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by: Sigurd Rinde
Hugh's post on social objects the other day resonated with many, and I still remember Jyri bouncing a beach ball around at Reboot a couple of years ago.
Allow me to quote Hugh reporting from a social setting:
Continue reading "Bars and Business - Social Objects and Business Objects" »
by: Idris Mootee
The hottest new agency is WANAA (We Are Not An Agency). Ok, there is no agency called WANAA. You get the point. Headhunters are calling everywhere tyring to recruit new heads for interactive agencies as many have plans to replace theirs. The problem is the interactive heads just move around from one agency to another...with little result...sadly. This is not going to change anything. Coming back to the topic of agency consolidation, these are the questions:
Continue reading "The Hottest New Agency for the Year Is WANAA!" »
by: Karl Long
Just read this over at JaffeJuice and Joseph extrapolates that the chance basically only 5% of people with the TV on are actually paying attention to advertisements. Wow, I thought it was only half of advertising that was wasted, we just didn't know which half 
Continue reading "What Do You Do During Commercials? 95% Not Watching" »
by: Joel Makower
My colleagues and I at GreenBiz.com have just published State of Green Business 2008, an accounting for how, and how much, the greening of business is moving the needle on environmental issues.
The simple answer: not much -- and certainly not enough.
by: Rick van der Wal via Business and Games Blog
Ross Dawson over at rossdawsonblog.com created an interesting ‘map’ of webtrends for 2008 called the ‘Trend Blend 2008+‘ (click to see the complete map, PDF warning).The map is based on the Shanghai underground, having 5 major lines (Society, Politics, Economy, Technology, Demographics) - connecting 5 big trends (Digitalisation, Globalisation, Ageing, Anxiety and Virtual Worlds) trough smaller trends, hypes and phenomena. Dawson places Virtual Worlds at the heart of Technology and Society for 2008 webtrends.
Continue reading "Virtual Worlds at the Center of Technology and Society Trends" »
A record $27.5 billion in ad agency accounts went into play in 2007, as clients elbowed one another to get chairs closer to the railing on the Titanic.
Those are some expensive chairs. Half of the total amount spent the year prior was up for grabs. The numbers, compiled by Adweek, cover accounts worth more than $20 million. You can imagine similar turmoil in smaller accounts. Or perhaps more.
by: John Caddell
In which we select the best of the annual Harvard Business Review list of twenty breakthrough ideas (free link) for the benefit of time-constrained executives everywhere. This service is provided at no extra charge.
Continue reading "Top 5 Harvard Business Review Breakthrough Ideas" »
by: Christian Smagg
Got your marketing plan ready for 2008?
Let me first ask you this simple question since you would be surprised (or not) to discover that a startling 40% of marketing professionals don't even have a formal marketing plan. Surprisingly, not everyone develops a plan - even though most will agree that it is the foundation to successful and effective marketing.
Continue reading "36 Online Techniques to Supercharge Your 2008 Digital Marketing Plan" »
by: John Caddell
A column in today's Wall Street Journal boils it down for us: "...[C]ompanies need to 'reinvent' the way they sell, to focus on their customers rather than product features."
Stop me if you think you've heard this one before.
Continue reading "How to Fix Your Selling Process in 192 Pages (not)" »
I got the latest Fast Company nearly a week ago. I browsed the cover and noticed the "Un-Tipping Point" headline on the cover. I then packed the magazine in my bag planning to read it on the train.
I never did.
Continue reading "Influence Ripples, Tipping Points + Toast" »
Continue reading "Bridging The Gap Between Online and Offline Shopping" »
by: Roger Dooley
Why Choose This Book? How We Make Decisions by Read Montague sounds like the perfect read for neuromarketing and neuroeconomics enthusiasts. In fact, the book does provide some interesting insights but the overall density of actionable information, at least for marketers, is fairly low. The title might lead one to believe that the book is a distillation of consumer purchasing behavior, but in fact it is a wide-ranging discussion of the neuroscience of human decision making.
by: Ilya Vedrashko
Last November, I spent some time poking around and trying to figure out where the "an average American is exposed to 5000 ad messages" number had come from (see the original post). President of Yankelovich J. Walker Smith, whom I cited as one of the sources, offered his explanation in a comment to the post on Hill Holliday blog:
Continue reading "Dissecting Advertising Clutter, Part II" »
by: David Armano
Is there really such thing as an "un agency"?
