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by: Nancy Baym
I spent the latter half of this week in Princeton. I was invited by the Center for Information Technology Policy and spoke on the topic “Understanding the Networked Audience.” Here is a super-short summary of my talk:
by: Idris Mootee
Every individual in this world shares one commonality which is we all have stories to tell. Some have very interesting ones and some are sad. It is like we all have a photo albums or a 60 minutes documentary that talks about our life. The older we get, the more repetitive these stories become. The true role of story and storytelling is much greater, older, and elemental than Hollywood.
Continue reading "Transmedia Story Telling - The Next Brand Building Super Engine?" »
by: Michael Hoexter
In Part 1 of this post, I started to construct a scenario where a medium-sized farm would do most or all of its work using electric farm equipment. This model of a farm had 1 large tractor with 250kW(335 hp) maximum power output and 4 smaller tractors with 50kW (67hp) maximum power output (though working at 50% power on the peak energy day).
Continue reading "The Renewable Electron Economy Part VIII.2: The Electric Farm - 2" »
by: Roger Dooley
Big companies often find great ways to aggravate their customers, and cell phone giant Sprint proves the point. John Wall of the Ronin Marketing blog posted a rant about Sprint’s advertising for their Centro Palm smartphone, Screw Your Customers.
by: David Armano
I can remember a time not so long ago when the notion of "strategy" seemed nearly divorced from the design and/or creative process. Strategists performed competitive analysis or "landscapes", talked to stakeholders—aggregated industry reports and trends and did stuff with lots of charts, metrics, bullet points etc.
Continue reading "Developing an Experience Strategy in 4 Parts" »
by: John Caddell
Following on to yesterday's post on political storytelling--in the December Harvard Business Review, Peter Guber, best described, I guess, as a Hollywood mogul (former head of Columbia Pictures, producer of "Batman" and "Rain Man," among others), writes about "Four Truths of the Storyteller" (link - $$).
Continue reading "A Hollywood Producer's Master Class on Business Storytelling" »
by: Guy Kawasaki
Stanford Magazine has a terrific article about Kiva
called “Small Change, Big Payoff” by Cynthia Haven. This is the story of how Matt and Jessica Jackely Flannery created it to enable people to make micro loans to entrepreneurs around the world.
by: John Caddell
The podcast is back, this time featuring Tony Ulwick, author of the book "What Customers Want" and CEO of Strategyn, a consulting firm helping companies improve their innovation processes.
by: Dick Stroud
I have worked with Jo Rigby, the head of Insights at OMD, to research the way that different lifestyle groups of the 50-plus respond to advertising creative. If you are a member of WARC you download the report. For those of you who are not, you can apply for a trial membership and hopefully access the report.
Continue reading " WARC Report About the 50-plus and Advertising Creative" »
by: Alain Thys
Every day thousands of people die from bad marketing. Neither Google nor I remember where I read these words. Perhaps I never read them at all. But as I was flying from Zurich to Amsterdam I couldn't get them out of my mind.
I had just read about Sir Bob Geldof badgering a number of CEO's on their moral obligation to get involved in poverty. And while - bless him - he probably saved quite a few lives by guilting them into a donation, I doubt whether anything beyond "token money" will change hands.
Continue reading "Marketing Challenge: Can We Profit From Poverty?" »
by: John Caddell
There's a fascinating interview at Harvard Business School Working Knowledge with HBS professor Alan MacCormack, covering innovation and how it's moving away from Corporate R&D and into a collaborative web of partnering & alliances. (You can find a working paper on the subject here.)
Continue reading "Innovative Companies Must Excel at Partnering" »
by: Dominic Basulto
In the current issue of Portfolio magazine, former Intel CEO Andy Grove suggests that corporate behemoths - sometimes, but not always - may be better suited to disruptive innovation than smaller, more nimble upstarts:
Continue reading "Andy Grove on How Large Companies Can Become Disruptive Giants" »
by: Gary Hayes
At the Cross-Media Storytelling conference a few days ago I witnessed a strange event with one of the categories of speakers. There were three groups of speakers, forward thinking practitioners, catch-up heritage media representatives and theoretical, reflective academics.
Continue reading "Web 2.0 and the Myth of Non-Participation " »
by: Eliane Alhadeff (via Business & Games)
A new Canadian online digital magazine, Second Slice, focuses on issues of marketing in virtual worlds (click here to download)
According to its publisher and VP at One Up Marketing, Mario Parisé. Second Slice is “an attempt to give marketers who are active in virtual worlds a stronger and more unified voice. It all got started when the more mainstream business press decided to go on a Second Life bashing spree, ridiculing marketers and businesses going in-world.”
Continue reading "Second Slice: Serious Games Embed Ambitious Marketing" »
by: John Caddell
Once, in my days running sales and marketing for a software company, the VP of Technology was growing agitated with my complaints about our product's hardware and database architecture. "OK," he said in exasperation, "if you don't like [proprietary platform], what platform do you want the product to run on?" In imitation of a Qwest ad from that time, I said, "I want it to run on any operating system, on any database, from any provider." I then glanced at him to make sure he wasn't winding up to smack me in the head. "You asked."
Continue reading "IT Risk - Platform and Architecture Matter" »
by: Idris Mootee
Continuing on this topic. Let's start with some key findings from a recent McKinsey survey. According to the survey, a company's main challenge with innovation today is finding enough talented people.
Continue reading "Innovation and Design Thinking - Is It A Mindset, Process or Profession?" »
by: Christian Smagg
When thinking about factors that distinguish top performing companies, the root of their success often can be traced to the human equation. But how many companies are able to tap more than a fraction of their workforce potential? How many are able to take advantage of latent talents, ideas and contributive strengths waiting to be switched on? How many are able to unleash the power of remote collaboration & virtual team management? The companies that find the means to use a larger fraction of their human resources will undoubtedly supersede their competitors. That is their edge in the global economy.
