The Flack & The Guru
American Airlines' announcement last week that it would charge $15 for a checked bag was met by disdain and contempt in the communications industry.
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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Contributing Blogs
May 31, 2008
Episodic Games, Here to Stay? A Look at Penny Arcade
by : Alex Eperjessy
Today on Business&Games, Penny Arcade Adventures: On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. It's an adventure game, it has a title long enough to raise one of your eyebrows and it might just spearhead a new generation of episodic games created and published outside the sphere of big name companies. Let's see what perspectives this could open for both developers and advertisers. But first, a quick brief to acquaint you with the game's creators, before we move to talk about the game.
Continue reading "Episodic Games, Here to Stay? A Look at Penny Arcade" »
Are You Suffering from Facebook Addiction Disorder (FAD)?
by: Idris Mootee
A growing body of research in the area of addiction suggests that Internet Addiction Disorder is becoming a real problem, it is a psycho-physiological disorder involving tolerance; withdrawal symptoms; affective disturbances; and interruption of social relationships. The most common one is Facebook Addiction Disorder (FAD).
Continue reading "Are You Suffering from Facebook Addiction Disorder (FAD)?" »
Golden Rules for Corporate Blogging: Preliminary Questions (2/3)
by: Yann Gourvennec
Preliminary questionsFirst and foremost, define the purpose of your corporate blog even before you start writing the first line. What is the objective of this blog? Is it about awareness? Is it intended for you to share knowledge with the community? Is it there to show that your corporation and its experts are particularly good at something?
Continue reading "Golden Rules for Corporate Blogging: Preliminary Questions (2/3)" »
May 30, 2008
We Are Carrying too Many Cards? Someone Needs to Solve This Problem
by: Idris Mootee
I've come up with two great ideas today. Here’s a big one for Facebook ....create a digital card that can replaces all the membership cards to replace all the cards that we carry and jam our wallets. Make it the size of an iPhone and I can just flip through my card on a touch screen. Or make that application reside on an iPhone.
Continue reading "We Are Carrying too Many Cards? Someone Needs to Solve This Problem" »
My 9 Commandments for Marketing Your High-Tech Company
by: Jon Miller
As VP Marketing at a B2B marketing automation company, I’m under constant pressure to take our marketing to the next level. When marketing to other marketers, the way we interact with our own prospects is a direct reflection of the capabilities of our lead management solution. If we can't market ourselves like a world-class company — and make it look easy — then why should our customers trust us to help them do it?
Continue reading "My 9 Commandments for Marketing Your High-Tech Company" »
Golden Rules for Corporate Blogging: Introduction (1/3)
by: Yann Gourvennec
IntroductionOnce your Corporate stakeholders have understood why Web 2.0 is more than a fad and why its marketing could benefit from it (read our 15 golden rules for Web 2.0) and once they have established how their 2.0 strategy should be articulated (refer to our interactivity matrix), quite a few questions remain: how to create a professional looking blog and how to make it known?
Continue reading "Golden Rules for Corporate Blogging: Introduction (1/3)" »
May 29, 2008
OPC (Other People's Cameras)
by: Guy Kawasaki
There are approximately thirteen million CCTV cameras in the United Kingdom. They are use to monitor people for security reasons--not all the time, though. A band called The Get Out Clause played their music in front of eighty cameras, requested the footage citing the Freedom of Information Act, and put together a music video
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TV Ads 'a Waste of Money' for the Back-in-Black Gap - Advertising Age - News
by: David Polinchock
I started to write about this article to focus on this the headline of this article TV Ads 'a Waste of Money' for the Back-in-Black Gap, 40% Jump in Profits Indicates Merchandising Initiatives Are Paying Off -- when I got to the bottom of the article where they had this to say:
Continue reading "TV Ads 'a Waste of Money' for the Back-in-Black Gap - Advertising Age - News" »
Web 2.0 for marketers
by: Dick Stroud
Last week I gave a presentation about the joys of Web 2.0 and why marketers should wake and leave the house with a spring in their step at the opportunities that the Web 2.0 technologies and applications bestow. I am not sure the audience saw it that way but I thought I would share the presentation with a wider audience.
