MARKETING AND SOCIAL MEDIA

How Do You Become a 'Super CMO?'

2012-02-19T06:09:00.000-08:00

By: Published: February 16, 2012

The political controversy over Chrysler's 2012 Super Bowl ad with Clint Eastwood describing a rebounding Detroit is a reminder of how broad the role of the CMO is becoming. No longer just the master of corporate advertising and promotions to sell a product, "Marketing's CEO," as our firm has come to call him or her, is a lead driver of growth and strategy.

The "Halftime in America " ad, which Karl Rove decried as a plug for President Obama's reelection, is more of a call-to-action for Americans to rally in times of economic hardship and political discord than it is about selling cars. It's a high-profile example of a brand embracing deep-set issues on a national stage, perhaps in recognition that until Americans feel stability again they will continue to keep their wallets closed.

Don't lose sight that Chrysler is still in the business of filling..... Read more.

NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX ... Facebook?

2011-12-23T02:38:00.000-08:00

By: Published: December 21, 2011, AdAge.

As Facebook continues to grow its user base worldwide, entertainment companies are increasingly trying to find ways to use the platform as a new form of TV channel with unprecedented reach. Both major TV networks and Hollywood film studios have previously allowed people to watch their content via their Facebook pages, including paid video trials such as Warner Brothers renting its "Dark Knight" film from its ultra-successful "Batman" franchise for Facebook credits.

Unfortunately, for WB and others, no early tests of traditional companies pushing their content on Facebook have registered any real success. Audiences simply don't seem interested in watching long-form, lean-back content wrapped in a Facebook environment (though augmenting traditional TV with a second-screen social context is another ... Read more.

Gartner Predictions for 2012: More Cloud, Consumerization, Loss of IT Control

2011-12-06T21:21:00.000-08:00

By Ann Bednarz, December, 2, 2011, CIO.

Network World — IT budgets and responsibilities are moving out of the control of IT departments and into the hands of others, thanks to trends such as consumerization and cloud computing, Gartner says in its vision for 2012 and the coming years.

UP FOR DEBATE: 33 hottest IT arguments

That means, to be successful, IT organizations will have to excel at relationship management and be adept at coordinating more widely distributed activities, according to Daryl Plummer, managing vice president and Gartner fellow.

"As users take more control ..... Read more.

Intuit embraces paid bloggers to support campaign

2011-12-06T21:00:00.000-08:00

Christopher Hosford, 6, Dicember, 2012. BtoB.

Intuit Inc., a provider of technology and finance software, is leveraging its appeal to small and midsize businesses with a campaign that pays bloggers for writing positive reviews of the company's “Love a Local Business” campaign.

“Love a Local Business” promotes such Intuit products as QuickBooks, Quicken and TurboTax to small businesses, and provides hiring grants ranging from $500 to $25,000. Businesses nominated by their fans then solicit votes on various social sites to vie for the funding.... Read more.

Your Facebook Interests Can Foretell Your Holiday Wishlist

2011-12-06T20:53:00.000-08:00

By: Published: December 05, 2011, AdAge.
This week, holiday gifts will start pouring into the mailrooms of agencies and marketers, but there is only so much wine and fruitcake one can consume. So this got us thinking: What's the perfect gift for the marketing executive who has everything?.... Read more.

Gestión de Redes Sociales: 21 Principios

2011-12-06T20:43:00.000-08:00

Andrés Silva A y Karina Durney S. MarketingHoy.

La forma de comunicarse ha cambiado de manera radical. Las personas se expresan y quieren ser escuchadas y las Redes Sociales son su principal herramienta para lograr tal propósito.

Entonces, las marcas, políticos, organizaciones gubernamentales, entre otras, se están viendo obligadas a adoptar este nuevo canal de comunicación, de lo contrario no será escuchado ni menos adoptado su mensaje.

Este fenómeno ha revolucionado el Marketing y la Publicidad, cambiando el paradigma de la Publicidad Interruptiva a la Publicidad Colaborativa – Participativa. Leer más.

U.K. Government Investigating Groupon Ad Practices

2011-12-05T04:22:00.000-08:00

AdAge, Published: December 02, 2011
Groupon, the largest Internet daily-deal site, is being investigated by Britain's competition regulator over concerns including unfair promotions and exaggerated savings.

The U.K. Office of Fair Trading has been looking into Groupon's British unit since July and expanded the probe after receiving a complaint from the country's advertising watchdog.

"Given Groupon's track record, we have serious concerns about its ability to adhere to the advertising code," the Advertising Standards Authority said in a statement. "It is in the public interest that we refer the matter to the OFT.".... Read more.

Google and TV: Playing to Win

2011-12-01T19:06:00.000-08:00

Adam Cahill | December 1, 2011 , ClickZ.

I checked out YouTube's new Movies section fully expecting to be disappointed, because so far I've found almost every attempt at premium video online to be lacking in one way or another.

Well, I wasn't. It only took about two seconds to see that YouTube Movies passes the only test that really matters: does it have up-to-date stuff I want to watch?

"The Change-Up," "Horrible Bosses," "Bridesmaids," and lots more of the latest releases are all available. By the way, they're renting for $0.99, which is no doubt a short-term promotion, but still a great deal. The selection isn't as comprehensive as Netflix. Nonetheless, YouTube running the newest, most popular rentals available anywhere sends an immediate signal to anyone that visits the site that it's for real.

In the broader context of Google's recent and ongoing moves, my visit to YouTube Movies clarified something I've been thinking for a while: when it comes to TV (by which I mean professionally-produced, long-form video content in general), Google is playing to win.... Read more.

AmEx Helps Customers Cash In On Foursquare

2011-12-01T18:34:00.000-08:00

By Stephanie Overby, 28, November, 2011, CIO.

CIO — Corporate marketers are keen to tap into the power of location-based social services—applications that use a mobile device’s GPS to locate nearby friends and businesses. But figuring out how to use them to drive consumer behavior and top-line growth has proven challenging.

The biggest issue, says Dave Wolf, vice president of global marketing capabilities at American Express, is creating a reliable user interface while tapping into complex core systems and data on the back end. That’s what the credit card issuer is attempting with a program launched in June. Customers who link their Foursquare profiles to their AmEx cards can redeem merchant special offers without scanning codes or printing coupons. It offers users more tangible benefits to checking in than being appointed mayor, such as $10 off a $75 purchase at H&M. “In the digital space, user simplicity is key,” says Wolf. “[This is] the equivalent of embedding a coupon in your card.”... Read more.

For Amazon, a Focus on the New Helps Push Sales of the Old

2011-12-01T18:03:00.000-08:00

By: Published: November 07, 2011, AdAge.
Like Walmart, Amazon.com sells food, clothing, media and electronics -- the old-school foundation of modern retailing. But Amazon keeps reinventing its business by coming up with new lines to sell, some of them tangible, some of them the stuff of imagination not too long ago.
In 2011, the e-tailer unveiled everything from the Kindle Fire, a tablet computer version of the company's popular electronic-book reader, to Amazon Silk, a web browser designed to enable easier loading of content onto Kindle screens, to AmazonLocal, a distributor of local deals that appears to be the Seattle company's answer to the Groupon and LivingSocial craze, and MyHabit, a response to the "flash sales" of high-end.... Read more.

