I was also a little confused. My initial thought was this is all about the marketing of technology products. Well it turns out it was not that at all. It was about the use of technology to effectively market.
I am a big believer in using marketing technologies. And I am not alone. Interactive marketing spend is currently at $26 billion dollars annually and projected to grow to $55 billion in the next four years. It’s a torrid growth rate and interactive marketing will soon exceed 20% of all marketing spend. Why is all this money being spent? Because marketers find that technology tools are less expensive, more measurable, and better for direct response than other methods.
Back in September Ad Age declared, “We have entered a Golden Age of marketing technology.” We have indeed reached a point where marketing has become deeply entwined with technology. So entwined that Ad Age advocated the case for companies to create the role of Chief Marketing Technologist to translate strategy into technology, manage data and technology across the marketing organization, and put tech into the DNA of marketing departments. This call for a Chief Marketing Technologist quickly became an Internet meme. Ad Age was on to something a lot of marketers are thinking about.
The Tech Marketing Awards are a testament to the growing importance of using innovative technology to reach customers in a world where the way information is consumed is rapidly changing. As I was thinking about what to say in my opening comments something dawned on me. Atlanta is home to a thriving community of marketing technology companies. This community has its roots in well-established firms such as BKV, ChoicePoint, Equifax, and PGI as well as first generation interactive companies such as 360i, iXL, Macquarium, and Spunlogic.
In addition to this heritage Georgia is home to many great marketing companies. AFLAC, Chick-fil-A, Coca-Cola, Delta, Home Depot, Newell Rubbermaid, Popeye's, Porsche, Turner, UPS, and Wendy's/Arby's immediately come to mind. These companies and their Atlanta based Fortune 1000 brethren generate a staggering $250 billion in revenue every year. A portion of this revenue is plowed back into marketing and marketing technology. There are lots of potential customers for marketing technology products in Atlanta.
I started writing down the marketing technology companies in Atlanta and with the help of a few others quickly came up with a list that exceeded 30 firms(1). Ad serving applications, analytics, content management systems, interactive advertising, ecommerce, email marketing, lead generation, marketing automation, mobile marketing, sales force automation, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, social media monitoring, and transaction marketing are marketing technologies offered by Atlanta companies.
Many of the finalists and award winners at the Tech Marketing Awards have helped to further Atlanta’s presence and reputation as a hub of marketing technology innovation. It was a pleasure to honor their efforts. But more important is to recognize that a cluster of marketing technology companies exists in Atlanta and to strive to help it grow and mature.
Thanks to Greg Foster, Paul Freet, Leslie Thomas, Sean McCormick for helping with drafts of this article and brainstroming the list of Atlanta marketing technology companies.
Over 170 of the city's best best marketers and marketing technology companies came out last night for a glorious evening at the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce Roof Top Pavilion. With the sparkling city of Atlanta serving as a backdrop I had the honor of serving as the master of ceremonies at the first ever Tech Marketing Awards. I will have a bit more to say about the growing Atlanta marketing technology cluster in the future but for the moment want to recognize the winners.
Small Company Corporate Marketer of the Year: Rod Witmond, Cardlytics
Big Company Corporate Marketer of the Year: Lincoln Barrett, Intercontinental Hotels Group.
Email Marketer of the Year: Simms Jenkins, Brightwave Marketing.
Mobile Marketer of the Year: Michael Tavani, ScoutMob.
Search Engine Marketer of the Year: Rick Batchelor, Qiigo.
Social Media Marketer of the Year: Jamie Turner, BKV.
Small Company CMO of the Year: Michael Trader, M2SYS.
Large Company CMO of the Year: Chris Thornton, Definition 6.
Up and Coming Marketer of the Year: Mariya Babaskina, MealpayPlus.
The Life Time Achievement Award: Dave Williams, BLiNQ Media.
A mistake that many people make about Facebook is that they believe it is a merely a social network and they want to go build one. What Facebook is really building is a marketing platform. A broad horizontal marketing platform that will be as much a part of the marketing mix as Google is today. Perhaps more so because due to network effects.
This week Facebook held a mobile event. The company announced that more than 200 million people are using Facebook mobile apps and use is growing very fast. They also announced their intention to make Facebook a cross platform mobile application. They broadened access to Facebook Places with write and search APIs. They announced Single Sign-On and Facebook Deals.
Rapleaf is one of the companies involved with the latest Facebook privacy snafu. The company, an online data gathering firm of sorts, was linking specific Facebook user information that it obtained from Farmville, Texas HoldEm Poker, and the like to its own database of Internet users. Rapleaf also transmitted the Facebook IDs to about a dozen other firms according to the Wall Street Journal.
The reaction from people when they learn about digital marketing is very bi-polar. The shock of Ms. Twombly on one end and the so what of the sophisticated Internet crowd on the other. So what exactly is Rapleaf collecting and sharing?
