Multi-channel marketing is mostly still multiple channels operating simultaneously. While it may provide some brand consistency, it is not fully integrated within and between channels or fully embedded in the brand voice or offer copy. With all channels now having the technology to support an integrated approach, there is significant potential to leverage marketing dollars.

For instance, with all of the angst around measuring the impact of social media as a stand-alone channel, we can now incorporate social media messaging and offers into email, in real time. Nothing has quite the cultivation power as email, and its performance is easily measured. So, to extend this example, if, in an email, you pushed your social media as a destination for contests which provides all of the rich context of other participants, but the entrant had to “email to win”, you would get a very different measurement of social media’s contribution.

Not all of the measurement systems are fluid or tied together, but it’s coming, and how it impacts decisioning around marketing and how dollars get spent is exhilarating…and an outright gamechanger.  Check out the Winterberry Group whitepaper entitled Rethinking the “Four Ps”: Marketing Operations Management and the New Pathway to Productivity.

But, here is a game-changer company that might just solve a lot of integrated marketing challenges, all at once: PowerInbox. Born as an email solution, it incorporates Twitter feeds, Facebook, ecommerce actions, all right in an email. With it, CRM becomes iCRM, instant CRM (new acronymn). There are no clicks between channels or events. It’s all integrated into the email experience. Using a Windows platform and api’s, consumers get an experience they frequently describe but never get. And, advertisers and marketers can, potentially, stop losing traffic and clicks between the cracks of today’s siloed, one-dimensional channel marketing. Tracking the performance across channels is still a work in progress, as I understand it, but it’s very intriguing. Tests are in our future.

50,000,000 YouTube views in the past 3 days. With more news attention and an Obama administration talking about it, the magnitude of the campaign has become equivalent to the anti-piracy movement of 2 months ago. But, it’s more than a video. It’s a movement. And, it’s a full-on integrated campaign. 3 independent producers lit the match with an extremely well done 30-minute documentary. They’ve given their charity a clear purpose and mission and have made it vital to be involved. Now, others are doing the work to incite support.

Who’s doing the most marketing? Teenagers. Not only are they activating around the globe to paper cities with the Kony message, but they’re getting their parents involved. The major giving and individual donor cash will continue to support more viral marketing and put even greater pressure on the US administration and the Ugandan government to find Kony. My hunch for what happens next if they find him? They’ll target another, Ugandan and international politics be damned.

What privacy means and doesn’t, where the appropriate edges are and aren’t is going to be tough to state never mind convince people they need to know and care. Or, maybe this is all about nothing and people don’t care as much as the Attorneys General and privacy pundits. But, wait, the District of Columbia, now, takes an average of 45 pictures of us a day. How far does that cross the line? Oh yeah, that’s protected by Homeland Security laws.

The land of the Free and the Brave is becoming the land of the Burdened and the Watched. That can’t be good for anyone.

Email, with its long-standing CanSPAM laws suddenly looks innocent. It should be a nice boon for that industry.

Carefully nurtured by founder, Daniel Neal, Ben Weintraub and the executive team, kajeet seems to have cracked the insanity code of starting up a tech company.  What a relief for parents, teachers, schools, Scout masters and even…the Amish?

Short-term suffering is always part of a more frictionless society but, over and over again, consumers have voted with their fingers and wallets.  The anti-piracy pressure applied two weeks ago was a much more stunning victory than Romney beating Gingrich in Florida. But, the story is long gone.  Despite the power of digital marketing for commercial entities to make good on threats by shutting down their websites, people proved they care more about convenience and efficiency than a just price for easy access to what copyright laws portend to protect.  Facebook’s $80-$100B IPO valuation will be another affirmation that the privacy train left the station a long time ago.

All of this aside, I do believe keeping that sharp line between Personal II and Anonymous II is paramount to protect the privacy people value most:  their health and finances, in particular.  Privacy legislation is likely and self-regulation is crucial to keep ahead of misconstrued legislation.  Without it, despite the illusion that privacy exists, it’s way too risky to tempt the congressional Gods.

Harvard Business Review, a brand built on rock-solid content and must-have business insights, nailed it again.  If you read nothing else this month, check out ‘Reinventing Retail.’

So often, even the experts assume that the new thing will simply replace the old.  Search will replace TV.  Starbucks will kill the local diner.  Madonna will shrivel up and Katie Perry will steal her fans.  Tech companies are running out of ways to put more storage and memory onto smaller and smaller chips.  It rarely works that way, however.   It’s always easier to think about what’s new than it is to consider what exists and that those who run these businesses and finance them are just going to sit idly by and aw-shucks their way into oblivion.

TV is being re-purposed on YouTube and, still, no other media has the mass that TV does.  There are more local greasy spoons and average-to-good cups of coffee than there ever was, Madonna is the half-time entertainment at the Super Bowl and Cloud Computing has fundamentally changed the data storage and data access business.

Harvard Business Review: The Future of Shopping

http://hbr.org/2011/12/the-future-of-shopping/ar/1

Harvard Business Review: Retail Isn’t Broken. Stores Are

http://hbr.org/2011/12/retail-isnt-broken-stores-are/ar/1

Harvard Business Review: Know What Your Customers Want Before They Do

http://hbr.org/2011/12/know-what-your-customers-want-before-they-do/ar/1