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by: David Wigder
"Your brand is your promise to your customer. It tells them what they can expect from your products and services, and it differentiates your offering from that of your competitors.” — from Small Business Encyclopedia, Entrepreneur.com
by: David Armano
A recent article in BusinessWeek talks creativity and says this:
“much of the hoopla over creativity is a crock. Why? Because we are already up to our eyeballs in it."
by: Guy Kawasaki
Here are three interesting essays about how social networks work. Highly relevant reading for anyone in a social networking company—or investing in one.
5 reasons why social networks fail
5 reasons why social networks can succeed
Situational Relevance in Social Networking Websites
Original Post: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/06/social_networki.html
by: Roger Dooley
We’ve had this site up for too long without reviewing the one English-language book with Neuromarketing in its title: Neuromarketing - Selling to the Old Brain for Instant Success by Patrick Renvoise and Christophe Morin. The book also features a provocative backup subtitle on its front cover, Is there a ‘Buy Button’ Inside the Brain?
Continue reading "Book Review: Neuromarketing - Selling to the Old Brain for Instant Success" »
by: Ilya Vedrashko
"Superheroes like Superman and Spider-Man can save mankind from natural disasters, space aliens and evil mutants. But there's one thing they are powerless to stop: Advertisers shilling products within the pages of the comic books they call home.
Continue reading "Co-Creation and the 12 Different Ways for Companies to Innovate" »
by: Karl Long
I love this story and hope i’m not the last person in the world to blog about it, I would hate to become totally redundant. So there’s this TV pilot that was filmed last year titled, ironically enough “Nobody’s Watching”, and it’s kind of a show within a show about two friends who want to create a sitcom and the WB is making a reality show about them making the show. Anyway, it got axed, never aired. Except someone uploaded it in three parts to YouTube.
If history can be our guide, in about a month Business Week and Interbrand will publish their 2006 hitparade of the most valuable brands in the world. For us this seemed to be the perfect occasion to take last year's list and look at the online relevance of these brands. The results are interesting to say the least.
We hope you don't mind too much, yet we're taking a short break in Spain, so we won't be able to update the blog until next Tuesday. Nevertheless, we hope you'll consider the Futurelab 100 we just put on food for thought. Hasta la vista !
by: David Armano
It’s officially official. We’re not gonna take it...anymore.In the early years of the internet, we saw consumers educate themselves online—get product information, make comparisons etc. They armed themselves with reviews and data before heading to that car dealership. Today, it’s a whole ‘nother ballgame. Now armed with technology such as mobile video enabled phones, digital recorders, blogs, and other tools,—the consumer has gone from being empowered to just plain powered.
by: David Armano
"Advertising is the next big industry to suffer huge upheaval thanks to the internet. They may think they’re already there, but they’re not, not by a long shot."
by: Joseph Mann
In a recent post I pontificated on the importance of having a systematic approach to lead generation by employing a formal lead scorecard to qualify leads prior to sending them on to the sales team.
Continue reading "Don’t Put the Metrics Cart Before the Strategy Horse" »
by: Ilya Vedrashko
In-game advertising meets consumer-generated content - what can be more cutting edge? Anyway, we talked about machinima ads before, and here are a few YouTube links to actual spots:
by: Josh Hawkins
John Battelle's Searchblog notes an interesting Nielson/Norman eye tracking study on the effectiveness of various online ad formats.
by: David Wigder
Wal-Mart is sending its employees back to school – all 1.3MM of them – to teach them “how to better take care of themselves and the environment”.
by: Joel Makower
Probably no sector is more conservative than the insurance industry, and I'm not referring to its political posturing.
by: David Armano
The Evolution of Creativity is Underway. Which Side Are You On?
