Saturday, 26 January 2019

Digital Marketing


Digital Marketing

Introduction toSearch Engine Marketing (SEM)

Today our Bachelor students following our Module DigitalMarketing in our Administration studies were introduced to the Search Engine Marketing by the Team Nijhuis, one of the top Google partners in Europe.
The guest lecture was in the context of the UT AdWords Challenge project, a group assignment introducing the students to the world of online marketing.


The CustomerEmpowerment Fallacy: How Technology is Eroding the Customer Power

Do you remember who was the TIME magazine the 2006 Person of the Year? In case you don’t, it was you, me and all the people of the world who had access to the Net: armed with the Internet and the social media the customer seemed to have been able to change the market power game and be for the first in modern history on the market steering wheel (See link). Marketers baffled by the decreasing effectiveness of the traditional marketing communication and the time-honored persuasion tactics had no other choice but accept the fact that their full and undisputed control on the media and message was a thing of the past.

Praised as one of the major upshots of technology democratization, social networking, citizen journalism, and customer engagement, the customer empowerment became a major nightmare of the marketers forced to open their business to customer scrutiny and expose them to social media publicity disasters. The Customer Empowerment as a game changer was something I consistently would mention to my students at the very start of my Digital Marketing services are the last years: the smart, tech-savvy and networked customer was not anymore the weak link in the Marketing Equation.


The CambridgeAnalytica case: Old News

I am really surprised with the recent outburst of anger and frustration following revelations about the tactics of Cambridge Analytica in influencing the results of the American elections and the Brexit referendum with the possible tolerance of Facebook.
This is in my view old news: In the winter of 2017 the case was already presented to my Bachelor students by SocialInc in a guest lecture and on June 2017 I discussed the Cambridge Analytica's case in a talk in June in the UT titled "Algorithmic Marketing".
I was surprised till 2 days ago that no one seemed to worry about this story that was also extensively discussed in various platforms, for example in the  from May 2017, with a very graphic title (this article was also posted in our group  on 23 October 2017).
Maybe when the mainstream media pick up a story and decide that the public is ripe to hear about it, the story reaches the increasingly passive, hypnotized public.
The question is what will happen from now on: Is this the beginning of the end of Facebook or even of the social media hype? Are there legal steps to be