This is rohetherington's Typepad Profile.
Join Typepad and start following rohetherington's activity
rohetherington
Sydney, Australia
I love big ideas, contributing to ethical and sustainable change, the opportunities of digital (social, mobile, web), strategic planning, envisioning the future and finding connections between seemingly unrelated things.
Interests: Digital strategy, Social business, Business transformation, Change management, Agile progress, Building constituency, Open leadership, Animal protection, Horses, Dogs, Elephants, Conservation, Sustainability, Vegan food/chocolate, Reading, Writing.
Recent Activity
Engaging and enabling IBM's Brand & Communications teams around the world (CEB Awards)
The 2016 CEB Internal Communications Summit and Awards is on in London at the moment. My colleague Nicky Parkinson and I submitted an entry (below) in the 'Innovations in Digital, Social, and Mobile Communications' CEB Award category, for our work... Continue reading
Posted Nov 1, 2016 at Rowan's blog
Comment
2
I just came across a presentation on this topic from Mark Schaefer that made me smile - it includes a great example (Apple): http://rowan.typepad.com/watts_up/2014/07/social-media-engagement-is-not-a-strategy.html
Will companies that use social succeed?
There is a lot of talk on the interwebs about how "Companies that use social will succeed". Frankly, this talk gives me the jitters. Why? Social is just another communication tool. Like the telephone. Or email. Would we say 'Companies that use the telephone will succeed'?! Succeeding is of co...
Social media engagement is not a strategy
I have raved about social media engagement being just one possible method of achieving an objective, for example in my post "Will companies that use social succeed?". I put social (along with all the other engagement tactics) in it's place... Continue reading
Posted Jul 9, 2014 at Rowan's blog
Comment
0
Ten years and it's a wrap
I started this blog ten years ago, when internet usage was very different. Blogs were new. Kazaa was the most searched for term on Yahoo!. Facebook and Twitter were not yet even twinkles in their founders eyes. In the last... Continue reading
Posted Jan 12, 2014 at Rowan's blog
Comment
0
IBM on Brand
What is IBM's brand strategy? IBM's Jon Iwata explains it in two minutes: “IBM on Brand” by Jon Iwata from VSA Partners on Vimeo. I think the logic applies well to 'branding' a career too, i.e. a career is not... Continue reading
Posted Mar 22, 2013 at Rowan's blog
Comment
0
Hi Caesar, I like your analogy that "a marketer without a strategy is like an army going to war without a map".
My concern is that I still see a lot of marketers who are focused on implementing a little piece of this puzzle, without an understanding of how it all fits together - or how their piece impacts the flow of the whole.
I guess where I'm landing is that marketers today need to have the ability to understand the overall map and make relevant connections between the different threads of potential customer journeys. While 'marketers' are certainly not 'one person' - there are many different roles within the profession, I suspect the strategic ability to contribute to the 'connecting of the dots' is something that is becoming increasingly required for ALL marketers.
Do marketers need to be strategists?
Marketing is getting increasingly complex. The marketing funnel is no longer linear, it has changed: (Source: Forrester) Typical marketing funnels, like the one shown at the top of this excellent Forrester graphic, were largely based on a groundbreaking article published by American academic...
Do marketers need to be strategists?
Posted Mar 3, 2013 at Rowan's blog
Comment
2
Skills gap highlighted in the 2012 IBM Tech Trends Report
Continuing the theme of my previous post, you may be interested to learn that only 1 out of 10 organizations have the IT skills needed to harness the benefits of business analytics, mobile computing, cloud computing and social business. This... Continue reading
Posted Dec 10, 2012 at Rowan's blog
Comment
0
The digital skills gap
One of the big challenges I encounter in my efforts to enable the Integrated Planning System is that existing staff often do not have the skills required to implement the steps. Even if there was budget for agency resources, many... Continue reading
Posted Nov 26, 2012 at Rowan's blog
Comment
1
What is social listening and why should organisations do it?
