Social Media: The New New Testament

Everything you ever wanted to know about social media, but was afraid to ask

The Future of Marketing, Today.

A lot of us in the new media/social media space have been talking about the fact that, the future of marketing will centered around co-creation and collaboration. I, for one, have been talking about co-creation and collaboration as key drivers of the future of marketing for quite a while. It is these concepts that sparked [...]

Santa Focuses On Bran Muffins and Soy Milk

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The digital age has been difficult for many marketers. All too often, marketers put the technological cart before the strategic horse. Facebook (and other social networks) is a breeding ground for campaigns that focus on the features of the platform, without telling a story.This is certainly not the fault of Facebook, rather it [...]

Branding: Without Your Brand

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All successful brands tell a story. Apple tells us a story about people who “think different.” Pepsi tells us the tale of a new generation and Disney tells a story about imagination and childhood. These are classic American brand stories — cultivated through traditional channels and originated (to a large degree) by the [...]

What Brand Managers Can Learn From High School Students

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No one knows everything (I am getting pretty close though ) and everyone has something to teach.

If you are a brand manager and think you know everything about your brand, think again
If you are a brand manager and think you know everything about your consumer base, you are in even worse [...]

We, The Value Seekers!

A couple of month’s ago, bald brother (and fellow crayonista), Greg Verdino and I took the stage at the iMedia Financial Summit in NYC. Our pitch (for the uninformed; our pitch was part of an agency shoot out, in which two agencies pitched for a mock piece of business. The case study at hand was, [...]

Caution Before Marketing

The above is the title I would have given my latest article over at iMedia–alas, they know best what brings in the traffic, and I love them for it
I bring up a number of topics that I plan on expanding upon on this blog. All of the marketing mistakes that I spell out [...]

We Agree, Brands Should Join the Conversation, but Do They Always Have To Be Nice?

I just stumbled across an article about the formation of a Facebook group by British Airways employees. This controversial group serves many purposes, one of which is to mock passengers.
These were employees of the company, and not spokespeople for the brand, however, this article got me to thinking about a few things.

In an era where, [...]

How Social Media Is Like Religion

Okay–I don’t really have any bullet points on how social media is like religion, but I just recorded a podcast with the great Lon Safko who is working on a book called, The Social Media Bible.
I don’t have a lot of time at the moment to explain all of the reasons that this project is [...]

Who Suffers From A Slow Down In Online Ad Spend?

(cross posted from the new iMediaconnection blog)
After a hectic week on Wall Street some industry analysts are predicting a downturn in online advertising spend for certain sectors. Other analysts are predicting a cut in ad spend across the entire industry as early as Q4. These predictions beg the question-who will suffer from such a state [...]