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Who would not want to believe in it? As far as anyone can tell it’s the best way to sell to today’s over-informed hyper-consumer. However even after extolling the virtues of it in my post “The Art of the Very Small Start”, I have some major doubts on the validity of this approach especially in the field of consumer electronics.
Continue reading "The Appropriateness of Getting Your Customer to Design a Product for You?" »
by: George Silverman
I have been so caught up in what I see as the nobility and purity of the word-of-mouth marketing movement that I'm shocked when people view word-of-mouth marketing as sleazy. I understand where they're coming from and I sympathize with their strong condemnation of attempts to manipulate consumers, hype unworthy products and engage in a wide variety of other deceptive practices. But when someone as thoughtful as Jeff Jarvis weighs in on the side of the condemners, it's time to weigh in. You can read what Jeff says, together with Andy Sernovitz's and my answer here:
Continue reading "Interesting Alternative Views of Word-of-mouth Marketing" »
by: Mark Rogers
I am addressing a CBI conference this week in Birmingham, UK, where the agenda is to discuss Crisis Management and digital media.
The technology inside mobile phones is now so complex that it deserves an advertising medium that reflects that processing power. Airport passengers in Lisbon have been able to experience such a medium thanks to a new campaign from Nokia. Inside the departure lounge is a single site that offers a glimpse of the future of out-of-home advertising.
Continue reading "Advertising Age - MediaWorks - Street Furniture Gets Interactive" »
In about '93, I gave a presentation at one of the virtual reality conferences about the future of advertising and this is one of the things I discussed. I think that having this kind of real product integration will be very important in the future and will allow for the content and the product to live together in a very natural way. If while watching a show, you could click on the outfits and order them through your TV, I think people would go for it! I know that I would. Of course, they'll need to watch several things:
Continue reading "Technology Enables Product Placement in CGM" »
by: Sigurd Rinde
What?
Yep, the September issue of the Harvard Business Review has an article - "The Decision to Trust" - with the angle of "explaining the mental calculations people make before choosing to trust someone".
by: Roger Dooley
This is one of those experiments that must have raised a few eyebrows during the approval process… “Let’s get this straight, you are going to show subjects invisible pictures of naked people and see if they unconsciously remember seeing them…”
by: Joseph Mann
Back in June 2005, more than 94 million people in the U.S., or 56 percent of the domestic Internet population, viewed a streaming video online according to Comscore Networks.1 Web video has come a long way in the year since: in July of this year Comscore data confirmed reports of 100 million worldwide daily video streams viewed from YouTube.com alone.2
Continue reading "Web Video: More than Regurgitated Cockroaches" »
by: Mark Rogers
A client, reviewing some of the sentiment scores on the net approval work we have been doing for them recently asked: “why are these people so negative? We don’t get these scores from our off-line net promoters work.”
Continue reading "Why Is Consumer-generated Commentary So Negative?" »
by: Stefan Kolle
I’ve put together the 10 key trends I see for 2007 in Marketing Innovation. None of these are new, except for Net Promoter Scores which have only been around for a few years.
And, OK, I have to admit that some of these might end up being more wishful thinking then actual trends, but I get the disctinctive feeling many marketers are actually starting to wake up.
by: Jon Miller
Sales & Marketing Management magazine recently posted that the average tenure of a sales manager / VP is 19 months, which I found courtesy of B2Blog.
by: Ilya Vedrashko
Ha! This could well be the monetization model everyone's been looking for, if the technology is robust enough. The system is a lot like the green interactive dots in the Shai videos, but work with other type of content besides porn.
Continue reading "Product Placement in Consumer-Generated Videos" »
by: David Armano
"People in SL are expressing what they would LIKE to do in reality. For example, it's easy to pimp your car in second life and clearly lots of people want to customize their transport there. All the major auto companies are piling into SL to learn about this--and build their big after-market customizing business in the real world."
