Marketing

Keyword ‘Marketing’

We’re not all marketers now

It's not marketing that needs to be more pervasive in organizations. It's people who care about customers.

July 16th, 2011 by Andrew Swenson

image credit LongitudeLatitude on Flickr

Perhaps I’m just piddling in semantics, but it really bothers me when the “marketing” term is applied to any and every customer-facing activity. Lately it seems that anyone with a Twitter account is considered “doing marketing.”

The McKinsey Quarterly, published by the international management consultancy McKinsey & Company, is the latest to elevate the claim that “we’re all marketers now” with an article of the same name. In fact, authors Tom French, Laura LaBerge, and Paul Magill make some relatively lofty proclamations (emphasis original):

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keywords: customer engagement, Marketing, McKinsey Quarterly, Purple Cow, rhetoric, semantics, snarky retort
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When marketing (and Santa) isn’t enough

December 21st, 2010 by Andrew Swenson

yes, I'm really sitting on his lap. yes, it was a little awkward.

While I was traveling home last weekend from Dallas, a few artificially bubbly college kids in festive hats asked if I wanted to take a survey. In exchange for my trouble, I’d get my photo taken with Santa and $20 off my next flight.

You know how that ended.

I quickly found out that Southwest Airlines and Microsoft had teamed up to offer “Holiday Photos on the Fly,” a promotion mainly for Windows 7. The sales pitch came in when I watched one of Santa’s elves take my photo “to the Cloud” for editing with Windows Live.

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keywords: Marketing, Microsoft, product, ROI, Santa, Southwest
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Marketing

Evil, Ancient Greece, and other Marketing Stuff

December 29th, 2009 by Andrew Swenson

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]

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keywords: Aristotle, ethics, evil, Marketing, Plato, rhetoric
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Business Practice

Simple: A Case Study

December 15th, 2009 by Andrew Swenson

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.

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keywords: charity: water, easy, Marketing, simple
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Marketing

An extension of social media? The word on Ads

November 11th, 2009 by Andrew Swenson

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).

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keywords: advertising, engagement, Marketing, strategy, trust
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Business Practice

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

November 4th, 2009 by Andrew Swenson

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.

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keywords: Business, critical thinking, Marketing, progress, social media, Straight-up Snark, strategy, Twitter
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Marketing

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

October 9th, 2009 by Andrew Swenson

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….

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This post is hosted in its entirety on ideaAnglers.com

keywords: critical thinking, idea Anglers, Marketing
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Marketing

Marketing & Misleading with Truth

July 24th, 2009 by Andrew Swenson

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:

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keywords: ethics, Jim Cramer, Marketing, Straight-up Snark
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