YOU LIKE ME? REALLY?
Advertising Age and the Ipsos Observer people released new research [1] in mid-February that sought to better understand the social media habits of US consumers. To no one’s surprise, Facebook is the dominant social network through which users want to receive communications from marketers. Nearly 75% [...]
CHIRPING FROM THE CHEAP SEATS
Please allow me to re-visit what is now very old news in the social media world. Somehow I missed it when it happened. Malcolm Gladwell, journalist and author of significant acclaim, wrote an article which appeared in The New Yorker magazine’s October 2010 issue titled: [...]
SURPRISES & NOT FROM THE MEDIA WORLD
It makes sense to be forward-looking at the beginning of the year. Some of what I learned in researching-up for this topic was a surprise to me, and some of it, luckily, actually made sense: 1. Where Online Media is Going It’s always discussed with [...]
WIELDING THE SWORDS OF HUMOUR
Humour in marketing. No weapon in the marketers’ arsenal is as potentially powerful and so often misused. At the most simplistic level, humour in marketing works like this: If an ad makes us smile, we like the ad and the brand too. I get the [...]
REVISION TO: THINKING OUTSIDE THE GRID
I hate it when truth gets in the way of a good story. I recently had a long and interesting chat with the senior marketing person at Audi Canada during the period I wrote about in an Oct 5th post on this blog. Now I need to revise my [...]
THINKING OUTSIDE THE GRID
Marketing gurus and practitioners are constantly talking about how vitally important it is to project a consistent brand image. And it is. Everyone understands this best at the literal level, which has resulted in the creation and enforcement of corporate or brand identity guidelines. These can [...]
SHOPPING BETTER THAN SEX?
RESEARCH PROVES IT.
A research study was reported in the mainstream news media yesterday. Inexplicably, it caught my attention: “TITILLATED BY THE SALES TAG—Turns out people can get as excited spotting a deal as they do watching porn.” [2] The article’s thesis is based on a recent study by [...]
WHAT DOES YOUR BRAND STAND FOR?
As both marketer and consumer, I’ve always been attracted to brands that stand for something beyond making money. How a brand handles adversity (product or service problem in the market), or any controversy, is a very good indicator of the values of the company and [...]
THE GRACIOUSNESS OF ‘NO’
Throughout history, every generation seems to accuse those following of being less socially polite and respectful. There is a lot at play in this comment. It can’t be completely true or we would all be treating one another like Neanderthals by now. I think it’s [...]
WHAT WE CAN ALL LEARN FROM MOUNTAIN BIKING
In case you hadn't guessed, one of my very favourite things is mountain biking. There are many reasons for this: You do it outdoors, often in incredibly beautiful places It's a big physical and mental challenge without the monotony of road biking or spinning It's safer than road [...]
DARWIN & THE ELUSIVE INTERNET BUSINESS MODEL
What do Facebook, YouTube & Twitter all have in common? Quite a few things, actually: All three are hugely popular Internet-based social media (admittedly, YouTube doesn’t usually get called social media, but based on the next point, it is) All depend on their users/members for [...]
AVOIDING THE HIDDEN COST OF COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
There is no escaping modern communication technology. In business, you must use email, a smart phone and some sort of online meeting program. These tools certainly can be more directly cost-efficient than conversing and meeting the old-fashioned (human) way. But unless they are used with some balance, [...]
NIKE, TIGER & PAYBACK
Nike’s “Earl and Tiger” TV commercial has created a lot of reaction, good and bad, since it aired on April 8th, one day before this year’s Masters tournament. Reviewers have called it everything from creepy to ironic to brilliant. It certainly has elements of all [...]
WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE SUPER BOWL?
Nothing's wrong with the game. In fact, it has been great the last few years, even for a non-fan like me. So shouldn't the marketing world be over-joyed about the world's biggest TV event, where over 30% of the viewers watch just to see the commercials? [...]
MARKETING XENOPHOBIA?
An innocuous little throw-away at the end of a story in Marketing Online caught my attention and jostled my memory the other day. It was a report on Molson Canadian’s new ad campaign from Zig. The article outlines how Zig’s new campaign evolves the iconic [...]
THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS
A couple of months ago, independent Toronto agency Cundari revealed the results of a self-rebranding exercise. The outcome was a revised logo and a new slogan, "It's the thought that counts." It's a nice tagline. The rebranding is all very familiar until you understand what [...]
RE-INTRODUCING THE POWER OF CREATIVE
It’s all too easy to become jaded about the creative side of the marketing business with time, even if you are a creative person. It’s easy to see how this happens: You see too many millions of dollars spent against weak or even silly creative [...]
INFORMATION-RICH, ATTENTION-POOR
Last month, The Globe & Mail ran an opinion piece on the state of today’s world, “Information-rich and attention-poor.” The basic idea, as you can guess from the appropriately descriptive title, isn’t ground-breaking news. But the author, Peter Nicholson, is President of an organisation called [...]
THE UNFORTUNATE GREATNESS OF MAD MEN
I recently forced myself to watch Mad Men because there are just too many references to the award-winning series coming up in everyday conversation these days. It even pops up in conversations about design. It is everything I feared it would be. We could have [...]
MAY I SPEAK TO A HUMAN BEING, PLEASE?
I understand the need to make businesses more efficient, but I get the uncomfortable feeling that there is a head-long rush to cut people out of customer contact at every possible opportunity. Even in customer service, and that can never be good for the customer. [...]