Web 2.0 and the Brand

Marketing is evolving toward a new thought-framework where the intangible experiences, transactional processes and relationships are becoming central to the brand and the customer has become a ‘co-creator’ of the brand rather than simply just a ‘user’.
The logic of branding is shifting from the conceptualisation of brand as the collection of attributes determined by the [...]

Digital Marketing Budgets

Internet marketing is concerned with creating a Digital Footprint which serves the organisation’s marketing needs. It consists four distinct elements

Providing information and education to the various stakeholders, whether they are potential customers, journalists, future employees etc. on the website;
Brand building through developing on-line communities, creating digital profiles etc;
Other on-line collateral to enhance “findability”; and
Direct response [...]

Collaboration for Business Success

The 21st century with its advances in communication and technology requires us to be more agile than ever before in responding to business challenges and business leaders realise that helping employees access greater levels of collaborative intelligence at work is key to the future success of the business. It turns out that this is a way [...]

Marketing and Innovation in mitigating the skills shortage

We all know that we are experiencing a critical shortage of talent in South Africa. Macro-economic factors including higher interest rates, petrol price increases and inflation are impacting on organisations’ ability to attract and retain talented employees. Couple this with social and political factors such as crime and an educational system which is failing learners [...]

The Ergonomics of 2.0

Web 2.0 represents a fundamental change in the way that people interact, collaborate and perform in the 21st century. It has become necessary to review the way we think about many other business disciplines in response to this structural change in the way we could do business. In this article we look at the ergonomics [...]

Enhancing long term sustainability through 2.0

Sustaining corporate performance is a challenge to most businesses. Many senior executives find it hard to shift their attention away from today’s share price and the next set of results. Fluctuations in exchange rates, rising interest rates, the demands of shareholders, Eskom’s load shedding and the talent crisis has intensified the pressure to focus on [...]

Using the Balanced Scorecard to design your Digital Strategy

The Balanced Scorecard1 was developed by Kaplan and Norton as a strategic approach and performance management system, which enables organisations to translate a company’s vision and strategy into implementation. It works  from 4 perspectives:

Financial perspective;

Customer perspective;

Business process perspective; and

Learning and growth perspective.

These perspectives are a useful departure point for translating Organisational Strategies into implementable Digital [...]

Revitalise your Personal Brand for the New Year

Have you ego-googled yourself recently?
For those of you who are wondering what an “ego-Google” is, it is when you do a Google search for yourself, and it is an essential part of the management of your professional (and personal) brand. Of course there are a lot of other search engines out there and it won’t [...]

Approaching Social Networking from a Social Sciences Perspective

Social Media is restructuring society, marketers need to adapt if they are going to participate in the opportunities this offers us.
Throughout time, communication systems have formed the foundations of society and have determined the development of civilisations. The parameters of communication have always been time and geography. Some communication occurs over time when the transmitting [...]

Using BI to analyse organisational networks provides valuable insights

Organisational network analysis is the use of Business Intelligence (BI) on the links, information flows and exchanges between employees. It can be used by businesses to identify potential opportunities or disruptions.