Why People Participate in Online Communities
by: Matt Rhodes
A great post last week from the NEXT web on why people participate in online communities (see post here). It’s an interesting read, bringing together various bits of thinking in this space.
Continue reading "Why People Participate in Online Communities" »
May 28, 2008
This Brand Needs Rehab
The Gap has proven again, as if we needed another reminder, that it's addicted to an old, ruined, costly, and self-destructive idea of what constitutes a brand.
High vs. Low Design
by: David Armano
I recently did a phone interview for the User Interface Resource center which is sponsored by the folks at Adobe, Microsoft and Effective UI. The folks at Effective UI were interested in having an informal discussion around the concepts of "high design vs. low design" that is, highly-designed "experiential" applications that push the limits of technology and human interaction (Think slick desktop applications) vs. solutions that don't quite push as hard on (think Craigslist, Flickr, or Twitter).
Twitter and "Every Minute Accounted For"
by: John Caddell
I've been using Twitter for the last several weeks and I find it interesting, though I'm not yet at the point where I see breakthrough applications for it. They may be out there; I'm just not experienced enough to see them.
Continue reading "Twitter and "Every Minute Accounted For"" »
May 27, 2008
Who Killed The Marketing Funnel? Accidental Marketers.
by: David Armano
That's the title for my contribution to the "Age of Conversation 2" which is currently being pieced together by editors Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton as I write this. My contribution will include the above visual—here's a brief snippet:
Continue reading "Who Killed The Marketing Funnel? Accidental Marketers." »
Social Media Metrics
by: Matt Rhodes
Next week I’m speaking at the SocialMediaInfluence conference in London on Measuring Influence and Audience online. It’s a tricky subject and looking around today I have been unable to find any examples of an approach which has been successfully and repeatedly applied.
May 26, 2008
Learning By Doing
by: David Armano
I'm Wrapping up my time spent at ID's Strategy 08 conference held at Chicago's MCA. It's been a great couple of days filled with nuggets of inspiration ranging from the topics of designing for the other 90 percent, and changing the culture of corporations through design thinking. But hands down for me, the most intriguing talk was given by John Seeley Brown also known as "JSB".
On Slow Blogging
by: David Jennings
About a month ago, or maybe two, I was on the sofa at London's Social Media Cafe having a chat to David Wilcox. We had no deals to do, and no pressing initiatives to scheme about, but our interests and contacts overlap at several points, and it was a wide-ranging discussion. I can't remember quite how it came up, but we started to talk about our approaches to blogging, and particularly the tacit pressure to provide more or less instant comment on developments in our respective fields.
May 25, 2008
SKI Is Alive an Kicking
by: Dick Stroud
The dreadful term Spending the Kids Inheritance (SKIing) is one of the few age-jargon phrases that has stuck in mainstream language.
Communication Lessons from the Deaf
by: John Caddell
Is it possible that losing one sense can improve one's ability to communicate? Aerospace consultant Bruno Kahne asserts this in an amazing article in the magazine Strategy + Business ("Lessons of Silence").
Why on Earth Would Barney's New York Launch a Target Brand?
by: Scott Goodson
In a very interesting twist of premium fashion melting into the Target Warehouse culture, Barney's New York will launch eco-friendly Rogan for Target.
Continue reading "Why on Earth Would Barney's New York Launch a Target Brand?" »
Business Week Thinks beyond Blogs
by: Matt Rhodes
Three years ago, Business Week published a cover story predicting that blogs would change your business. This week they have followed-up with a piece showing how quickly and how far things have moved since then: Beyond Blogs.
May 24, 2008
SF Chronicle on Neuromarketing
by: Roger Dooley
I’ve been trying to catch up on the neuromarketing press after my lengthy trip, and found that an article in the San Francisco Chronicle provided a nicely balanced, if not highly detailed, look at the field. The story focuses on two Bay Area firms, NeuroFocus and Emsense Corp.
Eco-labels Impact Consumer Behavior
by: David Wigder
Eco-labels influence consumer behavior in two ways. First, they introduce green as a considered attribute at the point of sale. Second, they enable consumers to comparison shop based on green. Over the past few years, there have been many new eco-labels launched by governments, manufacturers and retailers. Many of these labels are listed on Consumer Reports’ Greener Choices site.