Traveling in the Age of Facebook Open Graph

2011-11-29T07:46:00.000-08:00

Janice Diner, November 29, 2011, ClickZ.

Travel and shopping are probably two of the most social activities we do with friends and loved ones. The hyper-interactive travel consumer is a new breed of engaged and informed traveler. They talk about travel before they travel, while they travel, and after they travel. With Facebook Open Graph and Facebook commerce, the travel industry has tremendous opportunities to market to travelers across the social curve.

More than 250 million photos are uploaded daily on Facebook and many travel-related photos are part of this activity. With the new Facebook Timeline, travelers will likely be sharing their experiences, such as the places they have been and the people they have traveled with, with their friends more often. The Timeline could become a scrapbook of your friends' travel experiences, allowing you to easily see where your friends have been traveling and may very well lead you to your next journey.

Many travel sites have started to integrate Facebook Connect into their web experience; the most notable is perhaps TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor is what Facebook calls a "new instant personalization partner," as the site becomes customized for you by using your public information and list of friends ..... Read more.

In 2012, a Mobile Security Minefield

2011-11-29T07:17:00.000-08:00

By Taylor Armerding, November, 28, 2011, CIO.

CSO — The mobile device, now the dominant technological tool in American enterprise, will become more dominant in 2012 and beyond. Industry analysts say mobile device shipments will top 1 billion in 2015, leaving PC shipments in the dust.

That will bring big benefits, but also big risks.

Its benefits for user convenience and productivity are obvious and irresistible -- a smart phone can handle everything from email to collaboration to video chat. It can serve as your GPS. It can scan product bar codes. It can find and store your favorite songs, help you take high-res photos and HD video and expand both your social and professional network.... Read more.

Concerned About Privacy? Pray Facebook Sees Some Real Competition

2011-11-29T06:59:00.000-08:00

By: Published: November 22, 2011, AdAge.

An increase in the number companies who hold your personal information is the best guarantee for safeguarding that information.

Come again?

Yes, an increase in the number of companies who know what you do online is probably your best protection. It may seem counter intuitive, and perhaps a little naive, but let me tell you why it is the only answer in a world where there is already enough personal information in the cloud about all of us to make us squirm if we think about it. When we are forced to think about it, like when we are asked in a survey, 67% of people say they are not in favor of things like behavioral targeting for fear that the information is too personal and will be misused. In reality, that is just what we say in surveys.... Read more.

Can Social Shopping Finally Take Off? Some companies still trying to integrate social networking and e-commerce

2011-11-27T03:23:00.000-08:00

By Erin Griffith, November, 22, 2011, AdWeek.
Analog shopping is inherently social. There’s the flea marketstroll, the girls’ outing, and the time-honored encounterwith a mall Santa. But e-commerce, a category that’sexpected to reach $200 billion this year, has yet to reap full benefitsof the social networking revolution. The two seem as compatible asreindeer and sleighs, yet the universe is littered with proof ofawkward pratfalls. (After all, who wants to learn on Facebook thattheir significant other bought an engagement ring at Dave’s DiamondBarn?) That explains why Facebook killed Beacon, a function thatautomatically published a user’s e-commerce interactions to newsfeeds. Apple’s Ping, which shared iTunes buys, flopped..... Read more.

How 'The X Factor' Vote-by-Tweet Partnership With Twitter Has Affected Its Social-TV Footprint

2011-11-26T07:58:00.000-08:00

By: Published: November 18, 2011, AdAge.

Earlier this month, "The X Factor" became the first-ever reality-TV competition show to allow voting by Twitter. (See "How to Vote for Your Favorite Act on The X Factor" in the Twitter Help Center.) What's that done for its social-TV footprint? Ad Age asked our editorial partner Bluefin Labs, a Cambridge-Mass.-based social-media analytics company that specializes in social TV, to give us a view into the data it's been collecting on the show all season. Some notes about the charts below.... Read more.

Exclusive: Facebook Marketing Results From 6 Major Brands

2011-11-26T07:00:00.000-08:00

Christopher Heine | November 23, 2011 , ClickZ.

Six major brands have given ClickZ snapshot-level case studies about their Facebook efforts. Mazda, Ford, Levi's, 1-800-Flowers, 20th Century Fox, and ADT have seen significant lift from their ad investment on the social network.

According to Facebook, spending on the following campaigns varied greatly and most included a mix ofmarketplace and premium ad buys.

Does Social Sell Cars? Mazda And Ford Believe So

Of the examples released to ClickZ today, Mazda's may stick out the most. According to the automotive brand's U.K division, a recent 20 percent Check-In Deal discount resulted in a 34 percent sales lift on the model being offered. The geo-social effort was regional..... Read more.

Is 2012 the Year Android Invades the Enterprise?

2011-11-25T15:08:00.000-08:00

By Tom Kaneshige , November, 22, 2011, CIO.
For CIOs, the year 2012 will be one of huge opportunity and incredible risk as Android phones and tablets drive deeper into the enterprise, mobile device experts say. CIOs will be in a bit of a bind with employees pressuring IT to support new-fangled consumer devices that may not be enterprise-ready..... Read more.

Stat of the Day: Holiday e-Commerce by the Numbers

2011-11-24T17:26:00.000-08:00

By: Published: November 22, 2011, AdAge.

We recently got an email from Walgreens offering up a sneak preview of its Black Friday special offers. The interesting twist was that customers were required to download a new mobile app in order to see the deals. Turns out, this is part of a trend.

Digital marketing strategists, Acquity Group, pulled together some more timely data for us about the upcoming holiday shopping season. Nearly one in five retailers have developed some sort of apps to help mobile shoppers buy their goods. Mobile's impact continues to grow.

Of course, brick and mortar outlets are hoping for a strong holiday season, too. A new Deloitte survey found that nearly one.... Read more.

Google Music vs. Amazon Cloud Player: How They Stack Up

2011-11-21T06:25:00.000-08:00

By Kristin Burnham , November, 18, 2011, CIO.
...... Google Music users located in the United States can employ the Android Market to purchase songs and albums, and can also upload existing Apple iTunes playlists to their accounts. And Google is placing a strong emphasis on its music sharing features.

Google Music joins a number of big players already in the online music arena, including iTunes and Spotify. Another competitor: Amazon Cloud Player, which debuted this spring and with features similar to Google's offering...... Read more.

Why Can't Newspapers Make Money Online?

2011-11-21T06:20:00.000-08:00

Sean Carton | November 21, 2011 , ClickZ.

