Conversational Marketing | Social Media Darwinism

Vlogging with Doug Simon

Every once and a while you meet someone who inspires you to elevate your game to a whole new level and for me Doug Simon is that person.

I first met Doug on a panel speaking about Web Video and he invited me to do a vlog with him. Candidly I have wanted to use more [...]

Command & Control Branding: Not Dead Yet?

For years, classic brand strategy has always been about the creation of a single message that can be used with all of your constituents; investors, employees, senior management and customers about who you are and what value your company provides. Brand managers tend to write it up and paste it on every wall and train [...]

Market to Change Customer Behavior, not Attitudes

Harvard Business School professor John Quelch once said “The purpose of marketing… should be geared to changing and reinforcing customer actions rather than customer attitude.” I recently revisited this quote and feel it still holds true. But in the age of social media, it is likely to come under siege.

Within his quote is the idea [...]

Conversational Marketing: Irrational Exuberance or Next Big Thing?

In a recent blog post, Jim Nail, chief strategy and marketing officer at Cymfony, wrote about a study that provocatively proclaims “Spending on Conversational Marketing will Outpace Traditional Marketing by 2012”. To find out if that’s even possible, I got together with Jim and Pete Blackshaw, executive vice president at Nielsen Online Strategic Services. Like [...]

Want more sales? Give sales something to talk about. A podcast with Lois Kelly of Foghound

Go to Portland, Oregon, and you’ll find everyone there talking about Voodoo Doughnut. They talk about the caffeinated doughnut. The chocolate-glazed chocolate doughnut rolled in Cocoa Puffs cereal. Or the voodoo-doll-shaped doughnut that bleeds raspberry filling when impaled with a pretzel pin.

Then there’s Innocent. The UK company launched a campaign called “Supergran,” in which English [...]