Well a user can go to Rapleaf, register an account then see and manage their info. Here is what it shows for me with some commentary. The most notable aspect is that the data it is not that detailed and not that accurate.
Nothing really that telling. I am a bit surprised with displayed interest in animation and television. I hardly watch anything on TV that is not HBO and does not end with a score. Which makes me surprised there is no reference to sports.
Pretty basic stuff. The age, sex, location, and marital status information is correct. I have two children and the income is off by a significant factor.
Rapleaf seems a little consfused about where I have been working. Duplicates of some job activities. Some occupational information is missing. The social networks are dead on. Interesting that they do not have my blog info.
So while I really do not care so much for Rapleaf and dozens of other companies monitoring my activity every time I visit a web site this information seems both inaccurate and harmless to me. If you feel differently you can always go opt out. But to me sharing personal information with marketers that allows for free Internet applications and may one day result in a more personalized online experience is a tradeoff I am willing to make.
On November 18 I will be playing master of ceremonies to the first ever, and hopefully annual, Tech Marketing Awards.
I am quite sure that the highlight of the evening will not be anything that I have to say about the chief marketing technologist meme in my opening comments. Nor will it be the spectacular views of downtown Atlanta and the lights of Centennial Olympic Park from the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce Roof Top Pavilion. The really good stuff will happen when some of the best and brightest marketers in Atlanta get together with a fine list of finalists to mingle and discuss the latest in marketing technology (easily confused by the non initiated with the marketing of technology.)
Me: Hey! Entrepreneur: I need a print ad. Me: When. Entrepreneur: Tomorrow by noon. Me: Dead silence. Entrepreneur: So can you help me? Me: Yeah.
So with the help of a few of the graduate assistants that I hang out with we popped this out in less then 24 hours.
Only the second ad I have ever directly created. Not going to win a CLIO but will do the job on short notice. Entrepreneurs walk into my office everyday. I help however I can.
The Lift Summit is returning to Atlanta next week with a program chock full of presentations and panels focused on using social marketing strategies to drive business results. I am really interested and eager to see the panels on social commerce and measuring ROI as well as Erik Qualman of Socialnomics who made those social media revolution vids that have been viewed like 3 million times.
The show is once again being put together by Robert Ball of OfficeArrow, which has made a little pivot into business flash marketing. It's on Thursday September 23 from 7:30 to 7:00 at the swanky new Loews Midtown Atlanta. The price is a reasonable $199. Friends of FoG can get a little love by entering promo code OA2010. You can register here.
So I was standing next to this friend of mine the other night when he casually mentioned that he might be joining the board of Barnes & Noble. My first reaction. Dude, the Nook has no chance. No one talks about the Nook. No one uses the Nook. I sit in a Barnes & Noble Starbucks quite a few days a week and I have never ever seen anyone even pause to look at the huge Nook display at the front of the store. You have to give that thing away to get anyone to use it. It's the only hope. Quite possibly Barnes & Nobles only hope not just in the eReader market but for their survival. In ten years there are not going to be any bookstores to walk into.
Well I get up the next day find out that Barnes has broken off talks with a gentleman named Ron Burkle to expand the B&N board by three seats, and that a judge had ruled against Burkle in his attempt to increase his ownership position at B&N. Ron Burkle is seriously rich. He is in the Forbes 100. He owns an investment company called Yucaipa.
So quicker than you can say kindle Yucaipa started a proxy fight. Mike McQuary, whom I worked with for a number of years, is on Yucaipa's slate of nominees for Barnes & Noble's board of directors.
If you are ever going to read SEC filings proxy statements are the best. Proxy statements filed by a party other than the registrant are the very best. They are full of intrigue. Buried with the proxy statement is this little gem:
In Yucaipa’s view, the B&N College acquisition (Barnes and Noble purchased B&N College for $514 million. B&N College just happened to be owned by the Barnes & Noble CEO and his wife) benefitted the Riggio family but does not make strategic sense for the Company. It gave Barnes & Noble over 600 retail textbook locations and essentially doubled the Company’s exposure to a “brick and mortar” market segment most at risk to technological changes, including increasing online textbook sales and digital textbook downloads. Yucaipa believes this capital could have been better and more timely utilized to support the Company’s digital media and e-books strategy.
Yucaipa understands the need to aggressively go after the e-books market. And my bet is that McQuary is thinking the same way I am about what to do. Amazon wants to view Kindle as a business that will stand on its own. Apple is proud of the iPad.
Barnes & Noble has got to get price/promotionally aggressive on the Nook. Is anybody asking for a Nook this Christmas? No. Change that by giving the things away on Black Friday with the purchase of x number of books. Treat the Nook cost as a marketing customer acquisition expense. With a small and shrinking market share a razor and blades strategy is B&N's only chance in the digital media and e-book world.
If they don't use it Barnes and Noble becomes Tower Records.
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DISCLAIMER
The opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone (with the exception of comments by others of course). They do not represent the opinion or position of any other person or entity. All postings adhere to my personal values.
