Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’

Evil, Ancient Greece, and other Marketing Stuff

Tuesday, December 29th, 2009
image credit: Raymond Yee

image credit: Raymond Yee

Is marketing evil?

When Seth Godin pondered the question earlier this year, he came to this conclusion:

Just because you can market something doesn’t mean you should. You’ve got the power, so you’re responsible, regardless of what your boss tells you to do.

Last night in a Twitter exchange with Jessica Gottlieb (@JessicaGottlieb) about how people market and sell, I suggested that the question isn’t anything new. In fact, I think it dates back a few millennia…

[Disclaimer: this post is purposefully philosophy light.
Email theword[at]wordpost[dot]org if you’re craving discourse on metaphysics]

Simple: A Case Study

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
a campaign by @shanemacsays

a campaign by @shanemacsays

Running a business, executing a successful marketing campaign, analyzing your sales data, all of this can be very complicated. But the experience your customers have shouldn’t be.

Simple is everything

Today I gave $5 to charity: water, partly because I believe in the cause (giving people access to clean drinking water), but mostly because Shane Mac asked me to. Shane explained to me that if he raises $5,000 (enough to build one well), charity: water founder Scott Harrison will play him in a ping-pong match in NYC.

An extension of social media? The word on Ads

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
Photo Credit: Stephen Gibson

Photo Credit: Stephen Gibson

Depending on who you talk to, it was either Lord Leverhulme (founder of Unilever) or John Wanamaker who first muttered the well worn phrase, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Either way, this quote is one of the most worthless pieces of word vomit spewed from the mouths of marketers today.

Are we really wasting parts of our budgets?

I have nothing against Tevor Young (@trevoryoung), but he like so many before him assumes an automatic and upfront wastage in the practice of advertising in his post (which was also featured on MarCom Pro).

We’re transparent, authentic, and on Twitter…now what?

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
We're on Twitter...now what?

photo credit: Troy Newell

I think we’ve reached the point at which if you aren’t transparent, authentic, and/or human you’ll be treated like a dirt sucking, crap-eating spammer.  I think we have to start talking more about what’s next.

I realize that I’ve regurgitated some of the hackneyed language of social media in Tweets and posts. But now is the time to move beyond those second order concepts like “relationships.” We don’t need any more lists of tips to help us get more followers. We need a strategic understanding of what the real-time web will look like so that we can write our business plans and outline our strategies for community engagement.

CMOs: “Social Media is Better In-House”…DUH

Monday, October 26th, 2009
Some things are just painfully obvious.

Some things are just painfully obvious.

When a group of CMOs were asked which group was best equipped to help them with social media, a recent post on Business Week reported the following:

65.6% In House
15.6% Interactive Agency
9.4% PR Firm
9.4% Social Media Agency
0% Creative/Ad Agenc

I may anger some of my friends in the agency world (I know, I was there once too), but I firmly believe social media MUST come from inside an organization in order to be credible. I think this is best illustrated in a quote from one respondent:

Seeing Marketing as Long-Term Investment (on iDea Anglers)

Friday, October 9th, 2009

When top line revenue declines (like during a recession), spending cuts often look like a great option for lifting your bottom line. You know what I’m talking about—layoffs and budget reductions.

While I think it’s financially wise to look at how we spend each of our business dollars, and while I concede that some budgets can afford to be trimmed (e.g. travel), one area I wouldn’t touch is marketing. In fact, I might expand it….

Read the rest on ideaAnglers

This post is hosted in its entirety on ideaAnglers.com

Marketing & Misleading with Truth

Friday, July 24th, 2009

I contend that far too much marketing misleads with the truth.

As we move into an era of commerce that’s supposed to be marked by transparency and authenticity, marketing becomes more than a matter of simply presenting the truth—it becomes matter of presenting the truth ethically.

Take the latest sleazy move by Jim Cramer (of Mad Money fame) for example.

In attempt to sell email newsletter subscriptions, Cramer lent his signature to a series of seedy emails that claim subscribers will earn big bucks by “taking on the market” with Cramer himself. From Henry Blodget (@hblodget) on Business Insider:

Measuring Social Media ROI

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

A few days ago I officially made my ebook debut—a sound byte Twitter tip in a book sponsored by Best Buy and HP (download it here):

Twitter is about connecting with real humans. People before profits. Relationships before ROI.

My point was not that profits or ROI are unimportant, but that Twitter (and social media in general) is a place where you must place primary focus on your customers or prospective students…who happen to be real humans.