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On this blog we assemble the world's sharpest minds in marketing and strategy innovation. People who spark exceptional insights in their field of expertise and inspire their readers to action.

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April 30, 2008

The Lost Librarians of National Defense?

by: Nancy Baym

Information Week has an interesting article up about Lost fandom. It talks about Second Life recreations of Lost spaces, ABC’s official sites, and Lostpedia, the wikipedia for Lost fans:

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Social Media Beginners: Lesson 3 - User Generated Content

by: Matt Rhodes

When people talk about new media, social media or Web 2.0, there is often one thing in common: user generated content (UGC). This is really what the essence growth of Web 2.0 is. Web sites are crammed full of videos, photos, reviews and articles written by users. This reflects a shift not only in the amount of time people are spending online (more), but also a change in the reason for going online.

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No Ownership, No Accountability - Wikis, Collaboration Software, Social Media, Enterprise 2.0 and How Not to Get Things Done.

by: Sigurd Rinde

The buzz around Enterprise 2.0 / Office 2.0 is palpable, one conference after the other with $ 50 k stands offering yet-another-wiki-version trying to snag the enterprise CTO/CIO.

Continue reading "No Ownership, No Accountability - Wikis, Collaboration Software, Social Media, Enterprise 2.0 and How Not to Get Things Done." »

Your final chance to vote for us at the Webby Awards

Today is the final day you can vote for us on the Webby Awards. So if you haven't done so, here's your chance to give us that little piece of encouragement or appreciation. Go to http://pv.webbyawards.com, look for the category Best Business Blog, and cast your vote.

Frog Design's Earth Day Presentation

by: Design Translator

In honor of Earth Day, Adam Richardson, Director of Product Strategy at Frog Design has shared a presentation he gave to introduce Frog Design during the “Design Green Now” panel discussions.

As Adam mentions, comes across a little light little without his supporting talk, but it does give you an idea of what Frog is doing to save the earth. Thanks for sharing it Adam.

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Micro Interactions + Direct Engagement

by: David Armano

So here's a presentation I gave recently to a client. I'm thinking through the concepts of "Micro Interactions" and "Direct Engagement".

Continue reading "Micro Interactions + Direct Engagement" »

April 29, 2008

The 2008 Shareholder Season

by: Joel Makower

proxy2008.jpgSome of the most important voting of the year doesn't involve candidates or political parties. It's taking place between shareholders and the companies they own.

It has become an annual rite of spring: a bumper crop of shareholder resolutions filed by activist investors aimed at compelling companies to address any of a wide range of social and environmental issues. This year is no different.

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Best Neuro Practices for Visual Communications

by: Ilya Vedrashko

67 Best Practices for On-Screen Communication
Press release (Apr.17, 2008): "NeuroFocus has distilled and compiled its findings into 67 key points, or "best practices", designed to serve as a roadmap for ensuring that visual communications on a screen match what the brain desires to see the most, and what it responds to the best."

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Money, Social Status Similar in Brain

by: Roger Dooley

Why do people do things that will gain them social approval? It turns out that the same parts of the brain are activated for a positive social outcome as for a monetary reward. In other words, the same reward circuitry is turned on both by social and monetary gains. Corporate marketers as well as non-profit fundraisers have always known that most individuals crave social approval, but these new findings show how our brains process these social rewards and how they relate to money.

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Kzero on Brands in Second Life

by: Rick van der Wal via Business and Games Blog

I was really disappointed when I had to miss Nic Mitham’s (of Kzero) presentation at the Clever Zebra vBusiness Expo two days ago (Last day today!). Thankfully Nic was kind enough to post his excellent presentation online. I really love his take on the ‘corporate islands’. Most brands who have entered Second Life have bought their own island, developed a playground and tried to attract visitors to their virtual places.

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April 28, 2008

Abercrombie behind Obama

by: Ilya Vedrashko

All these people in A&F behind Obama - not a product placement.

Which brings up an old question: what's the effect of news photography on a brand?

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MacArthur Forum Talk on "Teen Socialization Practices in Networked Publics"

by: danah boyd

Last Wednesday, I gave a talk in Palo Alto as part of the MacArthur Forum "From MySpace to Hip Hop" alongside the rest of the Digital Youth Research Team. I'm still waiting on the videos and as soon as I have them, I will post them. In the meantime, I thought that I'd share my crib from the talk. For those of you who know my work, much of this will be familiar. Still, it's a pretty good overview of my project. Enjoy!

"Teen Socialization Practices in Networked Publics"

Original Post: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2008/04/27/macarthur_forum.html

Precise Pricing Pays Off

by: Roger Dooley

precise_pricing.gifIn my time as a catalog marketer, I almost always priced products just below the next dollar increment - a cheap item might be $9.97 rather than $10, while a more expensive item may have been $499, or even $499.99, instead of $500. My strategy was based on a couple of assumptions.