That's the question I asked myself the other day as I ran smack up against The Baltimore Sun's paywall after having reached my 15 page per month (free) limit. I'm not a big reader of the Sun, but I was curious about what people were saying about Gordon Ramsay's "Kitchen Nightmares" visit to one of our local eateries. I clicked a link on Facebook that was supposed to lead me to a post on the Sun's food blog when I smacked right into the wall.

Oh well. As much as I liked reading the Sun's blogs (and their food blog - Baltimore Diner - was by far my favorite), it didn't take much to find another local foodie blog with the dirt on Chef Ramsay's "Nightmare"-ish tirades. Curiosity slaked, I surfed on to somewhere else…all the while muttering to myself under my breath about how I was done with the Sun.

And I am. I'd long ago moved on to other venues.... Read more.

B2B EMAIL MARKETING: Most companies still emailing inactive subscribers

2011-11-21T06:04:00.000-08:00

BtoBMagazine, November, 18, 2011.
San Bruno, Calif.—A new study from email marketing company Responsys Inc. finds companies are generally failing to monitor inactivity among email subscribers, with about 54% sending emails to those who have been inactive for more than three years..... Read more.

Media All-Stars 2011 'Adweek' honors the 13 most creative thinkers and innovative leaders in the agency business

2011-11-21T06:00:00.000-08:00

AdWeek, November, 19, 2011.
The morphing of the media world from a flat landscape of traditional buys to a 3-D bazaar of ever-multiplying platforms has created a dazzling, and sometimes overwhelming, array of choices for brands and their agencies. Clearly relishing the challenge, this year's All-Stars have responded with innovative, often brilliant work--none more so than Lisa Donohue, CEO of Starcom USA, who utilizes the power of creative thinking to help transform an industry once reliant solely on numbers. .... Read more.

Who Took the Storytelling Out of Holiday Season Marketing?

2011-11-21T05:55:00.000-08:00

By: Published: November 21, 2011, AdAge.

Cue "Do They Know It's Christmas?" by Band Aid on YouTube. By New Year's Day you will have heard this song in stores and on the radio and maybe on your own iPod more times than you will see an effective digital ad from the retail sector.

Why? First, people don't get tired of the song. Second, retailing is too focused on direct response to get its message heard amid all the clutter of the holiday season.

Don't oversell direct response. We see this mistake over and over. Try the following experiment on Google. Search "winter jacket" and then "Gore-Tex jacket." You'll find hardly a website or ad campaign that communicates any information other than lower prices. But abandoning good creative in the busiest shopping season makes no sense.... Read more.

Holiday Season Price-Cutting and Hard Sell Can Damage a Brand

2011-11-16T11:34:00.000-08:00

By: Published: November 16, 2011, AdAge.
t's a shooting war as of next week. Black Friday is the selling season kickoff. It's sell or die by Dec. 25 if you're a retailer, and time to help them cheat death if you're a brand. The toughest part is that you're likely going to see your brand lose value over the next month or so, perhaps more so the more successful you are at selling.
Consider that your actual cost of holiday sales consists of two expense lines: First, the tangible costs of promotional pricing, outbound marketing, extra staffing, etc. and, second, the intangible costs incurred by your brand from all of those tangible efforts, including the negative experience that many consumers associate with holiday shopping..... Read more.

Google continues to dominate search market

2011-11-16T10:02:00.000-08:00

BtoB Magazine, November 15, 2011
Reston, Va.—Google's share of Internet searches inched up a bit in October, accounting for 65.6% of all U.S. search queries according to a report from digital marketing and intelligence company comScore Inc. Google captured 65.3% of U.S. searches in September...... Read more.

9 Killer Facebook Tools to Generate Brand Awareness

2011-11-16T09:58:00.000-08:00

By @noranshinnawy, visibilitymagazine.com
With Facebook constantly releasing new apps, features and ad formats, it gets hard to keep track of not only what tools are available, but what actually works for you as well. As Internet Marketers (you know, because we don’t like to be called geeks), we’re always prowling to get our hands on the latest features to stay ahead of our competitors. But we also know that trying to advertise everywhere all the time using all available tools is never a god idea. What is, in fact, a good idea is picking and choosing tools based on our business objectives. Remember those things we tend to set and forget?

Exploring the best combination of tools based on each different type of objective can take up all the pages in this magazine. Permutations, anyone? So let’s focus on the most common objective for marketing on Facebook; generating awareness..... Read more.

British Gas to axe 20% of marketing and sales roles in swingeing job cuts

2011-11-16T09:47:00.000-08:00

By Matthew Chapman, 16 November 2011, marketingmagazine.co.uk

Marketing understands the utilities giant is likely to make more than 40 redundancies from its 231-strong commercial unit, which includes marketing and sales positions.
Those affected within marketing and sales are entering a 30-day consultation period that will conclude early to mid-December.
A British Gas spokeswoman said: "We need to make sure we are running as efficiently as possible given the current climate that we face, as wholesale costs are changing.".... Read more.

Brand Building and Social Media—Beyond Communication to Changing the Marketplace

2011-11-14T18:31:00.000-08:00

By Dr. David Aaker, SMMmmagazine.

Marketers are attracted to social media to communicate their offerings and programs in large part because traditional mass media lacks coverage and is increasingly fragmented, expensive, complex, and ineffective. Social media is the apparent salvation, even though it is difficult to manage, in part because the lack of control is frightening.

However, there is another use of social media. It can augment the offering to expand the value proposition.... Read more.

http://www.smmmagazine.com/magazine/issue04/feature-publishing.html

We Said We Were Sorry on YouTube! What Else Do You Want From Us?!

2011-11-14T18:25:00.000-08:00

By: Published: November 14, 2011, AdAge.

If you're like me, you're super excited about the 100 new YouTube channels born of just-announced partnerships with professional content producers.

As Ad Age Media Editor Nat Ives reported, these are "high-polish, high-stakes original-content channels." Magazine conglomerate Meredith, for instance, is creating series including "Gardens of the Rich and Famous," about celebs' backyards; "No Man's Land," about women's answers to the "man cave"; and "Porcelain Thrones," about extravagant bathrooms. Of course, I personally have no plans to cut back on my viewing of non-professional YouTube content -- I can never get enough videos of cats palling around with horses , acoustic covers of "Hey Ya!" and footage of horrific skateboarding accidents -- so I guess I'll have to cut back on reading The Economist since there are still only 24 hours in the day...... Read more.

Get on the social media bus … but get real, Part 1

2011-11-14T18:20:00.000-08:00

By James Rogers, November, 3, 2011, BtoB.

In this two-part post, I'm going to examine social media. If your company is like many b2b organizations, it pays lip service to the importance of social media monitoring and participation but fails to adequately fund it.

Although social media undeniably attracts b2b marketers as a bright and shiny thing, it often gets shortchanged at budget time because its ROI is rather challenging to demonstrate. This is somewhat understandable. Our CFOs are accustomed to calculating ROI in lead-generation terms; from there, it's a big leap to contemplate the “return on relationship.”

Yet, as marketing leaders..... Read more.