I'm always on the lookout for patterns: And the industry is full of them right now.
by: Idris Mootee
I've seen a few downturns and what happened to ad spend. In most cases ad-spending plunges 8-12% when there is a slow down, but I think this time is little different. I was having lunch with a friend who is the CEO of a vertical content and search company in California and we're talking about this subject and we shared the same opinion. Digital media will be a shining star in this downturn.
by: Alain Thys
Just when you think the blogosphere has nothing new to offer you run into Idris Motee. As CEO and Chief Strategist at Idea Couture, his blogging personality explores the intersection of business strategy, experience design and disruptive technologies.
And today, we're proud to welcome him as a contributor to the Futurelab blog as well. All we can say is ... fasten your seatbelts.
by: Rick van der Wal via Business and Games Blog
On the internet we present ourselves differently to different audiences. Of course this is not a purely digital phenomena, but the internet has greatly amplified our need, and ability to do so. As Joseph B. Walther, a professor of communication and telecommunication at Michigan State University, told the New York Times in a recent interview, On-line Social Networking is like “impression management on steroids”.
by: John Caddell
It's not a trick question. There may be little difference at all. The Getty is one of several museums that have been accused of systematically acquiring stolen antiquities. (The Getty last year agreed to return forty disputed works to the Italian government.)
Continue reading "How is the Getty Museum Different from Enron?" »
by: Karl Long
Found this video on Jonnie Moore's always thought provoking blog. It's a collaboration of 200 students in an anthropology class that looks at the defining characteristics of students today.
by: Guy Kawasaki
You've got to read "Is the Tipping Point Toast?"
by Clive Thompson in FastCompany. The gist of Thompson's piece, based on the work of Duncan Watts of Yahoo Research, is that the theory that a select few "key influencers" matter more than "the rest of us" when it comes to viral and word-of-mouth marketing campaigns is flawed.
Check out this very clever Napkin PC designed by Avery Holleman that is perfect for collaborating designers. Using e-ink and RF technology it allows designers to draw in colour and skip the very tedious stage of transferring the sketch into a digital format.
Continue reading "Finally a PC That Every Designer Has Dreamed about!" »
by: Ilya Vedrashko
Ross Dawson: "While last year's map was based on the London tube map, the 2008 map is derived from Shanghai's underground routes. Limited to just five lines, the map uncovers key trends across Society, Politics, Demographics, Economy, and Technology."
Original Post: http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2008/01/world-trend-map-2008.html
by: Ilya Vedrashko
Not too many of those. Actually, just one.
by: Dick Stroud
This is a general observation about marketing not something specific about the 50-plus.
by: Nancy Baym
My favorite band, Madrugada, has released a new record. It’s an emotionally-loaded time for them and their fans: their guitarist, whose contribution to their sound cannot be replaced, passed away last summer, just a month after most of this record had been recorded. The surviving members returned to the studio, finished the record, and have just released it to fawning reviews.
I put "customer loyalty" in the same category of happy myths as those of creation science, voter intelligence, and brand equity.
