March 2, 2009

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. These are the lines that actor Greg Kinnear uses in the movie Flash of Genius in his court case brought against Ford to receive credit for his invention of the intermittent wiper.

February 10, 2009

You probably receive your fair share of pitches from vendors at work. Nothing wrong with pitches. A well-crafted pitch is brief, polite, and written taking the seat of the person who is going to read it. It should really answer the question “so what?” better than anything else you do. After all, you’re trying to make a first impression.

December 16, 2008

Getting people to do anything they don’t want to do has always been hard. These days, customers and prospects seem to be made of Teflon, nothing you send out seems to stick very much. Direct response is running out of juice in its current incarnation. If we step back for a moment and think about lead generation more broadly, we may see why.

December 1, 2008

This is an important question. A tribe is a group of people connected to each other, to a leader and to an idea (Godin). I opened a conversation with direct response professionals in Philadelphia last week by summarizing three timeless imperatives for marketing....

October 28, 2008

Free is not a benefit. It’s a feature. We think it’s a benefit because we know what we offer has value. It benefits from our experience and it’s designed to get someone to act on something. Yet our prospects and users have not discovered any of that yet.

October 6, 2008

We notice the things we think about, we overlook the rest. Say you’re buying a car and are looking at a 3 Series Sedan from BMW. I know, nice! Suddenly, you start seeing the 3 Series everywhere. Now that I think about it, I saw a couple just the other day. See? Because we pay attention, we tend to see what we’re thinking about.

July 28, 2008

Today the Blog Council unveils a disclosure toolkit. Before I get into what these checklists are designed to do, a word about what the council is.

July 14, 2008

Tim Brunelle is playing games. He decided to celebrate the one year anniversary of his agency with a game - Viking Smackdown. You can play it alone or with friends. He is onto something. You can use an iPhone and iPod Touch. Having seen the iPod Touch at work when I was in Canada recently, I think it has little to envy its cousin - aside from the phone bill.

June 24, 2008

Harris Interactive just released it’s 9th Annual Survey of the 60 most visible US companies. Their findings: 71% of consumers say the reputation of corporate America is “poor,” but consumers will buy, recommend and invest in companies that concentrate on building their corporate reputation.

May 20, 2008

You’ve got something to say and you need a company to listen to your feedback. Would you use a suggestion box? You are a company in search of a fast way to help capture feedback and a structured approach to deal with it. Would you buy a suggestion box?

April 28, 2008

By raise of hands, how many of you think that Web sites are going to go away? With all this talk of social media on one hand, and the clicks version of bricks on the other, there might remain little appeal for a static, brochure-like online presence. Business directories and aggregators do a better job of providing an address and contact information that is not a form more often than you think.

April 3, 2008

Have you noticed a certain impatience with lines and crowded stores? A couple of weeks ago I was making a purchase and saw two people abandon their selections before check out and leave. Are you tempted to abandon virtual shopping carts that take a long time to upload? You are not alone.

March 11, 2008

Imagine this scenario -- it really happened. A young woman’s dog poops on a subway train in South Korea and she refuses to clean it up. Someone happens to be there with a camera to post the snapshot on a popular blog. The story ends up on BoingBoing, and suddenly the whole world knows about it. This is what happens today with the power of self-publishing tools.

February 19, 2008

Almost one of the last things you think about when you are establishing a brand is the question of service marks and trademarks. That may be especially true when the brand you are establishing - consciously or not so much - is your own. That is particularly important with social media, as we learned not long ago from the Seth Godin case on Twitter. Is someone else reaping the fruits of your hard work?

February 11, 2008

You could continue applying veneer on your old marketing habits of driving the conversation, pushing promotions and controlling the messages - and think of ways to make what you do sticky. This is the old, company-centric way and it has no business in the new media environment. Or you could borrow a page from Nickelodeon’s book and make your content "slippy" so that your customers can spread it, use it, and change it for the better.

February 4, 2008

We have been talking about using social media to improve a company reputation and to spread the word about its products and services. In fact, the conversation has been centered more on building awareness and possibly creating demand on the basis of it. We have not talked much about generating leads through social media. Is it even possible?

January 28, 2008

You won’t know how useful a tool cam be to you until you test drive it. Then it might turn out to be high performance, just like a car. Take Twitter. This extremely versatile tool is ready to be used immediately, out of the box. Yes, even for B2B companies.

December 4, 2007

If so, it's a sure sign that your organization is not doing its homework. One of the main causes of disconnect is that B2B companies work out of sync -- the vendor sales cycle does not match closely the buyers'. I was reading a digest of a recent IDC insight report and agreeing wholeheartedly with the buyers quoted. This applies to IT, but it could apply to a number of other fields...

November 14, 2007

Conversation is not about critical mass; it's about critical connections. You will forgive me for talking about leadership for a moment. I know you're all interested in marketing and have recently joined probably one too many social networks, feeling a bit of indigestion in reading yet another title with the word conversation skillfully placed where it can be noticed.

October 24, 2007

He had a prissy British accent and an attitude that matched the tone – "You don’t know the half of it and you’re already missing this opportunity," it said. Then he launched into an unwanted pitch on how all *he* wanted was to have a conversation. Yet he was the only one speaking.

October 4, 2007

A few days ago, Mack Collier asked the million-dollar question: Do you "Get" Social Media? Well, call me ambitious, I'd like to ask an even bigger question – how is social media appropriate for your brand? That's what you want to know before you take action.

September 11, 2007

As our customers' real-life and online lives continue to intersect, social networks are becoming the glue which holds it all together. Take Facebook, which started as a sort of online frat party. Now it's poised to become the equivalent of a 24/7 bazaar, part of an online industry of web applications which research company IDC says will grow from $46.8 million in 2006 to $428.3 million in 2009.

August 22, 2007

Technology spoiled us. We’re used to things being always on and for the most part, they are. Last week Skype users found themselves unable to login in to their accounts — and thus make or receive calls — for the better part of two business days. When I wrote about it on Friday, I received mixed reviews in the comments.

August 7, 2007

Early this month, another CEO bit the dust. The forced departure of Commerce Bancorp Vernon Hill were the business arrangements between various members of the Hill family and the company. Bank regulators caught up with those various interests and decided that enough was enough. If you think that these considerations are valid only at such high levels, think again.

July 24, 2007

I bet that many of you either work inside an organization or spend time pitching marketers who do. How’s that going? Spending time on both sides of the fence, membrane or wall -- depending on how you see the divide these days -- I can tell you that there is a lot of room for improvement. Let’s start by talking about the person inside.

July 10, 2007

Hello, I’m Valeria Maltoni, and I’m a marketer. What exactly does that mean these days? That is aside from the obvious laundry list of tactics that are associated with the “marketing” brand. Yes, dear colleagues, let’s admit it -- by and large, we’re still seen as order takers.