Get on the social media bus…but get real, Part 2

2011-11-14T18:15:00.000-08:00

By James Rogers, November, 8, 2011, BtoB.
In this second part of my quick look at social media, I pose the question, “What does an effective social media program look like in dollars and cents?” (In the first part of the post, I took a look at how b2b marketers can use social media effectively.) Your costs depend upon what level you invest to accomplish these various purposes. Like anything else, it depends on the size of your business, what you specifically want to accomplish and the particular strategy you devise for achieving those goals..... Read more.

After Penn State Flub, Ashton Kutcher Will Let PR Team Manage Twitter Account

2011-11-14T09:55:00.000-08:00

By: Published: November 10, 2011, AdAge.

"While I will continue to express myself through @Aplusk I'm going to turn the management of the feed over to my team at Katalyst as a secondary editorial measure, to ensure the quality of its content," wrote Ashton Kutcher on his blog today. Now why would the TV, movie and Twitter celebrity do such a thing?

Because of the outrage he'd caused with the following tweet: "How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #noclass as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste."..... Read more.

A New Media Driver's License Primer for Chief Marketing Officers

2011-11-14T09:48:00.000-08:00

By Derek Mehraban, SMMmagazine.

Chief Marketing Officers are in the enviable position of controlling the marketing budgets for their companies and managing their social media marketing. It's an important role, and as an academic, I want to share some insights I have learned from teaching the New Media Driver's License course at Michigan State University for the past three years.

These ten ideas are designed to help CMOs better use social media and to harness the power of the Internet and propel their companies to higher sales and increased profits..... Read more.

When marketing and IT teams work together, amazing things can happen.

2011-11-14T09:40:00.000-08:00

By Jeff Ernst, November 11, 2011, BtoB.
I've been working at the intersection of IT and marketing my whole career. I've felt the pain of marketing teams circumventing IT and buying technology, only to discover that they then don't have the technical knowledge to implement and use it. I've felt the pain of IT folks derailing projects for fear of losing control..... Read more.

Virgin America and SU2C Team Up to Fight Cancer Using Facebook and Twitter

2011-11-14T06:22:00.000-08:00

By Eve Mayer Orsburn, SMMmagazine.

Stand Up to Cancer (SU2C), launched in 2008, raises funds for translational cancer research. Virgin America, a California-based airline established in 2007, is SU2C's official domestic airline partner.

In December 2010, Virgin America launched service from Los Angeles and San Francisco to the Dallas/Fort Worth airport, marking the airline's first mid-continent destination in the United States. To continue to raise funds and awareness in Texas and throughout the country for SU2C and to successfully launch Virgin America service in a new market where serious competition already existed, both organizations came together to develop an integrated social media marketing strategy...... Read more.

Facebook makes a Swiss Mountain Town of 80 People Famous to 60 Million

2011-11-14T06:18:00.000-08:00

By: Published: November 10, 2011, AdAge.
A simple but brilliant Facebook stunt out of Jung von Matt Limmat for Grabunden Tourism earns the tiny, out-of-the-way Swiss town of Obermutten more than 9,000 fans and the global spotlight..... Read more.

How to Stop Worrying About Google Algorithm Changes

2011-11-11T15:14:00.000-08:00

By: Published: November 11, 2011, AdAge.
Every time Google tries something new, site owners panic and hit the blogs, desperate for any sort of tidbit that will help them get ahead of the latest "shift" in the algorithm. While Google's mathematical page ranking system has been dancing since day one with updates on a secret schedule, last week's change is one big deal in sea of big deals.
Scrambling to adjust the whole lot for every change Google initiates is counterproductive. Simple best practices like a good content strategy focusing on delivering relevant and -- as if it were possible-- unique information to the world are best practice staples in search marketing... Read more.

UK Facebook Statistics For March 2011

2011-11-10T10:43:00.000-08:00

Published on 29 March 2011 by Rebecca in Blog, http://www.clicky.co.uk

With over 500 million users worldwide, Facebook continues to dominate the social networking world. Today, Facebook is available in 70 different languages with 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) being shared each month.
An average of 1 million new UK users sign up to the site each month with 50% of UK users logging in every day. New reports show that people are also visiting social media sites more often and the time people spend on them is rapidly increasing. The average session time spent on a social network in January 2011 was 22 minutes. Unsurprisingly, one in every eight people leaving a social network visits another one immediately after, something that is encouraged by the connections that exist between the networks..... Read more.

Building Mutually Beneficial Relationships

2011-11-10T09:53:00.000-08:00

By Thomas A. Freese, November, 7, 2011, SMM.
If the intangible nature of perceived value is sometimes difficult for customers to quantify, try putting a fence around the notion of trust. Let me pose this question: Who is it that you trust? I bet it’s not some cold caller on the telephone who’s offering a fantastic deal chosen “just for you!” Cold callers are ostensibly trying to offer you an ideal solution, yet they don’t even know you. It’s important to realize that prospective customers may be just as reticent to engage in an open-ended dialogue when meeting a salesperson for the first time.
There’s no doubt that our business culture has grown increasingly cautious toward vendors, especially those with whom we don’t already have an existing relationship. Thus, it stands to reason that being disappointed by one vendor’s actions could very easily erode a customer’s faith in the system, making it that much more difficult for the next salesperson who wants to build a strong business relationship. Our cultural skepticism has evolved to the point where I recently saw a bumper sticker in a church parking lot that read, “Trust in God, but lock your car!”
Understanding the dynamics of how mutual trust is created is particularly important for salespeople.... Read more.

Ad Industry Group Issues Guidelines on Facebook 'Like-gating'

2011-11-08T06:55:00.000-08:00

By: Published: November 08, 2011, AdAge.
Facebook is looking to grow its ad revenue, now projected to reach $7 billion in 2013, according to eMarketer, but its advertising ecosystem is still the frontier from a regulatory perspective. Now a new decision by the Better Business Bureau's National Advertising Division should offer guidelines for advertisers to follow when looking to drive up "Likes" on their fan pages..... Read more.

Enterprise Social Software: What Businesses Need to Do Next

2011-11-06T12:25:00.000-08:00

By Kristin Burnham , November, 3, 2011, CIO.

CIO — As Facebook and other social networks have grown in popularity, businesses have started looking for ways to leverage them within the enterprise. The result: an influx of social software companies vying for a spot in business' technology portfolios, and IT and business executives scrambling to map out long-range plans.

According to a new report by Forrester Research, though, while this new class of technologies is gaining steam in the marketplace, the trend is still in its infancy. The keys to widespread adoption and the overall the success of these new tools, the report says, are in understanding who is using them now, how they're using them, and what policies the business needs to put into place to support them..... Read more.

http://www.cio.com/article/693110/Enterprise_Social_Software_What_Businesses_Need_to_Do_Next

Big Brands Use Foursquare for Goodwill Marketing

2011-11-06T12:20:00.000-08:00

Christopher Heine | November 3, 2011 , ClickZ.