~Bruce Nussbaum
Original Post: http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2006/10/thought_of_the__1.html
by: Guy Kawasaki
Blog reader Curtis Thompson asked me a very good question a few days ago: What should an entrepreneur say when she’s asked what makes her company defensible? This question is more and more common as more and more entrepreneurs start “Web 2.0 companies,” and investors torture themselves by wondering why they didn’t fund YouTube.
by: David Armano
Well, today I got to attend the Forrester “Humanizing The Digital Experience” event. Actually, Margaret—one of my colleagues couldn't make it today, so I went in her place. That’s right, I was the guy with the dark hair, rectangle specs and “Margaret” on my name tag. Yeah, I got a few looks. Well, only in the morning—the kind folks at Forrester reprinted a nametag for me.
by: Joel Makower
A lot of environmental types get squeamish when the talk turns to money and finance. They believe that most notions of capitalism fly in the face of sustainability, and vice versa. Money is so unseemly, it seems.
Continue reading "At New Resource Bank, Money Talks ... Green" »
by: Alain Thys
If you haven't yet seen it, this video is a great edit of what people tend to get up to on YouTube. There are probably a dozen ways to analyse this, yet from my perspective it's also just good viewing (all 9 minutes).
by: Dick Stroud
Why does Wal Mart or Tesco not have a section of their stores dedicated to assistive technologies (i.e. technologies that assist people who have some form of disability resulting from illness or ageing)?
by: Ilya Vedrashko
As promised last week, Nissan has just unveiled a Second Life extension of its campaign for Sentra. Here's the location's SL URL, and here are more details from Giff at Electric Sheep.
by: Gary Hayes
Still catching up with drafts and this one is more about my editing than my own crystal ball gazing. I love predictions about the way we will be interacting in the future especially when we are getting a little sniff of them in the present day, eg: web 3.0. So I selected, last month, some quotes/segments from the fantastic Pew Future of the Internet report from Sept 26 this year. The report made some assumptions and commentators responded, more in a moment.
Continue reading "The Real Alternate Reality in Future Social Networks " »
by: Yann Gourvennec
In the following video presentation, you will discover the so-called MIT digital drawing board complete with geometrical recognition and simulation of movements. Everybody on the Internet or so seems to have seen this video, and a lot of bloggers have liked it and commented on it.
Continue reading "“MIT” Digital Drawing Board: Innovation is In the Eye Of the Beholder" »
by: David Armano
The following "group post" is the Brainchild of Eric Kintz from HP. Eric recently coordinated this effort between myself and some very respectable names representing distinctly different areas related to marketing.
Continue reading "Why Blogging Matters: 6 Degrees of Perspective" »
by: Ilya Vedrashko
"Nielsen Media Research on Wednesday announced an electronic rating service to track who is playing what game.
by: Joel Makower
The question of how to engage Americans on pressing environmental issues is a perennial one. Arguably, environmental activist groups haven't made much traction. After more than 35 years since the birth of the modern environmental movement, the major green nonprofits cumulatively engage only 3 million to 4 million Americans -- the roughly 1% of Americans who appear on the groups' mailing lists.
Continue reading "WITTs, YOYOs, and Why Americans Don't Go Green" »
by: Jon Miller
Strategy+Business had a great article in their summer issue by Edward Landry, Andrew Tipping, and Jay Kumar from the consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton.
by: Guy Kawasaki
I found a great blog entry that explains technology marketing. Here are the first three elements of this top-ten list:
by: Ilya Vedrashko
MIT Media Labman came up with Art-o-Meter -- a system apparently equipped with motion detector that counts how much time people spend in front of an art piece.
Continue reading "Art-O-Meter Measures Art Popularity in Museums" »
by: Dick Stroud
Focalyst, a joint venture between AARP Services and Kantar, the research arm of WPP, has published its findings about the 125 million Americans, aged 42-plus segment.
by: Ilya Vedrashko
"Nivea Does Video Game Tie-In with 'Splinter Cell'" October 16, Enid Burns, ClickZ. The game is brand new, so no good screenshots yet. Quotes from the article:
Continue reading "Nivea Gets Products Into Splinter Cell: Double Agent" »
by: Lynette Webb
Continue reading "internet is just the world passing notes in a classroom" »
by: danah boyd
Please watch this video. It is a depiction of how beauty is crafted for print. It's made as part of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. Below are the before/after images (tx to BoingBoing).
by: Ilya Vedrashko
Reuters opened an online center that covers news from Second Life with interviews, charts and everything.