In an earlier post I covered detailed findings about enabling social listening research within IBM's marketing and communications practice. Those of you not familiar with social listening may be wondering what all the fuss is about -- why has social... Continue reading
Posted Nov 25, 2012 at Rowan's blog
Comment
0
The Integrated Planning System
I led the 'Plan' stream at the FUNNEL Sydney event on Monday with a presentation titled, The Integrated Planning System: Five steps to ensure your marketing plan remains effective within the evolving digital environment. The Integrated Planning System - Presentation... Continue reading
Posted Nov 20, 2012 at Rowan's blog
Comment
2
Speaking at the FUNNEL Sydney event
Posted Nov 20, 2012 at Rowan's blog
Comment
3
Action Research Project: Enabling social listening at IBM
Earlier this year I designed and led a four week Action Research Project. The aim was to gather insight into how sustainable, pervasive social (listening) research could be enabled within IBM's marketing and communications practice. This project was not about... Continue reading
Posted Nov 19, 2012 at Rowan's blog
Comment
0
Case study: IBM's journey to becoming a social business
MBA, Change management, Communications and IT students around the world are learning about social networking tools and the potential benefits of applying these tools within an organisational context. Articles on this topic quickly become out of date, due to the... Continue reading
Posted Oct 14, 2012 at Rowan's blog
Comment
1
Oh so quiet
Posted Jul 31, 2012 at Rowan's blog
Comment
0
How have digital interactions improved the way you work?
As part of the work around the digital transformation of IBM, I was asked to record a two minute video, answering two questions: 1. How have digital interactions improved the way you work? 2. How might they be made better?... Continue reading
Posted Apr 1, 2012 at Rowan's blog
Comment
0
The need for insight into digital landscapes
I just read an article titled "Why Apple Needs Reminding We Don’t All Live In The United States", about the recent iPad WiFi+4G issues. Basically, Australians (among many others) have decided that Apple calling the new iPad ’4G’ is inaccurate,... Continue reading
Posted Apr 1, 2012 at Rowan's blog
Comment
0
'Engaging' requires building rapport
Posted Nov 15, 2011 at Rowan's blog
Comment
7
The Integrated Digital Plan
Posted Nov 12, 2011 at Rowan's blog
Comment
6
One Tribe at a Time
It is Remembrance Day. In line with my interests in change management and building constituency, I read "One Tribe at a Time: A strategy for success in Afghanistan" by Major Jim Gant. My understanding of the War in Afghanistan in... Continue reading
Posted Nov 11, 2011 at Rowan's blog
Comment
2
11.11am on 11th of the 11th, 2011
Posted Nov 10, 2011 at Rowan's blog
Comment
0
Agile Progress - an experiment in driving open, collaborative, sustainable progress
The seven billionth human will be born today. This population level is currently unsustainable. Whose responsibility is it to regulate human population numbers - and solve other problems facing humanity and our planet? Is it the responsibility of governments? Of... Continue reading
Posted Oct 29, 2011 at Rowan's blog
Comment
2
The Power of Open: 2.0 Public, Private and Community Sectors
In September, the Open Government Partnership formally launched with a series of high-level meetings highlighting the transformative nature of open governance. Events included a day-long multi-stakeholder discussion, "The Power of Open," that brought together governments, civil society, industry leaders, academics... Continue reading
Posted Oct 22, 2011 at Rowan's blog
Comment
2
Building Constituency: A communications approach for open leaders
Mary Murphy, reporting from the recent THINK Forum in NYC, wrote: “We’re living in a time where our need for strong leadership is intensifying and the leadership qualities we need are changing.” In her blog post titled "We Need a... Continue reading
Posted Oct 21, 2011 at Rowan's blog
Comment
2
I just read some info about the FutureGov Congress http://www.futuregov.asia/events/futuregov-congress-australia-2011/ which demonstrates the Australian government is at least moving in the direction of citizen engagement and Open Goverment. Looks promising!
From: http://www.katelundy.com.au/2011/05/12/senator-kate-lundy-announced-futuregov-congress-coming-to-canberra/ :
"As part of our suite of policies, we a very strong statement, the Declaration of Open Government, and I think it’s probably worth reminder everybody here today the nature of that statement.
"The Australian Government now declares that, in order to promote greater participation in Australia’s democracy, it is committed to open government based on a culture of engagement, built on better access to and use of government held information, and sustained by the innovative use of technology.
It goes on to say:
"Citizen collaboration in policy and service delivery design will enhance the processes of government and improve the outcomes sought. Collaboration with citizens is to be enabled and encouraged. Agencies are to reduce barriers to online engagement, undertake social networking, crowd sourcing and online collaboration projects and support online engagement by employees, in accordance with the Australian Public Service Commission Guidelines.
"The possibilities for open government depend on the innovative use of new internet-based technologies. Agencies are to develop policies that support employee-initiated, innovative Government 2.0-based proposals."
Isn't it time we replaced political parties with crowd-sourced democracy?
ZDNet just revealed the Australian Lib's National Broadband Network (NBN) policy to be yet another half-baked, shambolic effort. Some of the background is in my blog posts from last year. So much time has been wasted - as with almost all major government projects. The political system drives me ...
More...
Subscribe to rohetherington’s Recent Activity