Most loyalty programs are just another form of sales incentive. Call them what you want, but point or mileage accrual engenders little more trust or conviction than an annual holiday bonus check. Repeat customers as likely to be trapped by habit or circumstance as by any sense of commitment.
by: David Polinchock
Thanks to copyranter for the tip on this piece. Wow, 44% of people surveyed don't believe anything a company says! If ever there was a reason to understand the value of compelling, authentic and relevant brand experiences, this could be it! If this many people don't believe what you say, you better give them a good reason to believe what you do! There's not an industry on the list that cracks 40% trust and that's pretty sad. Some interesting numbers:
Continue reading "Polls: 44% Normally Disbelieve Any And All Company Statements" »
by: Roger Dooley
As described many times here at Neuromarketing, paying for a product activates the brain's pain center, particularly if the price seems too high to the person making the buying decision. Starbucks is the company that taught us that $5 for a cup of coffee (or at least for a skinny mocha peppermint latte with an extra shot ) isn't too much too pay.
by: Scott Goodson
The Nielsen Company today released its annual Guide to the Super Bowl which showcases a wide range of consumer and media information about the most notable marketing event in the U.S. - the NFL's Super Bowl - scheduled for February 3 in Glendale, AZ. For more information email the very friendly...Lucy.Aleman@nielsen.com
Continue reading "The Nielsen Company's 2008 Guide To The Super Bowl" »
by: Rick van der Wal via Business and Games Blog
The business communicators of Second Life blog posted a very interesting interview with Mary Ellen Gordon, president of research company Market Truths. They asked 9 questions on the value, and how to approach, market research in Virtual Worlds (Second Life in particular). When asked for the reason why to do research in Virtual Worlds at all, she answered:
Continue reading "8 Reasons to Do Your Market Research in Virtual Worlds" »
by: Nancy Baym
Last.fm users may have noticed that the 2-toned indicators of whether a song could be streamed in its entirety or for only 30 seconds changed colors today. The small aesthetic shift is a sign of a much larger one announced on the Last.fm Blog today:
by: Roger Dooley
Long recognized psychological phenomena and various aspects of human behavior are being localized in the brain daily, it seems, and the latest to be studied is discovery, often referred to as an “Aha!” or “Eureka!” moment. This is the turning point when one realizes that one has found what one is looking for or has solved a vexing problem.
by: Ilya Vedrashko
During commercial breaks,
by: Dick Stroud
nfpSynergy is a UK research consultancy for not for profit organisations (e.g. charities, housing associations and public bodies).
After all of the zillions in hours and money spent on making the world's corporations customer-centric, there's one brand experience that most companies seem dedicated to delivering: making consumers wait.
by: Dominic Basulto
Starbucks is quietly rolling out a pilot program of $1 coffees and free refills to customers at select stores in Seattle. Despite all indications that Starbucks is slowly morphing into a McDonald's-like fast food chain complete with dollar menus, highway rest stops, and drive-through windows, Starbucks spokespersons vigorously deny the notion, claiming that the pilot "is not indicative of any new business strategy."
Continue reading "Starbucks Rips Another Page from the McDonald's Playbook" »
by: David Armano
The question isn’t if we’re heading into a recession. It’s how bad will it be—and what we learn from it? As marketing budgets feel the squeeze of the housing crisis and a slowing U.S. Economy, now is a good time to think about opportunities. That’s right. Opportunities. It just happens that the digital medium could be your best friend in a time when belts tighten. Here’s a few starters for how digital can help your business or brand thrive in a recession:
Continue reading "10 Ways Digital Can Help You Thrive in a Recession" »
by: John Caddell
The most useful part of Danny Ertel and Mark Gordon's recent book "The Point of the Deal," to me, is this lesson: in a negotiation, if you convince the other side to do more than it can reasonably deliver, you have not won anything. More likely, you have set up the project for failure.
Continue reading "Don't Let Negotiating Counterparts Overcommit" »
by: David Wigder
One of the most effective ways to syndicate content is to activate power users on sites such as Digg. Quite simply, “Diggers” uncover and bookmark interesting content – news articles, images and videos – for others to view.
Continue reading "Green Content Syndication: Part II - Top Environmental Diggers" »
by: John Caddell
Collaboration is in. The WSJ Business Insight article "Leading From Below" states, "at most companies, senior managers are increasingly hamstrung by the demand from investors and analysts for immediate results"--requiring middle managers to provide leadership at the company level. Other scholars say dissent in the workplace is to be encouraged. The democratic organization is gaining traction.