Fans Will Be the Most Comprehensive Curators
by: David Jennings
There's a section in my book called "Creating and Curating the Archive" where I wrote,
Continue reading "Fans Will Be the Most Comprehensive Curators" »
A New Can of Soup
(note: this is part 5 in this week's 5-part series on the brandification of our lives)
Although Andy Warhol didn’t exhibit his first art show until 1962, I think we've been seeing art as brands since the late 19th Century...or perhaps forever.
If we define a brand as "the perceptual aggregation of qualities that constitute the experience of something," then the corollary fits perfectly. Nobody experiences art separate from the influences of context:
Social Media Beginners: Lesson 4 - Principles of Engaging People Online
by: Matt Rhodes
It’s been a while since the last installment, so apologies for that. This time we’re going to look at a few principles for engaging people online.
Continue reading "Social Media Beginners: Lesson 4 - Principles of Engaging People Online" »
Look Inside the "Black Box" of Today's Organization and You'll Understand What's Wrong
by: Idris Mootee
How is an organization born? Is it usually by design? What's inside that black box of an organization? Do we think about how organizations should be organized in the first place .... or we just take any org chart and add titles? How often do people try to invent a new organizational form to fit their needs? Not very common. No wonder why companies can break out of their performance trap.
May 23, 2008
Naoto Fukasawa: Without a Thought
Now this guy below has to be one or my all time favorite Industrial Designers. Simply because he has been able to successfully combine his unique design philosophy with a very obvious sensitivity to manufacturing constraints. Something a lot of designers these days do not seem to be able to do well.
Denise Lee Yohn: Goodson Does Lunch-Time Chats
by: Scott Goodson
A few years back, I met Denise while she was running marketing at Sony USA. We had just started StrawberryFrog USA, and she was one of the first people I called. We had won the AIWA business out of our StrawberryFrog Europe office, and the head of marketing for Sony (AIWA) Europe gave me the introduction. Denise was incredibly nice and helpful. For this I am eternally grateful (it all comes around right!).
Continue reading "Denise Lee Yohn: Goodson Does Lunch-Time Chats" »
Tony Ulwick's "Customer Job Innovation Map" in May Harvard Business Review
by: John Caddell
Recent Shop Talk Podcast guest Tony Ulwick, with Strategyn colleague Lance Bettencourt, has written an article in this month's Harvard Business Review ("The Customer-Centered Innovation Map").
Continue reading "Tony Ulwick's "Customer Job Innovation Map" in May Harvard Business Review" »
Designer Salvation
(note: this is part 4 in this week's 5-part series on the brandification of our lives)
Lots of people shop for religion, and some even get their salvation custom-designed. It didn't used to be this way.
Religion was something you were born with, like eye-color, and its practice was a given. Societies enforced it, even if you as much as entertained the possibility of switching allegiances. So did the religions themselves; eternal damnation was a stiff penalty for canceling your account.
May 22, 2008
"Senior Leadership Teams" Is Essential Reading for Executives
by: John Caddell
I recently related a story for the Mistake Bank about my experience as a senior leader with a medium-sized IT company. It involved a particularly difficult senior team meeting and my nasty reaction to a colleague's questioning a decision I'd made regarding a member of my team. I recalled the story because I was reading "Senior Leadership Teams" by Ruth Wageman, Debra Nunes, James Burruss and Richard Hackman, which discusses that peculiar species--the team of leaders.
Continue reading ""Senior Leadership Teams" Is Essential Reading for Executives" »
Princess Puts Pain into Cruising
by: Roger Dooley
Regular cruise ship passengers almost always say that cruising is the least painful way to travel. Once you are on the ship, there’s no packing or unpacking as you visit new destinations, and you are pampered 24/7. Your cabin is straightened and cleaned several times per day, and an endless cornucopia of food is available. Passengers can see live entertainment, attend lectures, play games, or do nothing at all if they so choose. For many, that’s a painless way to spend one’s travel time.