Continue reading "Unleashing the Power of Remote Collaboration & Virtual Team Management" »
by: Alain Thys
We probably all know the trouble Vincent Ferrari's had to go through when trying to cancel his AOL account over the phone. But to vindicate him and all other victims of the telephone terror direct marketers often inflict on us, Tom Mabe created a rather cruel, yet hilarious method of dealing with any tele-marketer that dares to invade his privacy.
Continue reading "Telemarketing Calls ... the Customer Strikes Back" »
by: Eliane Alhadeff
Via: NanoMission - 3 Games Modules Available For Download!
Following my prior post Serious Games To Understand Nanotech, PlayGen has made 3 game modules available for download:NanoMedicine, NanoScaling and Nano Imaging.
Continue reading "Serious Games To Understand Nanothech Available For Download" »
What
do mathematicians, architects, sculptors, biologists, and graphic
designers have in common? They all use what is perhaps the most
interesting number in mathematics: the Golden Mean, also called the
Golden Ratio and the Golden Section.
This has been a crazy week. And worse we missed out flight by 5 min yesterday and ended up spending the afternoon in O'Hare eating really bad food. Here's a photo of us between meetings. I realized I have not posted anything since last week. It is not usual as I always try to do that at least every other day. Here we go, back to our topic of "design thinking" and "innovation". Both topics are getting popular but least understood in the executive officesContinue reading "The 4 Ps of Innovation and Design Thinking" »
by: Roger Dooley
Wine and coffee seem to be common topics here at Neuromarketing. Perhaps it’s because I enjoy both, but also because each of these beverages comes in an infinite variety of flavors and is available in varied methods of delivery.
by: Eliane Alhadeff (via Business & Games)
For most people, video games mean entertainment, like TV or the movies. But their true meaning may be much bigger, impacting every aspect of our world, from education to business, society and culture.
IBM explores how video games may impact every aspect of our world, from education to business, society and culture.
Continue reading "Serious Games Pioneering How We Will Learn & Work In The Future" »
by: Dick Stroud
Research (from Alliance & Leicester) has looked at the goals and ambitions of the UK’s 50 plus and shows that travel is at the top of their agenda. Over half (54%) want to travel more regularly and to long-haul destinations and a further (22%) want a “once in a lifetime holiday” in the next decade.
Continue reading " Some Research about Travel and the 50-plus" »
by: Roger Dooley
Burger giant McDonald’s has the lucrative upscale coffee market dominated by Starbucks clearly in its sights. According to an AP report, McDonald’s Eyes Ballooning Coffee Market,
Continue reading "Starbucks vs. McDonald’s: Coffee War Heating Up" »
Ok the secret is finally out and one of the reasons why I have been “extra” busy during my down time!
by: Yann Gourvennec
All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players … (1)
Our friend Markus Giesler is assistant professor of marketing at York University’s Schulich School of Business in Toronto, ON, Canada. He is also the author of a previous article on Napster (the anthropology of file sharing, consuming Napster as a gift). Here is his new opus in which he compares marketplaces with drama.
by: Dick Stroud
According to Gartner, in 10 years the largest influence on all purchases will be the virtual experience associated with them. By 2015, more money will be spent marketing and selling to multiple anonymous online personas than marketing and selling offline.
Continue reading "Ditch Your Age Segmentation - Target Generation V" »
by: Alain Thys
If I were responsible for corporate PR at Unilever, I'd be getting little bit nervous about the chatter in the blogosphere these days. A few weeks ago, there was the video by Rye Clifton (see below) in which he challenged the company's dual position on women. With Dove they take the high ground, and defy the beauty industry's push for übersexy women. With Axe, they then do exactly what they condemn.
Continue reading "Should You Talk to Your Daughter before Unilever Does ?" »
by: C. Sven Johnson
I caught a whiff of this piece on the Guardian earlier this month, and having finally read it, all I can say is, thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster someone else is starting to talk about the impact virtual worlds will almost certainly have on real world commerce. Victor Keegan has fired a nice warning flare in his article, “Virtual China looks for real benefits” (Link). From the piece:
Is green marketing just a series of lies?
That's one conclusion to be drawn from a new study that examines hundreds of environmental labeling claims and found pretty much all of them wanting, suffering from sins of either omission or commission.
Is it any wonder that consumers are overwhelmingly wary of green marketing and view it as "just a sales tactic"?
by: Alex Eperjessy (via Business & Games)
They call themselves a hot new advergaming company. Blogger opinions are already split on this, with some calling it a great idea and others arguing that it’s nothing but a fishy scheme. Last week, Moola’s CEO, Arlen Ritchie, gave me a presentation that stretched slightly over one hour. He gave the demo, I asked the questions. The result is below, God help us all.
Continue reading "Interview with Arlen Ritchie, Moola's CEO" »
by: Dominic Basulto
Companies that innovate at a snail's pace may not be in quite the competitive mess that some experts think they're in. Forget rapid prototyping and rushing beta versions of products to markets.
by: David Wigder
BBMG recently reported that US consumers increasingly say that words like “socially responsible” (88% say these as words describe them “well”, 39% as “very well”) and “environmentally friendly” (86% well, 34% very well) describe them. It should not be surprising then that many leading companies today are aligning their brands with more socially reponsible and eco-friendly activites and attributes. (See “Defining Green Brand Leadership”, Marketing Green, October 29, 2007)
Continue reading "Waning Opportunity to be Early Mover on Green" »