Continue reading "Collaboration or Individual Leadership? Which Is It?" »
What a mess!
About 5 or 6 months ago, I decided that I needed to simplify my life.
Due to a lot of diverse interests and that little bit of an overachiever in me, I have a bad habit of taking on and doing more than I can actually handle. Furthermore, the fact that I tend to lose interests in things very quickly or jump around on different projects does not help me one bit at all. Coupled with the stresses of my job, I was just flat out overloaded!
Continue reading "How I Simplified My Life and Became a More Efficient Designer" »
by: George Silverman
In an article last Monday in the Wall Street Journal, reporter Emily Steel described the growing trend of using online social networks -- both existing and company-encouraged -- for marketing research. It's a very dangerous trend, as I point out in my letter to her. Many companies are headed for disaster if they give undue weight to the opinions expressed on their online networks.
Continue reading "Using Online Networks for Market Research Can Be Dangerous" »
by: Yann Gourvennec
Good morning, we are on Monday, the twenty first of January zero two thousand and eight. No this isn’t a typo, but rather a sign that we are taking into account the fact that humanity still has a few millenniums to go through. Well… hopefully!
Continue reading "Long Now Foundation: Slower Pace, Better Future ... Well Maybe" »
by: Guy Kawasaki
All hail Garr Reynolds! He has written the definitive book about making great presentations: Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter)
. To give you a taste of his book (and increase my link count), here are ten questions (really thirteen) with Garr.
by: Roger Dooley
It appears that neuromarketing practitioners face one more challenge in analyzing brain scans. Research at Stony Brook University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford University shows that people from East Asian cultures use their brain differently than people raised in the U.S. The study, titled “Cultural Influences on Neural Substrates of Attentional Control,” appeared in the January issue of Psychological Science.
by: David Wigder
Traditionally, publishers have viewed websites as content destinations, challenging marketers to drive traffic to specific websites in order to engage consumers with relevant content.
Continue reading "Green Content Syndication: Part I - "Deconstructing" Websites" »
by: Dominic Basulto
The above video is IBM's tongue-in-cheek look at corporate brainstorming events. This 0:30 ad has been played over and over during each week of the NFL playoffs as IBM reminds managers all over the country to just do it when they get back into the office on Monday.
[video: IBM Commercial: Idea-ting Session]
Original Post: http://endlessinnovation.typepad.com/endless_innovation/2008/01/what-are-you-do.html
by: David Polinchock
You know, there are many companies that we would all expect to respond like this, but Target isn't among them. I'm with David Burns from Adpulp on this one. Companies have to work much harder then this if they want to not wind up as fodder for the blog world -- and the MSM.
Continue reading "Target Doesn't Engage With Non-Traditional Media - AdPulp" »
According to Gizmodo there is an uncanny resemblance between the great work of Dieter Rams to the work of Jonathan Ive head of Industrial Design at Apple.
Continue reading "Jonathan Ive, Design Genius or Something Else?" »
by: John Winsor
What happens when two companies advertise their respective products in the same 30 second spot? It’s intrusive and disjointed. Still, does doubling up on ads boost both brands? What if one brand has poor memory recall or is associated with poor quality? Does it bring down the other brand? It will be interesting to see the effects of “double-branding,” and in particular, on this spot for HP computers and the newly released action-film, “Jumper.”
by: Idris Mootee
Here I am with Adam (a smart and creative guy who started with us only for a week) in our new office. He was given three tools to get started: 1/ a power drill 2/ a IBM tablet and 3/a blackberry. He has a typical profile of the people that we carefully select ..the left and right brainer..the raw material for an innovation provocateur.
Continue reading "Why Is It Even Harder for Leaders to Innovate?" »
by: Yann Gourvennec
Very often, I hear people say that you have to make your end-user’s lives easier to generate a marketing success. However paved with good intentions this statement may be, I did ask myself the question whether making users’ live easier is a sustainable marketing argument for the development of a business.