Continue reading "Reuters Opens News Center on Second Life" »
by: Roger Dooley
Last May, we posted Food Ads: How Brains Respond, which discussed research showing that images of food triggered a response in the brain’s reward centers. Now, as reported in the Seattle Times in Chocolate: Love at first bite — or sight, Ciara McCabe and Edmund Rolls of Oxford University in England will present additional food image research at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience later this week.
by: Lynette Webb
Click image to enlarge.
Continue reading "latest hazard is clicking under the influence" »
by: danah boyd
Editorial note: On this blog, we typically don't publish elements of US political debate. Still, some thoughts are just too powerful to ignore. That is why - if at Futurelab we want to be true to our belief of making a difference - our rules are there to be broken. Thank you danah for what I consider one of this blog's most powerful posts of all times, and for reminding us what it is all about (note: also here in Europe). Alain.
by: Dick Stroud
If you are interested in the way that wealth is distributed among baby boomers then this is an article you should read. It is about the US but the same principles apply in all countries.
by: David Armano
...And folks wonder why Harley-Davidson is arguably one of the most successful brands ever.
by: Lynette Webb
People have individual clickprints. This is both scary - from a privacy perspective - and reassuring - from a security perspective (eg: could help to reduce online identity fraud). It might also enable some of the problems of cookies to be overcome which would thus improve user experience in terms of enabling far more refined targeting of advertising. Click image to enlarge.
by: John Caddell
TEDBlog has just posted a talk from Iqbal Quadir, the Bangladeshi innovator responsible for GrameenPhone, the mobile phone company that has made dramatic differences in quality of life for tens of millions of poor Bangladeshi villagers.
Continue reading "The Cure to Poverty Is Connectivity and Individual Empowerment" »
by: Lynette Webb
... the guy with the most data wins.
by: David Polinchock
Chris Weilfrom Momentum Worldwide was doing the keynote presentation entitled We are the Clutter, a challenge to the entire industry. His challenge to us was to stay on course with what we're doing and create short term opportunities or change ourselves for long term growth. According to a Yankelovich study, people believe that 60% of the messaging they receive have to relevance to them.
by: Roger Dooley
The Prague Post, a popular English-language weekly in the Czech Republic, ran both an article, Picking Your Brain, and an opinion piece, On the brains (and ethics) of neuroplanning, on the topic of neuromarketing. The former covers the launch of a neuroscience-based media planning effort being launched by European media planning firm PHD Network.
Continue reading "“Neuroplanning” and Neuromarketing in the Czech Republic" »
by: David Wigder
An Interview with Ian Yolles, VP of Marketing, Nau
What if you could build a company from the ground up, where every decision was based on the principles of sustainability? Nau is an emerging outdoor apparel company that is trying to do just that. In fact, even its corporate bylaws state that fiduciary responsibility to shareholders must be balanced by the needs of the environment.
By: Alain Thys
I promise this is the last time I post about our Knight Rider, yet as the project Hoff Alert had now managed to land this most unlikely of musical heroes on the number 3 spot in the UK, I just had to find out who was behind it. Was it really a bunch of fans who got together ? Or was it an innovative ploy by a record company executive looking for a fast buck ?
by: Michael Hoexter
In my post earlier this week on the Concept of Sustainability, I left out an important bullet point. As I had thought about my post over a period of days sometimes without the help of a computer or pen and paper, I suppose it was not such a surprise that something would get left out…
Continue reading "The Concept of Sustainability Part II: Addendum" »
by: Dick Stroud
This article from MarketingSherpa is fascinating. It is not age specific but the general principles will apply to the 50-plus market.
by: David Armano
I love this photo illustration of Lafley's now-famous quote as rendered by Lynette. What I especially like about it is that it's not very Zen-like.
by: Lynette Webb
This is a quote from his speech at the Association of National Advertisers, as reported by the New York Times on Oct 9 2006.