Building Power and Respect through Marketing Accountability
by: Jon Miller
CMOs have long fought hard to earn the power and respect they deserve. Today's CMOs face greater challenges than ever to demonstrate that their actions have a real impact on revenue, cash flow, and the bottom line.
Continue reading "Building Power and Respect through Marketing Accountability" »
Finding Equity in Labor
(note: this is part 3 in this week's 5-part series on the brandification of our lives)
Earlier this year, I wrote that Karl Marx was prescient when it came to explaining the woes of corporations that find themselves chasing the same consumers.
Without ever having sipped a double espresso skinny latte, he worked through a model that predicted companies would tend to pursue monopolies (via acquisition, or simply by destroying the competition), vertically integrate, squeeze workers until they earn the least possible, and then commoditize human experience.
May 21, 2008
Web 2.0 Is Velcro
by: David Armano
From my latest contribution to Advertising Age:
Michael Eisner at Advance08
by: David Polinchock
I got to listen to Michael Eisner rehearse yesterday and enjoyed it a great deal. His first point is that the killer app is creative storytelling. Long relationship between storytelling and emerging technologies. Storytelling is an emotional experience and there's no better way to connect with consumers.
Wii Advergames
by: Ilya Vedrashko
There are quite a few advergames designed to be played on the popular Wii console out there.
Jonathan Ive on Apple's Industrial Design Strategy
Claire Beale is one of the lucky few that has been granted a rare interview with Jonathan Ive, who, unless you have been under a rock in the past decade, is Apple’s senior vice-president of Industrial Design. You know, that guy responsible for the iMacs, iPods, and iPhones etc?
Here it is with all the good parts and non design bits snipped off. The Bold bits are mine.
Continue reading "Jonathan Ive on Apple's Industrial Design Strategy" »
Facts & Theories
(note: this is part 2 in this week's 5-part series on the brandification of our lives).
Shorthand is anathema to science, isn't it?
So are metaphor and analogy. Ditto for most any sort of imaginative modeling. Anything that might truly help communicate a scientific theory, or observable fact, generally confounds the invention of such concepts. The what invariably gets all messed up with the why, and versa visa.
Can't Find the Words to Describe Web 2.0?
by: Matt Rhodes
Michael Wesch is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University and leads the Digital Ethnography Working Group. He was trying to find a way to describe Web 2.0 for a paper that he was writing and found that words were not quite enough - instead he created this video. Showing us rather than telling us what Web 2.0 is.
Continue reading "Can't Find the Words to Describe Web 2.0?" »
May 20, 2008
Facebook, MySpace, Second Life, Hi5, Twitter - the Social Networking Wars
by: Scott Goodson
Everyone is being overwhelmed with a flood of requests to join all the different social networking sites. Last night I was invited to the latest one - hi5.
This video sums it up for me...hilarious.
Continue reading "Facebook, MySpace, Second Life, Hi5, Twitter - the Social Networking Wars" »
Malcolm Gladwell on Innovation "Multiples"
by: Dominic Basulto
Malcolm Gladwell returns to the pages of The New Yorker with a story about "innovation multiples" -- independent discoveries or inventions that occurred at the same time, but in different places.
Continue reading "Malcolm Gladwell on Innovation "Multiples"" »
Never Having to Say You're Sorry
(note: this is part 1 in this week's 5-part series on the brandification of our lives. In the spirit of full disclosure, I am a political Independent).
The Republican Party is going to try to "rebrand" itself this year.
"It's not that the party's going to change, it's what we talk about and how we talk about it," explained House Minority Leader John Boehner last week.
May 19, 2008
How Much Would You Pay for Free?
by: Ilya Vedrashko
How much would you pay to use Twitter? How about Facebook? Gmail? Would answering a simple "How much would you pay for it?" question help us to understand how the valuable is perceived differently from the disposable?
The One Video All Marketers Should Watch
by: David Armano
The video below is a presentation given by a couple of staffers from the small experience design consultancy Adaptive Path to employees at Google. It's a compilation of thoughts that has been synthesized into a book titled "Subject To Change".