Continue reading "Is User-friendliness a Sure Marketing Bet?" »
by: Roger Dooley
Brain studies are providing lots of new insights into consumer behavior, but this post recognizes a new and important role for marketing based on neuroscience research. If you are an occasional Neuromarketing reader (or grazer!), this is one post that you may want to bookmark.
by: Eliane Alhadeff
Following my recent posts Serious Games Market Enroll Major Players, $9 Bi: Microsoft's Conservative Estimate For The Serious Games Market and Microsoft Shaping The Serious Games Movement Into A Multi-Billion Dollar Market , I thought it was time to go deeper into the Microsoft ESP Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) platform under a marketability perspective.
Continue reading "Microsoft ESP Leveling The Serious Games Market Playing Field " »
World stock markets are crumbling. Financial institutions are writing-off losses in the billions. Workers are in fear of losing their jobs. Home-owners are scared of looming mortgage payments. The dismal holiday sales and ongoing economic uncertainty suggest that nobody is feeling too comfortable with spending money. And the mid-term outlook doesn't look any better.
by: danah boyd
In writing Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship, Nicole Ellison and I wrote many iterations of the definition of the term "social network sites" and why we chose to use this instead of "social networking sites."
Continue reading "let's define our terms: what is a "social networking technology"?" »
by: David Armano
We are living in an age of ambient interruption. Gone are the days when we flipped through channels while Ads interrupted our programming. Broadband, wireless and file sharing killed the radio star and all our media is served to us on a "need it now" basis. We think we need it? We go out and get it. We've been liberated to ignore the assault on our senses telling us to buy, asking us to try and selling the myth of brand.
by: Dick Stroud
The IPA’s 2007 Agency Census has just been published. I rushed to see what was happening to the age of agency staff. Wow, the percentage of under 30s are increasing.
Fart jokes. Bad puns. Scantily clad models.
That's what the commercials on Super Bowl Sunday will give us next month. Created to appear but once in the light of TV, the spots will endeavor to out-dare one another in a virtual arms-race of foolishness, ribaldry, and expense.
by: Eliane Alhadeff
The revelation that games could be serious has now become conventional wisdom: "we've gone from games representing life to becoming life".
Continue reading "MellaniuM: When Reality Feels Like a Serious Game " »
by: John Caddell
When I was growing up in the northeast US, it became fashionable for weather forecasters to declare, "This is one of the ten best days of the year!" And I always wondered what happened if they used up their ten-best days too early--for example, not being able to duly recognize a spectacular October 17th.
Such is the risk in proclaiming a book on January 14 to be one of the best books of the upcoming year. But if I read five better books than "The Opposable Mind" this year, it will have been a good year indeed.
by: Christian Smagg
While every day seems to bring a whole bunch of predictions and thoughts for this new year (and the decade to come!), I have selected this excellent article from The McKinsey Quarterly entitled "Eight business technology trends to watch". In a Nutshell, this article provides an extremely interesting overview of emerging technology-enabled trends that will shape businesses and the economy in coming years.
Continue reading "Predictions for 2008 ... Eight business technology trends to watch" »
I've written for the past few years now on my utter befuddlement over Super Bowl advertising.
We live in an age when making a connection between the fleeting exposure of mass-market awareness and subsequent sales keeps getting harder, less dependable, and certainly more expensive. Yet some bold, damn-the-torpedoes brand marketers seem committed to not just thinking otherwise, but putting their employer's/client's money where their, er, bravado is.
Continue reading "Exploring Adjacent Sector Innovation Requires External Provocateurs" »
by: Roger Dooley
For Neuromarketing readers, it’s not big news that the perception of wine drinkers is altered by what they know about the wine (see Wine and the Spillover Effect, for example). Now, researchers at Stanford and Caltech have demonstrated that people’s brains experience more pleasure when they think they are drinking a $45 wine instead of a $5 bottle - even when it’s the same stuff.
by: danah boyd
As everyone knows, Kenya has been in a state of unrest since the corrupt elections in December. Interestingly, a surge of homebrewed cyberactivism has emerged to aid in information flow and resource sharing (as well as political organizing). As an example, take a look at Afromusing's Twitter stream which contains regular updates from Kenya.
