It really is so lame to start a blog and then promptly abandon it two months in. In my defence, I’ve been working on something new.
In ways both good and bad, I usually act on gut instinct rather than methodical research. About five days after meeting Carrie McCarthy and Danielle LaPorte I rather presumptuously suggested [...]
Gradual Change
Marketing —
Category Archives: Marketing
And now for something completely different
Success Factors
Investors and entrepreneurs often pitch business models by describing them as a fresh or niche-focused take on a high profile success story. Angel investor Jeff Clavier allegedly described parenting social network, Maya’s Mom, as “Dogster for moms”, but this unfortunate example aside the point is simple: apply a business model that worked elsewhere to a [...]
Big Brand Free
Funny, I was looking through the kitchen cupboards today and realized that, except for some razor blades, I haven’t bought any mainstream consumer packaged goods for a long time. I’m sure I can’t be alone. Even though profits remain healthy at the big CPG companies, it’s developing markets that are primarily driving growth.
Actually, there were [...]
Penny Wise, Pound Foolish
Large, slow-moving and bureaucratic companies are an easy target for critics, but so what, it’s often fun and illuminating to pick on easy targets. Particularly when they descend to the pettiest behavior for the sake of cents today that will cost them dollars in customer loyalty tomorrow.
I returned a DVD to my local Rogers Video [...]
When Marketing Isn’t Enough
I went to my local drugstore today to pick up razor blades. I wasn’t shocked by the price so much as I was by the realization that it’s taken me this long to be shocked by the price. $32 (taxes in) for eight blades, or $4 per blade. I poked around the web and found [...]
Someone Else
I’m a car guy, although sadly one without the resources to fill his driveway with exotics. In fact just to get my one and only vehicle into my tiny garage I have to perform an intricate backing up maneuver, with the odds of knocking off a wing mirror or two standing at about 50/50. But [...]
Cautiously Pessimistic
The Economist hedged its bets today, predicting that advertising spending might soften in 2008, or 2009, or it might not. I actually prefer this caution to bombastically certain predictions, but further down in the story there are a couple of interesting observations. The second is paraphrased from Trevor Kaufman, CEO of WPP-owned Schematic.
Search advertising, the [...]
Getting Down to Business
I had a lengthy discussion yesterday with a friend who’s a passionate advocate of web-based alternatives to the traditional office productivity suite. We were chatting about the surprised discussion in the blogosphere recently, regarding the relatively small number of US Internet users who have even tried Zoho, Google Docs or any of the many purely [...]
Influence
A few years ago I was involved peripherally with the Chief Marketing Officers Council and their initiatives on marketing performance measurement. More recently I did some consulting work for a luxury auto maker to consolidate marketing data from various online and offline channels and create a dashboard for this information. And more recently still I’ve [...]
Breaking News: Marketing Still Difficult!
Let me play devil’s advocate here… Where exactly is the evidence that the relationship between brands and consumers is changing so radically? Yes, much more diverse media inventory is available and gets populated than used to be the case, but mostly it’s filled with regurgitation of ideas and affinity to brands that has been generated [...]