Continue reading "The One Video All Marketers Should Watch" »
Office Buildings as Peaker Plants
by: Joel Makower
My speaking schedule last week took me to Toronto, to a conference of commercial building owners and developers, along with a corps of product and service purveyors that do business with them. It was a good time to talk about the future of office buildings, looking beyond LEED and other green-building considerations to examine the role of buildings in a cleaner energy future.
May 18, 2008
H&R Block Do Social Media
by: Mark Rogers
H&R Block used social media marketing to boost their profile and raise awareness of their digital accounting product, reports Ad Age. The lady responsible was Amy Worley (Photo: Jonathan Fickies). They used YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Second life. As AdAge comments, this kind of marketing in social media is “about stacking up many small ideas to create a big total impact”.
History of In-Game Advertising and Advergames: The First Wave
by: Ilya Vedrashko
A couple of years ago, I wrote a thesis on in-game advertising. One chapter about history didn't make it into the final version, but now you can view and download the entire chapter in its original format, complete with proper references. Here, I am publishing a series of excerpts, illustrated, where possible, with screenshots and gameplay videos that have began to appear on YouTube. This first installment deals with the early years of advergames. The next one will be about brands and arcades.
Continue reading "History of In-Game Advertising and Advergames: The First Wave" »
Lots of B2B Marketing Webinars
by: Jon Miller
I've been doing quite a bit of speaking recently along with other B2B marketing experts. Here's a round -up in case you missed some of them.
What's the Difference Between Platform Strategy vs. Business Strategy vs. Product Strategy?
by: Idris Mootee
Platform is a fairly new word in the world of business strategy. It has existed in the engineering world for a long time. What is a Platform?
May 17, 2008
100 Million Hours of Ads a Weekend?
by: Ilya Vedrashko
You might have already seen Clay Shirky's now famous speech about cognitive surplus given at Web2Expo and the dramatic comparison of the time spent watching TV (200B hours a year in the US) and building Wikipedia (100M hours total).
The Mistake Bank Manifesto
by: John Caddell
I've been reading the new book "Senior Leadership Teams: How to Make Them Great," by Ruth Wageman, Debra Nunes, James Burruss and Richard Hackman. Very close to the end of the book I found a passage that is a better explanation of what's behind the Mistake Bank than anything I could write myself. While it's focused on senior leaders, I think the ideas work for anyone who has a job or owns a business. [I'll do a full review of the book next week. Sneak preview: it's very good.]
Germany Is in the "Second Round" of the Ageing Process
by: Dick Stroud
This article in the FT should still be available. If not it will only take a minute to register for free. It is worth the effort.
German politicians have recently decided to increase pension payments after pressure from the voters, the majority who are 50-plus. Some are expressing the fear that Europe's largest economy is turning into something approaching a dictatorship of the old. And what is wrong with that?
Continue reading " Germany Is in the "Second Round" of the Ageing Process" »
May 16, 2008
To Progress in Complex Environments, Experiment
by: John Caddell
I was talking to my wife tonight about a discovery I'll call the "Mistake Bank Manifesto" which I'll post about later. The upshot of what I was saying is that the folks who wrote the Mistake Bank Manifesto (I named it, others created it) asserted that learning from mistakes, while exceptionally useful to senior leadership teams, is often highly unnatural for very successful leaders.
Continue reading "To Progress in Complex Environments, Experiment" »
How to Twitter Conferences Like a Rock Star
by: David Armano
I'm fast approaching having 3000 followers on Twitter. Though my followers on Twitter don't match the readership of this blog, it's a fairly substantial audience and I've found Twitter to be incredibly useful in a number of ways which I've spoken about at length several times.
Continue reading "How to Twitter Conferences Like a Rock Star" »
Can We Crowdsource Great Designs?
I stumbled over an interview conducted in 1957 between Mike Wallace and Frank Lloyd Wright where he discussed his thoughts on the common man and designing for the common man.
Wallace: What do you think of the average man in the United States who has little use for your ideas in architecture, in politics, in religion?