Continue reading "mobile phone credits as currency in Kenya" »
by: David Armano
Meet David Lee King. David's a librarian. David's interested in transforming the library experience. He's also interested in Experience Design—specifically, Digital Experience Design.
Continue reading "Digital Experience Design + A New Book From David Lee King" »
by: John Caddell
Dave Snowden, whose posts are always interesting and instructive, says this in a post today:
What I am finding is that the more accurately you can describe the situation, the less you need formal intervention methods. For example if I can show a statistically valid trend, supported by narrative then most people in leadership or management positions can work out what they need to do.
Continue reading "Complex business problems need diagnosis, not packaged solutions" »
by: danah boyd
The Economist is doing an "Oxford-style debate" on the following proposition:
Given that MySpace and Facebook are ubiquitous, can social networking be defined as the "collective power of community to help inform perspectives that would not be unilaterally formed" or is it simply a distraction for students? Can these tools could be used in the classroom?
Continue reading "The Economist Debate on Social "Networking"" »
Continue reading "Phone quest, or Please be less creative" »
by: David Wigder
While many corporations leverage the Internet to distribute information about environmental initiatives, a few companies are going much further by facilitating two-way dialogue with stakeholders.
Continue reading "Corporations Foster Dialogue On the Environment" »
by: Joel Makower
Can a major consumer packaged goods company with a name indelibly associated with household bleach become a leading light in the green marketplace?
Early this year I wrote about the Top 5 consumer trends to watch for 2007 and how it relates to Industrial Design. Following tradition, here we go again for 2008, and this time it is a little earlier and hopefully will help all of us be a better prepared in our never ending push to identify, synthesize and create a product that could become the next big thing.
Continue reading "8 Important Consumer Trends to Look out for in 2008" »
by: Michael Hoexter
Other than functional differences between renewable and fossil fuel generators, one of the main issues related to green and renewable energy are the capital and the per unit energy costs of new, cleaner energy systems.
After an 18-month development process, Xerox has unveiled a new corporate logo: a "friendly" font, and a red ball wrapped in band-aids. It promises to spend many millions this year to promote its new brand.
by: David Jennings
In a review of Net, Blogs and Rock'n'Roll (the book) in this week's Spectator, Christopher Howse writes
by: Eliane Alhadeff
Blended Learning involves the use of multiple learning environments - usually some combination of physical/face-to-face and online/virtual approaches.
In the strictest sense, blended learning is when an instructor combines two methods of delivery of instruction. However, this term most often applies to the use of technology on instruction.
by: Scott Goodson
A friend of mine Anne from Helsinki wrote a wonderful description about the spectacular styling and profiling found in the nordic capital of Helsinki. There is something incredible happening up there that I've never seen before. It's not London or Paris or even Tokyo, it's something far more interesting and distinctive.
Have a peak...
by: Idris Mootee
While going through some my old files, I accidentaly discovered a small privately published book of DDB (now TBWA) in memory of 40th anniversary of the agency. Founded by Bill Bernbach (1911-1982), one of the early advertising legendaries of Madison Avenue. I remember it was given to me by then the president of the agency in 1989. It is a collection of his words.
Continue reading "Agencies Consolidation and Mega Mergers - Some Thoughts" »
I
had just finished giving a talk about youth culture to a room full of
professionals who worked in the retail industry when a woman raised her
hand to tell me a story. It was homecoming season and her daughter Mary
was going to go to homecoming for the first time. What fascinated this
mother was that her daughter's approach to shopping was completely
different than her own.Continue reading "Technology and the World of Consumption" »
by: Joel Makower
This just in: pretty much every consumer is concerned about the environment and is thinking conscientiously about what they buy — how it's made, under what conditions, and by whom. All you have to do is make good, green stuff and they'll buy it! We've reached the tipping point!