Are you a Planner who thinks about design? Maybe you are a designer who obsesses about the business impact of your designs. Or you might be an Information Architect who thinks about motion, transitions, multimedia, and uses tools like storyboarding and visual scenarios. Or how about a Developer who comes up with the “big idea”?
by: Roger Dooley
Every little while, a neuroalarmist rant pops up in the blogosphere, almost always from someone who read an article about neuromarketing and concludes, “My goodness - now they’ll manipulate my brain into buying all kinds of stuff I don’t want or need!” (Latest example: Neuromarketing - a Growing Menace.) While one might argue that marketers have been doing that for decades, if not centuries, the reality is that marketers are using brain scans for product refinement and avoiding clunker ad campaigns. Whether the art and science of neuromarketing will ever achieve unprecedented levels of brain manipulation seems unlikely, but what about product optimization?
Continue reading "Neuro-Optimized Products - Good or Evil?" »
by: David Armano
by: Josh Hawkins
I was in a PR meeting last week and blogging came up. These conversations always seem to turn on risk, exposure, liability, trust, competition. Unfortunately, these topics tend to derail attention to the key benefits of engaging in social media tactics as part of more general marcom strategy.
by: Ilya Vedrashko
Here's a bit of rain on the parade of web 2.0 enthusiasts who claim that community-edited news sites work better than the traditional vetting structures.
Continue reading "Reality Check: Community-Governed News Sites" »
by: Ilya Vedrashko
"Finally, a search engine offering true pay-per-performance advertising." It's not Google, though, which, it was leaked, is testing a new CPA (cost-per-action) format. It's Snap, created by the same guy who created Overture whose model was later adapted by Google.
Continue reading "Commentary: The Problem Of Pay-Per-Action Ads" »
by: Lynette Webb
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Continue reading "Running TV Ads on Mobiles is Wrong Approach" »
by: Lynette Webb
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Continue reading "Koreans Have Bought 1m Mobile TV Receivers in 6 Months" »
by: Lynette Webb
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Continue reading "We're Living Online But Yet to Realise Implications" »
Continue reading "The One Thing Worse Than Being Talked About…" »
by: Roger Dooley
Neuromarketing is coming to a cineplex near you. In an interview with Caltech’s Steve Quartz, The Guardian reports that movie makers are starting to use fMRI brain scans to evaluate consumer preferences and predict future recall of promotional trailers.
by: Joel Makower
While sitting there at your desk sweating (or freezing, if the A/C is overly blowing) over the summer solstice and beyond, you might want to peruse a new, downloadable guide from the World Resources Institute.
by: John Caddell
In this month's Harvard Business Review, Paul Schoemaker and Robert Gunther write about ways companies get bound up in their own assumptions, and thereby miss important opportunities for growth or improvement.
by: Lynette Webb
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Continue reading "Startrek Fans are Making Their Own Episodes.jpg" »
by: Lynette Webb
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Continue reading "15 Percent Under 25s Heard About Xmen3 Movie Via Myspace" »
In a world that is unpredictable strategy, leaders have more and more apprehensions about strategy as effective tool for leading.
Continue reading "Strategy is Not a Pointed Prediction of Future" »
by: Guy Kawasaki
Here’s more information along the theme of understanding the “young-people” market.
by: Joel Makower
You've created the World's Greenest Product, and you're shipping it off to your first big customer. You've made it from the most environmentally sensitive materials, using only renewable energy. It's the pinnacle of eco-friendly everything.
Continue reading "Shipping for a Better World: Think Inside the Box" »
by: Ilya Vedrashko
"The Guardian is launching a new service providing readers with a rapid overview of news that will be updated every 15 minutes.
by: John Caddell
The above-linked article from Sunday's New York Times highlights how certain companies have engaged users to help design their products. An excerpt:
by: Joel Makower
Here's an inconvenient truth: For all the handwringing over the negative bottom-line impacts of climate change for most companies, a handful of large corporate interests may come out winners, creating potentially profitable opportunities for forward-thinking investors.
Continue reading "Is Climate Change the Next Big Investment Opportunity?" »
Continue reading "Experience Hierarchy and Non-Market Co-Creation" »