May 15, 2008
Twitter or Facebook?
by: Mark Rogers
The scene is the playground at my wife’s school in Oxford in the 1980s. Two children put their arms around each other’s shoulders, they start chanting: “Anybody want to play kiss-chase?” As each child joins they put their arms around the shoulders of a child at either end of the line they join in with the chant: “Anybody want to play kiss chase?” The chant gets louder, so more of the other children can hear. Finally enough people had gathered for a game of kiss-chase. The line breaks up and the game begins.
Leadership in Games Is a Task, Not an Identity
by: Alex Eperjessy
The title comes from the excellent Harvard Business Review article, Leadership's Online Labs. The article gives an in-depth view of the similarities between leadership in business and in games. While this is not the first time the subject is approached, the HBR article gives it the treatment it needs. And of course, gives the theory some weight...
Continue reading "Leadership in Games Is a Task, Not an Identity" »
War of the Concepts: Virus vs Spread
by: Nancy Baym
Last Thursday and Friday I had the pleasure of attending a retreat of the Convergence Culture Consortium, an alliance between a core group led by Henry Jenkins and William Uricchio in Comparative Media Studies at MIT, industry partners, and consulting researchers made up of people like myself looking at issues around participatory audiences, media convergence, and all that good stuff.
Web 0.0 to 5.0 - Spheres of Influence
by: Gary Hayes
Currently doing some talks about online buzz and the ‘network’ and thought I would share some of those cute charts I threw together to illustrate a few angles.
May 14, 2008
Social Networks 2.0 - Data Portability and Gated Social Networks
by: Idris Mootee
I have so many responses from my last post, I wanted to explore that subject more next week so for those who sent me emails or posted here plese bear with me and I will get back to you on those discussions. For now, I want to share some thoughts on social networks. We are all wondering how social networking is likely to evolve once we get past the current hype cycle. It is always good to start from the motivations of these social networks.
Continue reading "Social Networks 2.0 - Data Portability and Gated Social Networks" »
The Art of Survival: An Interview with Jerry White
by: Guy Kawasaki
Jerry White is the co-founder of Survivor Corps
(formerly Landmine Survivors Newwork). His changed in 1984 when he lost his leg in a landmine explosion while visiting Israel. After this experience he has championed the cause of survivorship and became a leader in the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. In 1997 he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Jody Williams for his efforts. He recently published a book called I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis.
Continue reading "The Art of Survival: An Interview with Jerry White" »
Integration Strategies for Better SaaS Adoption
by: Christian Smagg
I recently provided highlights on the role and impact of SaaS in a modernised IT environment and am trying to permanently observe the emergence of innovative offers that will bring the SaaS (r)evolution to its second and third steps. Over the last few months, I've been following RunMyProcess, an innovative European start-up who brings to the market a very interesting SaaS integration and aggregation platform.Continue reading "Integration Strategies for Better SaaS Adoption" »
The Ethics of Ethics
Consumers are willing to pay more for ethically produced products, according to a study published in yesterday's Wall Street Journal and the MIT/Sloan Management Review.
The researchers, both Canadian academics, defined "socially responsible" companies as those which are:
May 13, 2008
How Best to Manage "Design"?
Wow a burst of link love and pointers from all my friends today seem to revolve around this theme. So I thought to compile it all right here in one place!
1) Managing Successful Client and Designer Relationships: Adaptive Path Blog.
Converting the Converted, and Other Tricks of the Light -- Adrants
by: David Polinchock
Love this story from Brian Collins to describe what a brand is and how it should act. He always has great examples! Read the full article for other great stories that Brian told during the One Show presentation.
Continue reading "Converting the Converted, and Other Tricks of the Light -- Adrants" »
A Personal Relationship Makes All the Difference
by: John Caddell
I am working on two consulting possibilities at the moment. #1 is right in my sweet spot, basically leveraging the work I've done the past fifteen years. #2 is more of a stretch, and would ask me to work in a few areas where I have peripheral knowledge or no experience at all.
Continue reading "A Personal Relationship Makes All the Difference" »
May 12, 2008
Whispers
by: David Armano
Walking by the train tracks on my way to work one day, I noticed a tiny tree sprouting from the rocks alongside the tracks. Headphones on, and power walk in place, I saw it—but really didn't "see" it. But a "whisper" told me to stop. So I did. Taking off my headphones, I knelt down and took this picture. The whisper said "There's something here. Something to think about... How can tree grow in a place like this?".