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How Good a Friend Is a Last.fm Friend?

by: Nancy Baym

With my colleague Andrew Ledbetter at Ohio University, I’ve been finishing up a paper looking at relational development amongst “friends” on Last.fm. Our paper’s been accepted for presentation at the Association of Internet Researchers’ annual meeting in Copenhagen in October. Here’s the abstract. Forgive the heavy academese:

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What Happens When You Disappoint Your Devoted Customers?

by: Matt Rhodes

Your devoted customers are your most active advocates. Positive experiences in the past have taught them to have high expectations of you - they expect a great experience and they’re devoted to you because they get what they expect. But just as these customers are you most active advocates, they can also be the easiest to disappoint and can quickly turn into detractors.

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April 27, 2008

In Quarter of Homes Only One Person Can Control Technology

by: Lynette Webb

I’m only surprised it’s not lower. :-)

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Forget the Art School. Photo-sharing Sites Have Their Own Ideas about Beauty

by: Scott Goodson

Today's NY Times Magazine has a wonderful story about Flickr and the potential for very talented people to rise above the networking and nomenclature of the established photo schools. In her article, Virginia Heffernan points to an Icelandic amateur photographer named Rebekka Guoleifsdottir as one good example of the rise of talent over the Flickr photo-sharing site. And in my opinion, Guoleifsdottir is very good indeed. She would certainly catch my eye if her book crossed my desk at StrawberryFrog. It's a good article. Have a read here and have a look at Rebekka's photos if you have the chance.

Continue reading "Forget the Art School. Photo-sharing Sites Have Their Own Ideas about Beauty" »

Interactive Marketers, the New Stick in the Muds?

by: Karl Long

Is the web really moving so fast that the recently, bold, innovative, interactive marketers are now the “traditional” media? Are they obsessed with RIA/Flash based “orgies” for the senses and missing the boat a little on the “new” marketing, the conversational marketing, the blog marketing, the social software etc.

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A Consumer Guide to Virtual Worlds

by: Rick van der Wal via Business and Games Blog

blue_book.jpg

The Association of Virtual Worlds released a useful 40 page eBook listing all Virtual Worlds available, completely free for download:

Continue reading "A Consumer Guide to Virtual Worlds" »

April 26, 2008

WorldBlu 2008 List of Democratic Workplaces Released

by: John Caddell

worldblu-list-2008-award-logo.thumbnail.jpg

WorldBlu, the organization headed by a friend of this blog Traci Fenton, has unveiled its second annual list of democratic workplaces.

Workplace democracy is still a rare concept, but a growing number of companies are allowing workers a voice in their company, encouraging dissent, and otherwise involving the entire employee base in shaping and running the organization. WorldBlu evaluates companies on these factors:

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Get More for Your House with an Odd Price

by: Roger Dooley

home_for_sale_price.jpg

I love research findings that run counter to intuition, or are at least unexpected, and the idea that you can get more for your house if you market it with an odd price is certainly unexpected. That’s what University of Florida researchers found, though:

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Spy Tech: from Interactive Museums to Serious Games

by: Eliane Alhadeff

Spy Museum - Your Mission: Learn the Craft of Espionage Through Top-Secret, Interactive Exhibits.

In an age of Google, YouTube and Sony's PlayStation, museums have to work a lot harder to make subject matter culturally relevant to young people.

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Video: Business Model Innovation in Private Banking

by: Alexander Osterwalder

This week I participated in a high-level panel on strategic and operational private banking models in the 21st century in Zurich Switzerland. I talked about business model innovation in private banking (not meaning the innovative financial products that provoked the current financial turmoil, of course).

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April 25, 2008

What Is Social Media?

by: Mark Rogers

This definition of social media is hard to beat. It boils to three steps:

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Who's Sexier - Tom Ford or Dov Charney?

by: Scott Goodson

picture_7_2.jpgPerhaps they are equally sexy. And that's a marketing challenge if one portfolio of product is a great deal more expensive. How do you feel the luxury and fork over thousands of dollars more for one shirt vs another?

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The Myth, Science and Craft of Music Discovery

by: David Jennings

Marc Cohen writes a challenging post on The Myth of Music Discovery. Citing a Digital Music News report of two venture capitalists agreeing that "the next big thing is going to be music discovery", Marc says this ought to be enough evidence that it won't be.