Continue reading "News Flash: 110% of Consumers Shop Green!" »
by: C. Sven Johnson
Here’s a quick note to call attention to something that might be of interest: Another avatar fabbing outfit has set up shop. Most of you are probably already aware of Fabjectory, the service that’s been “3D printing” Second Life avatars and objects for the last year or so. Well now there’s a service available for fabbing World of Warcraft game characters.
by: George Silverman
The New Hampshire Primary is a cautionary marketing tale.
The polls missed the Clinton victory by a mile yesterday, yet they were right on target with the McCain victory. Why?
Continue reading "Things Are Not Always as Simple as They Seem" »
by: Dominic Basulto
The return of Howard Schultz to Starbucks in the CEO role -- combined with the deluge of press attention about the looming showdown between McDonald's and Starbucks for the hearts and minds of coffee drinkers around the world -- raises a very interesting question: To what extent can the founder of a company spark a turnaround by returning to the CEO role?
Continue reading "Starbucks turns to its founder for a spark of innovation" »
A site's signup page is the second most important page on a site (the most important is the home page itself) because this is where you're asking for committment. Everyone worries about the home page (and still don't do a good job), but most companies do a poor job with the signup page.
Continue reading "Neuromarketing Shoots Itself in the Foot" »
by: Guy Kawasaki
A broker friend of mine sent me this Merrill Lynch report, "Top Internet Themes for 1H'08", by Justin Post. The report contains useful information if you're in online businesses. It discusses these six themes/events:
Continue reading "Merrill Lynch 2008 Internet Trends Report" »
by: David Jennings
This is the season where many bloggers are providing their predictions for the year ahead. I tend to opt out of these because a year is both too long and too short to foresee many types of change, which are like rainstorms or earthquakes: you know one's coming, but you don't know quite when or where until the early warning signs appear. I'm more of a Long Bets man, so today I'm going to revisit something I've touched on occasionally in the past, most recently nearly two years ago: the falling price of MP3 players and the possible implications for listening/buying experiences.
Continue reading "Your New Year Resolution - Unlock Your Creative Mind" »
by: Eliane Alhadeff
On 30th November Visualise was at the Wales Rally for the first public trial of the enhanced Visualise system.
Continue reading "Serious Games Radically Enhancing Spectator Experience At Public Media Events" »
by: Guy Kawasaki
Scott Shane of Case Western recently published The Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths That Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By
Continue reading ""Spamturitis" and Facebook's Signal to Noise Factor" »
by: Scott Goodson
Rio de Janeiro is the most spectacular city in the world against any criteria. Mine include "views" (Rio scores 100%), "Music" (again Rio gets the highest marks), “Beaches” (Impenema and Copacabana!). And “Beautiful women” (ok, ok it's a little chauvinistic but true none-the-less!), again Rio gets full marks. But something else is incredible about Rio, and it’s something you may least expect – graffiti.
Continue reading "Street Graffiti - Another Reason to Visit Rio de Janeiro" »
by: Joel Makower
I've long been an admirer of Gary Hirshberg, the idealistic and iconoclastic "CE-Yo" of organic yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm, which he co-founded in 1983. I first met Hirshberg a decade later, in 1993, when researching my book about corporate social responsibility, Beyond the Bottom Line.
Continue reading "Gary Hirshberg: Changing the Culture and 'Stirring It Up'" »
Continue reading "Cosmetic Neurology: Brain-Boosting Drugs" »
by: Lynette Webb
At my old agency we used to sometimes talk about “the immunised consumer”. The point we were trying to make was that the practice of ad avoidance isn’t just to do with tools that people employ to block out ads - be it the fast-forward button on a DVR, pop-up blocker, etc.
Continue reading "Consumers Treat Advertising Like Trains" »
A new report by the UK National Union of Teachers - Growing up in a material world - shows that contemporary marketing and commercialization practices have devastating consequences on youth:Continue reading "what are marketing and advertising's social responsibilities wrt youth?" »
by: Idris Mootee
I just finished reading Business Week' s latest "Innovation Predictions 2008" and there are 3 things that I am interested most since they resonate with what my company is doing and my personal interest. Let's look at those three:
Continue reading "B-Week Innovation Predictions 2008 - Some Thoughts" »
The CEO!
