Traditional marketing is dying.

I am not an early riser. In fact, I'm not sure anyone in our office is, except for John. So, when I "stumbled" across this article while doing some research for a new Social Media site StumbleUpon (ahh I love my jobs on days like this), I was overjoyed. It's a good article on "How to Become an Early Riser." I'm going to try it!

Around mid-January it is typical behaviour for my internet browsing to stumble upon websites offering hot destination holiday packages.   This year I noticed that many of these websites have evolved to include different functionality than they did a couple of years ago.  Tripcentral.ca in particular is utilizing many "new media" techniques to engage their audience and ensure that they do not quickly click away from their website.

I just uploaded some video testimonials to my Blackberry Smart Phone.  During my presentation to a prospect, I opened up my Blackberry and showed one of the testimonials.  You should have seen the look on the prospects face!  I could tell he was thinking that this could be a great tool for his business development people. Video is now the new norm for web communication.

Winnipeg 311 was recently launched in Winnipeg.  For those unaware this is a non-emergent call center that strives to answer all non-emergent inquiries.  I gave them a call to see what it was all about.  I posed the question, "where is the closest veterinarian to my home?"  As the operator was finding my answer, as an internet savvy consumer I was sitting at my computer trying to Google the answer.   I was very impressed with the speed of the operator's response!  However, many of these answers are available via the internet to any avid Googler.  Although this service does offer an incredible breadth of questions, as internet savvy consumers become more plentiful this service may not be what they are looking for.  Winnipeg 311 puts information at their fingertips as they demand, but is it in the right format?  Is a phone call the way they want to search out their answers?  My take on Winnipeg 311 is that it is catering to a specific niche of consumers by essentially bridging the gap between the Googlers and the non.