This is a roll-up of all Forrester blogs written for . Role-specific blogs are listed below. Visit Forrester.com to learn how we make successful every day.
If you're a marketer targeting Gen X consumers (which we define as consumers between 30 and 43), and you're not using social media or influence marketing, it's time to reevaluate your strategy. Our new report, Brands Should Reach Gen Xers Through Word Of Mouth, sheds some new light on these consumers and their use of social technologies.
Chances are you've seen an online video contest lately. In fact,
you've probably seen a lot of them: more than 20% of interactive
marketers -- including category leaders like P&G, Nike, Coca-Cola
and Sony -- tell Forrester they've run campaigns asking users to submit
online content in the past year. I've been collecting a list of dozens
of great video contests, and one contest clearinghouse site says there are 115 user-generated video contests accepting submissions right now, across a huge range of categories.
I'm pleased to announce that Forrester's five year forecast is now complete and live on Forrester's site. It feels like this has been a long time in coming from my side too! Please see the full report for detailed explanations of the trends affecting overall marketing budgets and the growth of the channel in the forecast.
You may remember we previewed our forecast at Forrester's Marketing Forum at the end of April. If you cross reference this post to the one we posted as follow up to the forum, you will notice that the "% of all advertising spend" has changed. The absolute forecast is still the same, we just changed this calculation to make sure it was done in the same way as in years past. See below for the most recent release:
This research will certainly help marketers plan their channel strategies.
During my presentation at Forrester's Marketing Forum on April 23, I previewed Forrester's latest forecast of interactive marketing spend. We expect marketer spend on display media, search, email, mobile and social media to reach nearly $55 billion by 2014.
Last week, Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst on the Interactive Marketing team that I manage, caught flak for comments that he made on his personal blog about the community vendor Mzinga. As you might expect, we both have been communicating with Mzinga's Chairman Barry Libert and other members of his team. At the same time, Jeremiah has been reflecting on the conversation begun by the post. So have I.
The results are in. And the collective effort of the four teams partipating in P&G's digital night sold 3,000 Loads of Hope t-shirts and raised $50,000 for charity. Tide actually matched the money raised, putting the total disaster relief donation to $100,000 for four hours of effort. Thank you to all who bought t-shirts!
So I got a golden ticket to P&G's digital hack night -- a P&G party to bring together social media experts, P&G digital minds, and experienced interactive marketers to share ideas. The event is to test the strength of digital media to try to generate $100,000 for charity.
On Friday, Forrester published new research on one of the most active groups of people ever seen when it comes to social participation -- buyers of technology products in the business-to-business (B2B) sector.
I teamed up with Oliver Young to write the report, "The Social Technographics of Business Buyers," based on a survey conducted online between December 2008 and January 2009; you can access the full report if you're a Forrester client, or arrange to buy it if you are not. You can also register to download the slides or hear the replay of our Webinar on the topic.
[Posted by 