Bruce Nussbaum, the person that I see playing an important role in bridging the gap between design/innovation and business, offers up his “Top Ten Innovation Mistakes”. While a good read in general, I find his first point is by far the most important and salient.
Continue reading "The Biggest Hinderance to Innovation in an Organization Is..." »
by: Eliane Alhadeff
Games that provide players with opportunities to learn and understand complex situations or different points of view have emerged as a distinct subset of videogames.
Increasingly, creators are taking the definitions of “play” and “learn” in new directions, often blending the two creatively.
Ok, you probably know by now that I'm no Nostradamus.
I'm less interested in making predictions of what will be, but rather forecasting issues that might be relevant to us, whether as trends impacting business...or potential areas of experimentation and exploration that could prompt said trends.
Continue reading "remix culture and fair use: a new study" »
by: David Wigder
As companies plan their green investment strategies for 2008 and beyond, they should take into account that caps on carbon emissions are all but inevitable in the future. In fact, it is highly likely that caps will be in place in the US within the next few years. The 187 nations that attended the UN climate conference last month in Bali (including the US) agreed to negotiate a successor agreement to Kyoto by the end of 2009. Perhaps more importantly, Congress already has several climate bills under consideration.
If 2007 was a year wherein lots of companies got their collective heads around Internet search, 2008 could be the year they start thinking about what to do when they're found.
Continue reading "2008 Prediction #4: Less Search, More Found" »
Continue reading "The Cooling of Russian Design, Web and Advertising" »
Continue reading "B2B Public Relations & Blogs: Policy, Resources, Process & Promotion" »
Continue reading "New Year's top resolution: Managing your online reputation!" »
Continue reading "Partnership Pitfalls and Avoiding Murder" »
In 2008, we're all going to move closer to becoming gamers.
I'm not talking just players of actual games, per se, although those segments of consumers are growing exponentially:
by: Sigurd Rinde
I believe we are making a huge and unconscious mistake in how we handle knowledge; how we capture, organise and distribute facts and information for assimilation. It might have a wide-ranging negative impact on all what we do, and I think we should do something about it.
Continue reading "Knowledge Handling - the Neglected Opportunity" »
Continue reading "Clients Are Demanding Agencies to Reinvent Themselves" »
by: Alain Thys
At Futurelab we've decided not to do any New Year Cards or gifts, yet instead put the money into Kiva loans. Still, as we did want to convey you our best wishes, we put together this short presentation with eight things we ponder as the new year is upon us (and you might want to give some thought as well).
by: Jon Miller
Here are 50 more blogs about business-to-business marketing, bringing the total on the complete Big List of B2B Marketing Blogs to 138 blogs.
B2B marketing still lags far behind other categories of marketing blogs, so please keep letting me know via comments if you find any B2B blogs that I missed.
As always, here is the updated B2B marketing blog OPML file.
Continue reading " Lists of social networking sites – mainly for the 50-plus" »
Here's a funky New Year's resolution for you: I intend to make fewer decisions on my own, and instead outsource them to people I don’t even know.
I don't think I'll be alone in doing so.
Continue reading " An ad that seems to work across the generations" »
by: C. Sven Johnson
{Update: It’s great to see an entry like the one I came across on Kim Pallister’s blog yesterday (Link). I’d learned about Build-A-Bear Workshop sometime last Summer iirc [Note: as I thought… on Raph Koster’s blog - Link], and my thoughts then were very much the same as what he details in his post, and pretty much follow the kinds of things I’ve been discussing here in other entries.
It's very likely that we're going to hear lots more in 2008 about the magic and glory of endless conversation. I'm going to suggest that we might see just the opposite start happening or, if not, that we should.
Continue reading "2008 Prediction #1: Finish Conversations" »