Continue reading "The Myth, Science and Craft of Music Discovery" »

April 24, 2008

Elevator Design Rooted in Deception

by: Ilya Vedrashko

A fascinating reading for experience designers comes this week from The New Yorker that has obtained and published time-lapsed security camera footage of a man who, in 1999, spent 41 hours stuck in an elevator, and accompanies it with a detailed feature about the history and specifics of the "vertical transportation" industry. The article also has a few great paragraph of observations on human behavior and how elevators are designed to accommodate for it:

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Thoughts on the Metaverse

by: Rick van der Wal via Business and Games Blog

I was writing a reply to Dusan Writers (great new design by the way) article on the ‘Sheeps Sweet Spot’ called ‘The Thinner the Client, the sweeter the Pie‘- Overall a good article and as it triggered a line of thoughts I’d been having myself lately It ended up a rather long reply and wanted to keep it documented on my own blog. Maybe to laugh at it at a later point, maybe to get back to in the near future (Why is it some realizations can seem so ‘right’ at some point, and a couple of days later lose all meaning…)

Continue reading "Thoughts on the Metaverse" »

More Choices, Fewer Sales

by: Roger Dooley

Consumers must like lots of choices - why else would there be hundreds of shampoo brands and variants on a typical supermarket shelf? Actually, its been known for years that too many choices can reduce consumer purchases. A 2000 study at Columbia University compared consumer behavior when confronted with a selection of either six or 24 gourmet jams in an upscale grocery store. The bigger selection did indeed cause more customers to stop and check it out - 60% vs. 40% for the limited selection.

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April 23, 2008

Better than Google Search, Better than Ask Search

by: Scott Goodson

The quality of search engines will change and get better and more user friendly.

Here is one that I LOVE. Feels a little like the nav you get on Apple itunes. But it's very cool.

Check it out here.

Original Post: http://scottgoodson.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/04/better-than-goo.html

Brand Interactions Are the Future: But Are Interaction Designers Part of Your Agency?

by: David Armano

 "Call them information architects, experience designers or Jack or Jane -- they are the design geeks who love to sweat the details. They care about "micro-interactions" and toil away at the building blocks of what actually results in a "lovemark" in the end. We love to use applications that help us do things like plan vacations, find old friends and share our passions with the world. The ad industry has made a big mistake in the past by thinking technology was for geeks. Technology, in fact, is a love affair."

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April 22, 2008

Email Has Become the Bane of People's Professional Lives

by: Scott Goodson

How many people out there feel a lot like Michael Arrington below in this article from today's NY Times? Last week, I wrote about the problems facing the advertising and communications industry in simply producing more spam. The tables are going to turn. Simply creating and sending out more spam isn't going to work. The smart brands won't do this. They'll do the opposite. They'll help you edit out the spam and keep only what's important. The good stuff. The relevant stuff. People just can't humanly react to all this eletronic stuff being sent their way.

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Change Is...

by: David Polinchock

On the subway this morning and my car has one side taken over by the Change Is campaign by Delta airlines. Change Is: The only U.S. airline flying to Capetown or Change Is: Flying to Heathrow. I'm sure you've seen the ads. Someone actually pointed out to me that the Greek sign for change is delta, but I guess I never really got that. But the thing is, the changes they listed don't really seem all that big. I mean, is the airlines such a patriotic industry that we would be excited that Delta is the only US.airline flying to South Africa? Didn't do that much for me!

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Thought of the Day

by: David Armano

Are your marketing initiatives insight led or trend driven?

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April 21, 2008

Putting the B(ees) in Buzz

by: Nancy Baym

Swarmteams is a project led by Ken Thompson exploring whether the same sorts of processes that insects and other biological entities use to organize group behavior through short term low range signaling can be applied to human social groups such as fans.

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Why Sh*T Matters in Design. What?

by: Design Translator

This little video excerpt by Allan Chochinov (of Core77 fame), during his presentation at the PSFK Conference New York 08, talks about his observations he made of his students after he asks them to design the perfect pooper-scooper.

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Internet Will Overtake TV as Biggest Ad Medium in 2009

by: Scott Goodson

Last week Google reported an unprecedented profit surge during a recession in the US while everyone else was reporting the opposite. And now this news from my friend Nishad who gave me this tip.

MSNBC Reported today that online ad spend will overtake TV in 2009 in the UK.

Here is the full article: 

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Earth Day, Green Marketing, and the Polling of America, 2008

by: Joel Makower

opinionpolls.jpgIt's time for my (second) annual survey of surveys — the bounty of public opinion polls on green topics that seems to sprout every spring in time for Earth Day. A half-dozen or so years ago, there were perhaps a couple such surveys. Today, there are more than a dozen, ranging from substantive to silly to self-serving.

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April 20, 2008

US Lags in Social Media Creation, per Survey

by: Scott Goodson

Brian Morrissey of Adweek quotes a new survey that says the US lags behind many other countires in Social Media.

Here is his article:

Consumers in the U.S. and Western Europe are more likely to be passive participants, while those in emerging markets often create content

April 18, 2008

-By Brian Morrissey

Continue reading "US Lags in Social Media Creation, per Survey" »

April 19, 2008

If the News Is That Important It Will Find Me

by: Lynette Webb