May 11, 2008
Doom, Doom and Daft Names
by: Dick Stroud
If you believe the media and “research shows PR” then all ages of Europeans are in financial meltdown.
In the UK, Liverpool Victoria (finance company) has done some research and found that 66% of over 50s fear they face an impoverished retirement. Conclusion they should save more – guess what, LV provides saving products.
May 10, 2008
Brand Tags - Crowdsourcing Brand Perceptions
by: Karl Long
My good blogging friend and burrito fiend Noah Brier has created an interesting tool called Brand Tags. Essentially visitors to the site are shown a page with a brand on it and asked to tag it with the first word that comes to mind. Brand Tags then shows “tag clouds” with all the words people have typed, the bigger the word the more people typed that word, simple really and the results are going to be fascinating. Even in this early stage some trends are emerging.
Continue reading "Brand Tags - Crowdsourcing Brand Perceptions" »
May 9, 2008
Can We Fix Marketing? Most Best Practices Are in Fact Worst Practices.
by: Idris Mootee
On average I receive 2 calls a night if I am lucky enough to be having dinner at home and not traveling; these calls are properly timed so they know I will be having candlelight dinner with my family and that’s exactly the time for interruption.
Continue reading "Can We Fix Marketing? Most Best Practices Are in Fact Worst Practices." »
May 8, 2008
Sheetal Mehta - Goodson Does Lunchtime Chats
by: Scott Goodson
I have been interviewing a select group of people who impress me and who are doing their own thing in their own way. Stanley Hainsworth, Creative Director of Starbucks, Kerri Martin, and Lee Daley, former dude from Manchester United. I've been calling it Goodson Lunchtime chats.
Continue reading "Sheetal Mehta - Goodson Does Lunchtime Chats" »
Consumer Gadgets Needs To Think Sustainability Seriously
by: Idris Mootee
In two weeks (May 19), Material ConneXion and Li Edelkoort partner to bring to life LEFT/BRAIN/RIGHT, an event on the greening of architecture and design. The event will discuss the sustainable materials and technologies that are transforming design today and tomorrow. In Greening Perspectives 2010, trend forecaster Li Edelkoort will offer an emotional and human perspective on how green thinking is changing the way we perceive ourselves and the world around us.
Continue reading "Consumer Gadgets Needs To Think Sustainability Seriously" »
Mobilizing Generation 2.0
by: danah boyd
Ben Rigby and Rock the Vote have put together a book for activists, politicos, and organizers called "Mobilizing Generation 2.0: A Practical Guide to Using Web 2.0." It is a how-to guide to help those who want to mobilize using the web, focusing on how organizers can leverage blogging, social network sites, photo/video sharing, mobile phones, wikis, maps and virtual worlds.
Muddled Story-telling
For all I can tell, news of the latest off moment in Microsoft's on-and-off, sometimes contentious courtship of Yahoo! is good news, not bad.
The kabuki drama that is merger reporting in the business media would be silly if it weren't so blindly evident of deja vu, all over again. Here are a couple of different ways to look at the story:
May 7, 2008
No Female Business Gurus? Try this List
by: John Caddell
There was a fun article today in the Wall Street Journal that ranked the top business gurus by citation, Google hits and media mentions. Familiar names, like Gary Hamel, Malcolm Gladwell and Thomas Friedman are in the top 5.
Continue reading "No Female Business Gurus? Try this List" »
This Bud's for Sumer
So it turns out that Mesopotamian hooch was the first brand.
It was 5,000 years ago, according to archaeologist David Wengrow, when the disparate villages of Sumer began to grow and trade with one another, that stoppers in wine bottles appeared to identify products by type and source.