For at least the last two days, Arby's has purchased Promoted Tweets on Twitter for the term "foursquare". It's part of a goodwill marketing campaign running all month, in which the quick-serve chain will donate $1 for every Foursquare check-in at its locations nationwide.

Here's the Promoted Tweet copy: Check-in on @foursquare at any @Arbys location in #November & $1 will be donated to the @ShareStrength #NoKidHungry Campaign!

And Arby's social media team has been replying to nearly every Foursquare check-in coming through the Twitter newsfeed, while adding short comments like: "@consumerX" Nice check-in! You helped raise money for @ShareStrength #NoKidHungry Campaign! Thanks!..... Read more.

Why Yum Brands Fights Hunger

2011-11-06T12:13:00.000-08:00

By: Published: November 01, 2011, AdAge.
Recently, I joined a delegation from the United Nations World Food Programme on a trip to Kenya, where we met government officials, talked with people living in the slums of Kibera and visited the world's largest refugee camp at Dadaab. I witnessed extreme poverty -- people living in shacks with no running water, no electricity and garbage as far as the eye could see. I saw starvation and people dying around me. While it was very hard to see people living in these terrible conditions, I came away from Africa more motivated than ever to help find a solution to this critical problem..... Read more.

10 Funniest Commercials of All Time

2011-11-06T12:03:00.000-08:00

By Tim Nudd, Nune, 20, 2011, AdWeek.
Sure, humor is subjective—but some advertising over the years has been undeniably hilarious. Here are our picks for the 10 funniest mainstream commercials ever made (none of that "banned" European stuff), stretching from the '80s to today. Yes, we left out about 17 million other ads, probably including your favorite. Leave your objections and insults—along with your favorite funny ads—in the comments section.... Read more.

Fall TV Update: Five Social-TV Success Stories (and One Ratings Disappointment)

2011-11-06T07:12:00.000-08:00

By: Published: November 04, 2011, AdAge.
Somehow it's November already, which means the fall TV season is at its midway point. To take stock, we decided to look at some notable new shows through the prism of social-media response. And so Ad Age asked our editorial partner Bluefin Labs, a Cambridge-Mass.-based social-media analytics company that specializes in social TV, to identify the five new series across broadcast and cable TV with the highest social buzz per episode (primarily on Twitter and Facebook) so far this fall. Some notes about the chart.... Read more.

Facebook Brand Exec: RIP Traditional Marketing How social networks (might) transform ads

2011-11-06T07:08:00.000-08:00

By Anthony Ha, November, 3, 2011, AdWeek.

When Facebook's brand experience manager Paul Adams took the stage today at the Geo Loco conference, he outlined one of the most-hyped scenarios for local advertising. Imagine walking down the street, he said, and every time you get close to a store, they can push an offer or marketing message onto your phone..... Read more.

Elections Will Turn on Which Candidates Use Social Sharing Most Effectively

2011-11-06T04:10:00.000-08:00

By: Published: November 04, 2011, AdAge.
Eighty percent of House and Senate members have social-media accounts, according to the Associated Press. That's 5% more than among millennials -- the key demographic of 18-29 year olds. Even more surprising, Congress has adopted Twitter far more widely than any other group recently surveyed by Pew Research: 81 percent of the House and Senate's 433 members use the platform, as against only 18 percent of 18-29 year-olds..... Read more.

Social-Influence Site Klout Partners With Brands to Distribute Freebies

2011-11-03T14:47:00.000-07:00

By: Published: November 02, 2011, AdAge.
Since launching a program to put products in the hands of influencers a year and a half ago, Klout has done more than 100 deals with brands such as Starbucks, Audi, Secret and Microsoft. And now it's ramping up the program, its main revenue stream for which it charges between five and six figures per program -- it did 25 deals in September alone.... Read more.

Top 3 Considerations for Your Holiday Mobile Campaign

2011-11-03T11:36:00.000-07:00

Tessa Wegert | November 3, 2011, ClickZ.
Now that Halloween is behind us it's time to start planning for the holidays - at least, in terms of your media buys. For months already we've been getting early reports of what this year's holiday season has in store for retailers, particularly as it relates to online shopping, and overall it looks good. Some studies say 81 percent of consumers will use the web in their holiday shopping this year, up from 54 percent who said they'd do so last year, while others report 83 percent of consumers prefer to shop online than in crowded stores over Thanksgiving and 21 percent expect to spend more on the web this year. In fact, nearly every report you'll find features this common theme: this year, consumers will shop more online..... Read more.

Bloomberg Businessweek Ad Campaign Pitching Consumers on Personality

2011-11-03T11:27:00.000-07:00

By: Published: November 01, 2011, AdAge.
Bloomberg Businessweek is starting a consumer ad campaign that's meant to build on its recent progress by pitching readers on its personality, using ads arguing that the magazine is "Disruptive," "Charged," "Viral" and "Worldly." The ad buy will total $1.5 million in the near term and grow as the campaign continues, Bloomberg Businessweek said..... Read more.

Google Offers adds 14 deal providers

2011-10-31T06:31:00.000-07:00

Tim Peterson, October, 27, 2011, DMnews.

Google expanded its daily deals product Google Offers on Oct. 26 to include offers from 14 deal providers, such as Gilt City, Tippr and Mamapedia. The company also added a form that enables consumers to personalize Offers according to their interests.

The expansion of deal providers results in consumers receiving up to five offers in their daily Google Offers email, said Nitin Mangtani, group product manager at Google Offers. Previously, consumers received only one offer per email.

“We used to only have one single deal in every market [in which] we were live, and it was essentially coming directly through Google's sales team,” said Mangtani...... Read more.

Why We Need Less Talking, More Actual Marketing

2011-10-31T06:23:00.000-07:00

By: Published: October 31, 2011, AdAge.
Which should be a lesson to those who've gone all in on the Church of Conversation.

This is not a dig at Chipotle or its social-media strategy. It's just a statement of fact -- this pleasant social exchange between the food purveyor and myself had absolutely no effect on my purchasing decision. And yet this simple fact seems overlooked entirely too often. There's not a day goes by that marketers are told they need to listen and to talk, and to talk and to listen. They need to make nice with consumers. Chat 'em up. Be their friends..... Read more.

Google Knows All—Even Your Halloween Costume The hottest costumes across the country

2011-10-31T06:20:00.000-07:00

By Erin Griffith, , October, 31, 2011, AdWeek.
Some things never change. While zombies and vampires are all the rage and actually relevant to the season, Google searches for Halloween costumes this year skewed, unsurprisingly, perhaps sadly, toward the sexy. Honorable mention goes to California, the only state interested in the best of both worlds—the Sexy Zombie. Elsewhere in America, Playboy bunnies and Pan Am stewardesses will haunt the streets; the costumes are popular, even though the TV shows are not. ... Read more.