Continue reading "Consumers Are Beginning to Own Brands - We Need to Learn to Let Go" »
by: Lynette Webb
So this is a tad flippant. But it illustrates a point I think isn’t made often enough… that watching clips on YouTube or GoogleVideo or any of their ilk is, from a consumer’s perspective, watching TV.
Click image to enlarge.
by: Jon Miller
Two of the most common questions I hear from fellow marketers is: “How much should I spend on marketing?” and “How much of my marketing budget should I spend online?” One way to look at this is through benchmarks.
by: Roger Dooley
There’s a neuromarketing lesson in extended warranties. If you have purchased any kind of electronic product in the last few years, you were almost certainly offered an opportunity to extend the product’s warranty.
Continue reading "Warranties, Neuromarketing, and Neuroeconomics" »
by: Ilya Vedrashko
The title here is a bit too dramatic, but it does illustrate a potentially much larger problem than the glitch at the Sun's new pavilion (it opened today in SL with a press conference; Millions of Us has more details and pics).
by: danah boyd
Read the comScore press release. Completely. Read the details. They have found that the unique VISITORS have gotten older. This is _not_ the same thing as USERS.
Continue reading "comScore Misinterprets Data: MySpace is *NOT* Gray" »
by: John Caddell
Foolishness is not typically considered beneficial to businesses, except possibly a few minutes of lighthearted fun to relieve the tedium of the workday.
by: Michael Hoexter
Sustainability has become one of the virtues with which almost every intelligent person and organization wants to associate themselves.
Continue reading "The Concept of Sustainability: Internal Diversity and Points of Conflict" »
by: David Armano
The GooTube deal has been signed, sealed and delivered. That's the big industry news today. You can read about it on virtually every blog and industry site/publication. Jaffe has an interesting take here.
I'm really not in the mood to cover this. But if you want to jazz up your Goo-post, here is a visual—feel free to use it. Inspired by the 80's motion picture classic, Say Anything.
by: Ilya Vedrashko
Yes, so we know that Leo Burnett and Bartle Bogle Hegarty -- two ad agencies, for the outsiders -- announced expansion into Second Life.
Continue reading "First Look at the Bartle Bogle Hegarty's Office in Second Life" »
by: Dick Stroud 
Focalyst is a joint venture of AARP Services and Kantar, the research, insight and consultancy arm of WPP. Focalyst claims to be the leading source of information about Baby Boomers and Older Consumers. The launch conference was held in New York on 28-29 September 2006.
Continue reading "The Focalyst Conference - First Impressions" »
by: David Polinchock
This new study has been getting quite a lot of attention lately and we think that it's a shame. Now, for full disclosure, we have a business relationship with POPAI, which is developing another study. However, we believe that none of the studied proposed so far go as far as we think they should go.
Continue reading "Advertising Age - P&G Wants In-store Marketing Metrics to Match up to TV, Radio" »
by: Guy Kawasaki
Polly LaBarre is the co-author (with Bill Taylor) of the newly released book called Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win
by: John Caddell
James Surowiecki, the author of the great business book "The Wisdom of Crowds," and financial columnist for the New Yorker, takes up the HP leak scandal in his latest column, but provides a different take on the matter.
Continue reading "The Board of Directors - A Fatally-Flawed Structure?" »
by: Ilya Vedrashko
Starwood Hotels and Resorts has been building an SL model of its upcoming Aloft hotel and last week the word got out that the place was open for visitors.
Continue reading "Starwood's Aloft Hotel in Second Life: First Impressions" »
by: Jon Miller
I had the opportunity to attend this year’s CMO Council Summit in San Francisco, titled “The Power of Engagement: Gaining Customer Intimacy, Influence & Inspiration”.