Coldplay vs. Judas Priest -or- The Benefits of Widgets
by: Nancy Baym
Last week, Coldplay made their new single “Violet Hill” available free for one week (one week? lame) for download from their official website. Last.fm tracked its listens and what a lot of them there were:
Continue reading "Coldplay vs. Judas Priest -or- The Benefits of Widgets" »
May 6, 2008
May 5, 2008
Exxon, the Rockefellers, and the Future of Big Oil
by: Joel Makower
Last week, the Rockefeller family made an historic challenge to Exxon Mobil Corp., the company founded by John D. Rockefeller in 1870 (as Standard Oil), and in which dozens of family members still hold stock. The challenge came in the form of a shareholder resolution to require an independent chairman of Exxon's board of directors, so that the company can better maximize long-term shareholder value in a rapidly changing energy environment.
Continue reading "Exxon, the Rockefellers, and the Future of Big Oil" »
Three Lenses to Look at the Emerging Discipline of Service Design
by: Idris Mootee
There were lots of talks around Software as a Service and it is actually becoming part of a major transformation of the software industry, and yet many still don’t fully understand what it takes to capture these opportunities.
Continue reading "Three Lenses to Look at the Emerging Discipline of Service Design" »
Bookmarkable Advertising
by: Ilya Vedrashko
Last week's news about Rolling Stone and Men's Health running promos where readers are invited to snap images of ads and send them in reminded me of a draft that I've been kicking around for a few months about bookmarkable advertising. It's not finished or polished but, I hope, useful for something.
May 4, 2008
Shouldn't Every Employee be a Brand Ambassador?
by: David Polinchock
I was doing an interview for a new book about experiential marketing and I was asked about the importance of brand ambassadors
. My response was that while they were certainly very important when you were doing marketing events, the truth is that there shouldn't be a select group of brand ambassadors. Every employee that you hire should be a brand ambassador. We've written about the importance of retail in the past and updated our thoughts:
Continue reading "Shouldn't Every Employee be a Brand Ambassador?" »
Harvard Business Review Article: Serious Gamers Hone Leadership Skills
by: Eliane Alhadeff
"Tens of millions of people are honing their leadership skills in multiplayer online games. The tools and techniques they’re using will change how leaders function tomorrow—and could make them more effective today."
Continue reading "Harvard Business Review Article: Serious Gamers Hone Leadership Skills" »
UK Research about Pensions
by: Dick Stroud
The figures published by the Office of National Statistics about UK pension trends make sobering reading. About two thirds of pensioner households received private pension incomes in 2005/06, but 40% of pensioner couples, 55% of single men and 61% of single women pensioners have an annual private pension income of less than £1,000.
May 3, 2008
Letting the Customer By
I wonder sometimes whether we should think a little less about selling to people, and a little more about allowing them to buy from us.
It's not such a subtle distinction.
May 2, 2008
Trucks and Gorillas
Cadbury Dairy Milk has released its latest piece of entertainment, this time featuring airport vehicles racing down a runway to the strains of Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now."
Clearly, nobody can stop these guys. They're the folks who brought us a gorilla drumming to Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight.
But they sell chocolate bars.
May 1, 2008
Telling the Heavyweights They Have to Be Agile - New York Times
by: David Polinchock
I started reading this article on the train home and something struck me as odd. All of the talk about how the ad industry needs to work so hard to change how the business is done. Well, that makes sense. Change happens in all industries. That's not really all that new, exciting or different.
Continue reading "Telling the Heavyweights They Have to Be Agile - New York Times" »
Message for Entrepreneurs - You Have to Shoot to Score
by: Scott Goodson
The Only Once blog has a great posting today about the need to 'Shoot to score' and anyone who leads an independent entrepreneurial driven organization will understand what this means.
Continue reading "Message for Entrepreneurs - You Have to Shoot to Score" »
Making What's Inconvenient Matter
by: David Wigder
An Interview with Mark Williams, EVP/Partner at The Martin Agency and Planning Director for the “We Can Solve It” Campaign
While many consider the release of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth to be a turning point regarding consumer awareness about climate change, consumer surveys indicate that much work is still left to be done.
The Future of Virtual Worlds
by: Rick van der Wal via Business and Games Blog
Another presentation by Cory Ondrejka (Former CTO of Linden Research, Inc.) on the future of Virtual worlds. I’m really glad it confirms some of my own, recent thoughts on the metaverse as I have a lot of respect for Cory’s vision towards Virtual Worlds.
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