Neuromarketing Still Raises Questions, but Shouldn't Be Ignored

2011-10-31T06:16:00.000-07:00

By: Published: October 31, 2011, AdAge.
"Our industry produces great campaigns 20% of the time at most. . . . We need to get that number up." So said Keith Reinhard, DDB chairman emeritus, at an ARF conference in 2004. Seven years on, how far have we come to meeting that challenge?

We believe that Keith's charge to the industry to improve the hit rate for great advertising is within our grasp, and the solution may come from neuromarketing.

The ability to evoke an emotional response from an ad is one of the most-prized arrows in the creative department's quiver. To measure this effect, brand managers have long sought better ways to understand emotion in their advertising-effectiveness research. Recent years have brought huge advances in the study of the brain demonstrating that emotion isn't really an arrow in the advertiser's quiver, a color in a palette or some kind of mysterious patina on an otherwise functional piece of furniture. It's the foundation for thought and action. It is clear that emotion plays more than a cameo role in driving consumer response and delivering marketing impact.... Read more.

Android's Biggest Fan Is Microsoft, of Course

2011-10-31T05:59:00.000-07:00

By Katherine Noyes, October, 31, 2011, E-Commerce Times.

It's been obvious for some time now that Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is a big Android fan, thanks to the tidy sums of cash the software giant has managed to extract from the companies that use it.

What wasn't necessarily apparent until recently, however, is just how far Redmond's devotion goes.

With last week's addition of Compal Electronics to Microsoft's Android licensing lineup, it's becoming truly clear. It doesn't seem premature, in fact, to declare Ballmer et al. Android's biggest fans *ever*, so passionately dedicated have they become..... Read more.

Nokia Lumia: The First Real Windows Phone?

2011-10-31T05:46:00.000-07:00

By Shane O'Neill, October, 26, 2011, CIO.

You have to hand it to Nokia. They can meet a tight deadline.

Last February, the Finnish company announced that it would be running Windows Phone 7 on future Nokia phones, and then, bam, eight months later we have the Nokia Lumia 800 and the Lumia 710, announced today at Nokia World in London.

Both phones use Microsoft's updated Windows Phone 7.5 "Mango" operating systemand are built on the same 1.4 GHz Snapdragon processor. The Lumia 800 has a 3.7 inch display and a sweet 8 MP camera; the 710 has the same size screen but a 5 MP camera. The estimated retail price of the Lumia 800 is 420 Euros (or $585) and the 710 is 270 Euros (or $376)..... Read more.

Foursquare Rivals Test New Strategies

2011-10-31T05:41:00.000-07:00

Christopher Heine | October 31, 2011 , ClickZ.

Remember Booyah, the maker of geo-social app MyTown? The San Francisco company says it's been intentionally keeping quiet in recent months, as it moves away from offering a location-based service to becoming more focused on game app development.

It's OK to think of the new Booyah as a mobile Zynga, a Booyah rep said. Speaking with ClickZ News, Booyah CEO Jason Willig said up to 4.7 million consumers have downloaded its Early Bird game for 99 cents since it was released in late August. While clearly not as popular as Zynga's Angry Birds, which has 400 million downloads, Willig's company seems to have found new footing beyond Foursquare's check-ins realm.

"With a major promotional push planned in the coming weeks, we believe Early Bird numbers will increase substantially," he said...... Read more.

A Love Letter from Brand Marketers to Silicon Valley

2011-10-30T04:39:00.000-07:00

By: Published: October 25, 2011, AdAge.

For too long, the digital industry has looked at brands like Pepsi simply as a monetization strategy. What's worse is that sometimes our digital friends view us as being uninformed members of the digital ecosystem - something akin to prey. Not only is that perception misinformed, its going to start impacting the bottom-line of many companies in the digital ecosystem.

On the brand side, marketers cannot afford to play that role anymore. We need to show a much stronger return on all our marketing investments just as we recognize that traditional forms of marketing (ie banner ads) aren't as effective as they once were. We also understand technology better than we're often given credit for. If you treat us as your monetization strategy, you probably won't get much attention from us.... Read more.

Smartphones Will Help Kids Trick Out Halloween

2011-10-28T21:07:00.000-07:00

By: Published: October 27, 2011, AdAge.

It's not far off. Kids on leafy streets with candy bags and mom or dad's old smartphone. Pinging friends for recommendations of the best houses to hit while updating their candy stash status on the fly.

According to comScore MobiLens, the average smartphone now turns every 12-18 months and many find their way into the clutches of kids. It's a shocking thought but there are more than 15 million kids 13 and up now using cell phones. Roughly 6 million – close to 40 percent – are smart, connecting kids socially, locally and in real time. My own son has my old iPhone 3GS and his brother is waiting for my iPhone4 coming his way any day now..... Read more.

Samsung Snatches Global Smartphone Crown From Apple

2011-10-28T19:47:00.000-07:00

By Rob Spiegel, October, 28, 2011, E-Commerce Times.
Samsung reported its quarterly earnings this week, showing a healthy jump in its smartphone business. The company's smartphone sales quadrupled, shooting up from 7 million in last year's third quarter to 28 million globally in third-quarter 2011. Samsung also saw a 44 percent increase from the previous quarter. These numbers have rocketed Samsung past Apple and Nokia in terms of units sold. The financial results reveal that ..... Read more.

7 Best Practices for Using Google's Bid-Per-Call in AdWords

2011-10-28T19:41:00.000-07:00

By Kevin Lee | October 28, 2011 , ClickZ.
Bid per call or cost per phone call? Google can't seem to decide what to call its pay-per-call extension, which has just come out of beta. In a post on its Inside AdWords Blog, Google generally refers to the extension as bid-per-call. Yet in the AdWords Help section Google uses the abbreviation CPP (cost-per-phone call) where "P" stands for "phone call" as well as "bid per call." Huh?.... Read more.

Nokia's First Windows Phone Ad

2011-10-28T19:35:00.000-07:00

By: Published: October 27, 2011, AdAge.

Nokia finally launched its long-awaited Windows Phone yesterday and CEO Stephen Elop has promised ads for the new device will make a big splash in Europe during the holidays.

Mr. Elop said yesterday that marketing spending for the new phones will triple that of prior product launches, especially thanks to carriers' support in the phone's six European launch markets. In 2009, Nokia spent $147 million in media spending in Europe, a little more than half its global budget, according to Ad Age DataCenter.... Read more.

YES, NO, MAYBE: CAN A SOCIAL MEDIA SIMULATOR REPLICATE A SOCIAL MEDIA CRISIS?

2011-10-27T17:13:00.000-07:00

BandT, October, 27, 2011.
PR firm Weber Shandwick has launched a simulator that recreates PR crises, including viral media attacks, across multiple social media platforms. Called FireBell, the simulator creates fictional crisis situations to help brands learn how to respond. But can a simulator ever fully replicate the complexities of a social media onslaught?..... Read more.

What Matters Most in Magazine and Newspaper iPad Apps? Quality, Report Says

2011-10-27T16:15:00.000-07:00

By: Published: October 27, 2011, AdAge.