Continue reading "Highlights from 2006 CMO Council Summit" »
by: Joel Makower
It's been more than 16 years since my book, The Green Consumer, was first published in the U.S. (You can now buy it for a penny on Amazon.)
Continue reading "Where Are All the Good, Green Products?" »
by: danah boyd
Six weeks ago, i asked all researchers who were publishing about social network sites to come forward and be counted. I mentioned that Nicole Ellison and i were plotting... Now i'm back to reveal what we are up to.
Continue reading "Special Issue of JCMC on Social Network Sites" »
by: David Armano
Adweek references a report on the rising age range of participants who are diving into the Social Media Network.
by: David Jennings
Soundflavor is the latest playlist sharing service to move beyond just their sharing community (see my review) to offer a software download that plugs into iTunes to recommend playlists. The download is called Soundflavor DJ™, and you can download it here.
Continue reading "Soundflavor Moves Into Music Recommendation Client Software" »
by: David Armano
Remember the Dotcom burst? I do. I specifically remember things like clients asking for content management system enabled Websites when they didn’t need one. Or better yet—choosing the wrong system.
by: John Caddell
The macho sleep-deprivation culture of global business is dangerous to companies, states Dr. Charles A. Czeisler in an interview from the October issue of Harvard Business Review.
Last August I posted about a bunch of guys who are trying convince enough people to purchase a Hoff single on iTunes to bring our Knight Rider to the Top of the UK hitparade. Today The Hoff Alert is launched in which over 40,000 emails are sent to those who have registered with the site to go out and buy David Hasselhoff's "Jump in My Car" from 7 Digital or iTunes.
Continue reading "Hoff Alert: Consumers Play the Hitparade" »
by: Guy Kawasaki
Fanpop is a network of social portals where communities of fans can discover and share content and participate in discussions around their favorite topics of interest.
by: Ilya Vedrashko
Two articles in one week on the same interesting subject: the influence of brand initials on brand image.
Continue reading "Initials, Brand Names, and Stock Prices" »
by: Ilya Vedrashko
Love this ad on SL Exchange:
"This Corona Vending machine will quickly pay for itself even in low traffic areas. It is the perfect visual addition to your club, casino, restaurant or even home! It is a fun vendor with a fun product. Easily earn $5L unlimited times over selling the copyable Corona drink inside the machine.
A great investment oportunity to make some good money with minimal investment!"
Original Post: http://www.vedrashko.com/advertising/2006/10/second-life-functional-corona-vending.html
by: Noah Keating (via David Polinchock)
The French television station M6, by encouraging viewer participation in its programming through the solicitation of SMS messages from audience members to influence show outcomes, has managed to surpass its ad revenue with the income it is now receiving from this practice.
Continue reading "French Television Station Earns More From SMS Than Advertising" »
by: Ilya Vedrashko
Netflix is giving away one million bucks to anyone who comes up with a better movie recommendation system than what they are currently using.
Continue reading "Netflix Battles Paradox of Choice with $1M Award" »
In a conceptual protest against the privately owned public spaces in New York City, members of the Graffiti Research Lab came up with a way of making these non-spaces a bit more user-friendly.
Inspired by the FedexFurniture project, the GRL team created a bunch of chairs, made of free-of-charge US postal mail boxes and brought them to one of the locations in question.
Continue reading "Postal Chairs - how to humanize a privately owned public space" »
by: Dick Stroud
The US finance industry is targeting the 50-plus with a series of dedicated web sites to help in the retirement planning process. New York Life, Allstate and MassMutual are just three examples.
Continue reading "Web Sites and Computer Games For the 50-plus" »
by: Yann Gourvennec
The Elon University website is hosting an interesting initiative whereby they are asking you what your future vision of the Internet is. Now, let’s be provocative, here is my vision of the future of the Internet: It will disappear! (I have reproduced my entry in the Elon University website hereafter). And what is your future vision of the Internet?
by: David Armano
BusinessWeek has a great piece on how the business world is turning to designers to help solve their complex problems through innovation vs. drawn out strategization.
