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In this exciting episode in the long-running soap opera that is Lee and Allan’s business life, Lee submits his PhD application and thanks Sallie Goetsch and Kami Huyse for their ideas; Lee will be researching the business PR opportunities of Second Life.
Allan extends warm congrats from the both of us to Shel & Neville (and CC Chapman and Joe Jaffe) on their crayon/SL venture.
Allan agrees with Lee [itself a scary thing - Ed.] that ‘one size fits all’ communications is — or at least should be — a thing of the past. “Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) must go!” they both proclaim loudly from their nearest rooftop. All communicators, they reason, must recognise the mega trend to individualization and the death of market segmentation. Lee cross references his FIR report on the matter, which you can also listen to.
Allan rails against the stupidity of intranets that only allow one look-n-feel across all departments and sections, leading to navigation confusion. Both Allan and Lee agree [see? it happened again! This is a worrying trend - Ed.] that companies need to open themselves to the risk of letting individual departments shape their own internal messages.
On a completely different topic (money), Kami Huyse posted recently that she doesn’t agree with the concept of value-based pricing, citing Fleishman-Hillard and David Maister. Allan and Lee are fully into Value-Based fees, as long as the value is agreed up front, before the project begins. Allan & Lee welcome your views and comments — agree with Kami? Agree with them? Let them know…
Dave Briggs let the Cafe team know what he thought about Chat #20, which compels Allan to launch into some Trabant and Lada jokes (e.g. How do you double the value of a Lada?”). Dave, Allan and Lee rail against offline blog editors, making Lee wonder if Macromedia will launch a pro-level blog editor that will work seamlessly with their industry-standard html editor Dreamweaver.
All in all, 28 minutes of caffeine-fuelled hyperbole and satire, which you can either download and listen to right away, or else subscribe to via your rss podcatcher. And if you are an iTunes user, you can find our podcast on the iTunes Music Store (for free, of course!).
Disagree with Jenkins? Feel like hurling abuse at Hopkins? We welcome your comments! Drop your comments on the show blog, or even better send a Waxmail to ‘comments at commscafe dot com’.
Until next week: take it easy, take some risks, take your dogs for a walk.
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Kami Huyse 11.28.06 at 1:29 pm
I was wanting to get an audio comment to you, but I haven’t sat down to do it yet. So, I am at least going to make some kind of response here.
First, you are right, I am no fan of overbilling. And I think that value billing has the potential to lead one there very quickly. To be sure, I am not opposed to per project fee; however, I am opposed to sliding fees based on how much “value.” however that might be measured, that I bring to a project. For instance, how can you know what value you brought until after the project is over? You really can’t. However, if you bill hourly, then bill hourly, if you bill time plus materials, then do that. If you bill per project, and the client agrees on the fee ahead of time, then, by all means, go that way. In the end, I think our disagreement is probably more semantics than reality. I believe in utmost straightforward dealings with clients and fair billing. Or, as you point out, what David Maister said, which was to ask for what anyone with your level of experience would ask. In other words, the going rate.
Now, on the topic of integrated marketing and PR programs, I also have an opinion, and that is my marketing in the mix theory. Meaning that all of this stuff shouldn’t be done in a vacuum. I also outlined this in my anatomy of a key messaging post where I advocate constructing key messages on the fly based upon key values of the company or brand. This keeps everyone on “the same page” while allowing flexibility in messaging.