Publishers, don't start skimping on your iPad editions now. Magazine and newspaper apps' quality seems to be the most important factor in their success with consumers, according to the first annual "The State of the App" report from McPheters & Company's iMonitor service, drawing on iMonitor's evaluations of 3,000 apps from publishers around the world.

Quality has a higher correlation with the magazine and newspaper-app revenue than a wide variety of other variables including price, subscription availability and audience demographics like age and income, the report says...... Read more.

Google, AmEx launch joint promotion

2011-10-27T08:17:00.000-07:00

BtoB, October, 26, 2011.
Mountain View, Calif.—Google, which owns the YouTube video sharing site, and American Express Co., whose AmEx OPEN portal provides services for small businesses, have launched a video contestencouraging businesses to “tell their stories.”.... Read more.

People on the Move: Virgin America Names Luanne Calvert VP-Marketing

2011-10-26T19:55:00.000-07:00

By: Published: October 25, 2011, AdAge.
Virgin America has appointed Luanne Calvert its new VP-marketing, replacing Porter Gale, who departed earlier this year. Ms. Calvert comes to Virgin after leading digital-marketing strategy as a consultant with Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy's Fendi and Moleskine brands in Italy. Prior to that, she was creative director at Google, where she managed the brand globally and developed campaigns for Google products including Google Checkout, Google Apps, iGoogle and Google Maps. Before joining Google in 2006, she led her own marketing firm, Mixed Marketing, Inc., with clients ranging from Calvin Klein Cosmetics to Netflix and eBay. From 1999 to 2002, she served as a director of marketing at Yahoo, where she founded Yahoo's buzz-marketing team. She launched her career working at various top San Francisco advertising agencies, including Goodby..... Read more.

McDonald's #McRib Is Back on Twitter Grill

2011-10-26T19:47:00.000-07:00

Christopher Heine | October 25, 2011 , ClickZ.
For the second consecutive year, McDonald's is running a Promoted Trend ad on Twitter to push the temporary reinstallment of the McRib. While the 30-year-old pork sandwich briefly coming back to the quick-serve chain's menu has become about as predictable as leaves turning gold and brown in the fall, the McRib seems to take on a life of its own on Twitter..... Read more.

No, QR Codes Aren't Dead. They're Just Used Badly

2011-10-26T17:52:00.000-07:00

By: Published: October 26, 2011, AdAge.

It's a lot of fun to call things "dead," and plenty of people are saying that about QR codes.

But QR codes are very much alive as the stats below demonstrate. What really should die aren't QR codes but the dumb ways agencies and brands try to use them.

Here are some recent campaigns that worked because of clever execution and an understanding of what actually motivates consumers to scan a product, brochure, or ad's QR Code:... Read more.

10 LinkedIn Tips to Boost Your Job Search

2011-10-25T16:02:00.000-07:00

By Kristin Burnham, CIO.
Is your job search lagging? Not seeing the results you'd like? Check out these ten expert tips from CIO.com's Kristin Burnham to enhance your search..... Read more.

Social Networking via Mobile Devices Surging

2011-10-25T15:41:00.000-07:00

TargetMarketing, October, 24, 2011.
Mobile social networking is on the rise: As of August 2011, the number of people who accessed Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter via mobile devices grew 50%, 69%, and 75%, respectively, over the same period a year earlier, according to a report by the comScore MobiLens service. Facebook was home to the largest mobile audience among the three social networking sites, attracting 57.3 million mobile users in August, followed by Twitter with 13.4 million users and LinkedIn with 5.5 million users..... Read more.

Marketers shift efforts to  responsive Boomers

2011-10-25T15:34:00.000-07:00

By Alex Palmer, October, 1, 2011, DMnews.
As the first Boomers have begun to hit 65, the generation that turned so many institutions on their heads is poised to do the same with retirement. Consumers born between 1946 and 1964 are more active, better educated and living longer than their parents, with Boomer women leading the way. This presents significant opportunities for direct marketers wanting to address these consumers' aspirations and fears about this life stage.

While they may not be digital natives, Boomers have shown a marked interest in the digital space. The 50-plus age group makes up the largest percentage of the active Internet audience, according to The Nielsen Co., .... Read more.

Takeaways for the Hispanic Market from the Auto Industry

2011-10-25T10:09:00.000-07:00

By: Published: October 25, 2011, AdAge.
J.D. Power and Associates drew more than 1,200 attendees to Las Vegas for a two-day conference on "Aligning Next Generation Marketing with Today's Digital Consumer." I was there Oct. 12 and 13 to moderate a first for this annual two-day event: A panel on growing your business with the Hispanic consumer.

I had never been to an automotive conference, so I was curious to see what people of this great American industry know or think about reaching the Latino market. Do they understand its special characteristics?..... Read more.

News Reading Up on Tablets, Revenue Not So Much

2011-10-25T10:05:00.000-07:00

By Susan Kuchinskas | October 25, 2011 , ClickZ.

People love their tablets, and they're consuming more news from more sources because of them. That's the good news from a new study by Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism and The Economist Group.

Now, the bad news.

While tablet readers are slightly more likely to pay for news subscriptions, a majority won't pay - even though early adopters tend to be more affluent and older, the traditional news audience..... Read more.

B&T-IPSOS PEOPLE CHOICE AWARD: BONDS SPOT A HIT WITH CONSUMERS

2011-10-24T16:13:00.000-07:00

BandT, 18 October 2011
The final Bonds TV spot created by The Campaign Palace before Pacific Brands dropped the agency has won the latest B&T-Ipsos People's Choice Award, with Sarah Murdoch's much derided Vaalia ad failing to connect and coming last.

Underwear ads featured strongly among the nine ads Ipsos tested this quarter, with Rio from The Monkeys - which shows men showing off their expensive designer briefs - coming in second..... Read more.

Marketing to the Distracted Consumer

2011-10-24T16:09:00.000-07:00

By Sean Carton | October 24, 2011 , ClickZ.

Marketers love to slap labels on groups of consumers. We've got the "millennials" and the "digital natives," who might be driven around by "soccer moms." As digital marketers, we're primarily concerned with the "connected consumer," and we're especially interested in "early adopters." We cater to the "online consumer," but we're really interested in reaching out to the "social consumer" who can spread our message through networks of "influencers." But no matter how far we might skate on the cutting edge, most of us still have to deal with "traditional" consumers who are more often than not "late adopters" or even "digital resisters."

All those labels are fine for spiffing up our presentation decks and justifying our media plans. But let me give you another label that probably includes most consumers these days: "the distracted consumer.".... Read more.

Nokia Windows Phone Likely to Miss Holidays in U.S.

2011-10-24T11:02:00.000-07:00

By: Published: October 24, 2011, AdAge.

The leading smartphone manufacturers have already unveiled their holiday wares -- Apple's iPhone 4S, Samsung's Galaxy Nexus and Motorola's Droid RAZR. But, for Nokia, the world waits.

Now, it looks like Nokia's much-anticipated Windows Phone, the fruit of a new partnership with mobile underdog, Microsoft, won't be around for the all-important U.S. holiday shopping season.

We know that mass-marketing for the new device won't start until 2012 in the U.S., and it's unclear if Nokia's Windows handsets will arrive on shelves this year at all..... Read more.

No Visibility, No Accountability, No ROI

2011-10-24T09:13:00.000-07:00

By Andrew Edwards | October 24, 2011 , ClickZ.

A recent study by IBM says that 56 percent of CMOs are not ready to be held accountable for marketing ROI - including web ROI. According to the study, a minority of them are looking to the web as a source of market intelligence. Most continue to rely on other marketing reports of a more traditional nature, and the article especially notes a lack of adoption of digital marketing analytics.

One's first reaction has to be: "Come on guys! Get with it!"

After all, web analytics is not some newfangled eruption in the mind of a crazed software engineer. It's been around for a while. Doesn't everyone use it these days? Could it be a generational thing? Are the surveyed CMOs tied culturally to what used to comprise the entire spectrum of marketing before the digital revolution?..... Read more.

OPTUS LAUNCHES INTERNET TV SERVICE

2011-10-24T09:05:00.000-07:00

By Madeleine Ross on 24 October 2011, BandT.
Optus is set to launch an internet TV offering in partnership with FetchTV, called Optus MeTV.

Giving viewers increased control over when and what they watch, the service is available on-demand over an existing broadband connection and brings together digital free-to-air and subscription television with a personal video recorder (PVR) and user interface...... Read more.

Tapping Spree: How to Spend $100 With Google Wallet

2011-10-24T08:57:00.000-07:00

By: Published: October 24, 2011, AdAge.

Mobile payments may be coming to a phone near you but, in the real world, can you actually walk out of your office and blow $100 using only your phone?

One rainy Wednesday in New York, I left my trusty leather wallet behind, slipped Google smartphone Nexus S in my pocket and endeavored to find out...... Read more.

Meredith Integrated Marketing rebrands as MXM

2011-10-23T19:10:00.000-07:00

By Juan Martínez, October, 21, 2011, DMnews.

Meredith Integrated Marketing rebranded as Meredith Xcelerated Marketing(MXM), said Martin Reidy, president of MXM on Oct. 21. Meredith Corp. also said it has acquired a minority stake in London-based marketing agency Iris Worldwide.

The New York City-based marketing services company launched a new website and an email and print marketing campaign to promote the new brand name..... Read more.

Goodenough resigns as CEO of Summit Business Media

2011-10-23T16:38:00.000-07:00

By Sean Callahan, October, 21, 2011, BtoB.

New York—In what industry observers describe as a surprising development, Andrew L. Goodenough has resigned as CEO of Summit Business Media, which serves the insurance and financial services markets, to “pursue other interests.” Thomas Flynn, Summit Business Media's CFO-COO, will serve as interim CEO while the company searches for a new chief executive.

“It's very much a surprise to me as it is to everyone else,” said Michael Parker, managing director at AdMedia Partners.

“It's no one's fault,” said Roland DeSilva, managing partner of DeSilva & Phillips. “He led them through a difficult time and the restructuring, but it's just the way things happen in situations like this.”..... Read more.

Maurice Levy Mulls Question of Lifetime: His Successor

2011-10-23T16:31:00.000-07:00

By: Published: October 24, 2011, AdAge.

Jean-Yves Naouri is in the bar of a five-star hotel in Singapore, armed with six cellphones, an iPad and a laptop. It may seem like the corporate edition of "The Amazing Race," but Mr. Naouri says they're simply his tools for staying current in a world where digital communication is so ubiquitous that the very word "digital" will soon be obsolete.

"It will be so natural, it will be entrenched, embedded in everything that we do," said Mr. Naouri, who is on the road as many as 200 days a year as he juggles the multiple roles of chief operating officer of French advertising conglomerate Publicis Groupe, executive chairman of agency network Publicis Worldwide and, sometimes, heir apparent to Maurice Levy...... Read more.

Apple iPhone’s Big Recycling Mess

2011-10-22T18:12:00.000-07:00

By Tom Kaneshige, October, 21, 2011, CIO.

Like many people, I never worried much about fulfilling my two-year wireless contract in the days before the iPhone. My trusty flip phone had worked for four or five years in the early 2000s, until I lost it.

Today, though, I count the months.

Last week, AT&T charged me an extra $18 to renew my contract with the iPhone 4S because I still had time remaining on my existing contract. I paid the ransom and became a proud iPhone 4S owner. Not sure what I’ll do with my iPhone 3GS, maybe throw it into Apple’s e-waste recycle bin or give it to a friend.

But that’s the problem: I’m now one of millions of people who throw away a perfectly functional smartphone every 15 to 18 months – the average lifespan of a phone..... Read more.

Groupon Sets IPO Date and Starts Holding Its Breath

2011-10-22T16:50:00.000-07:00

By Rob Spiegel, Octobre, 21, 2011, ECommerce Times.
Groupon has packaged a new deal, and it's going worldwide. The Internet coupon star will go public on Nov. with an IPO designed to raise as much as US$621 million, valuing the company at $11.4 billion. That's just 5 percent of the company's shares.
The numbers look big on the surface, but the total is smaller than the original expectation of $750 million to nearly $1 billion -- a valuation of $15 billion -- that was trotted out back in June.... Read more.

The Great Tech War Of 2012: Ongoing Skirmishes

2011-10-22T09:27:00.000-07:00

BY KIT EATONTue Oct 18, 2011, FastCompany.
Fast Company is tracking developments in the increasingly intense competition between Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon to show just how fast the big four are creeping into each others' spaces. Here's what changed in the 30 days since we published The Great Tech War of 2012. Check back often..... Read more.

ABCs of Ecommerce Success

2011-10-22T09:15:00.000-07:00

By Eric Leuenberger, October, 11, 2011, ECommNewz.
One of my primary jobs as an ecommerce consultant is helping businesses turn the corner—increasing conversion and website sales. In doing so, I find that many stores I work with have the same things in common. Many feel they are doing the right thing with their website, they believe in their product and customers, and they believe that all they need is more traffic to increase sales.... Read more.

Private Social Networks Playing Facebook Role in More Workplaces

2011-10-22T08:37:00.000-07:00

By Carolyn Duffy Marsan, October, 20, 2011, CIO.
From retail chains to electric utilities to manufacturers, a growing number of U.S. corporations are harnessing the power of social networks to modernize how their employees communicate with each other, business partners and customers -- making these firms more nimble in the marketplace and leaving their less Facebook-savvy rivals trailing.... Read more.

Las Redes Sociales Revolucionan el Marketing. 20 Tendencias 2012

2011-10-22T08:31:00.000-07:00

Por Andrés Silva A y Marcos Anguita S., 28 de Septiembre de 2011. MarketingHoy.
El permanente crecimiento y desarrollo de las redes sociales, está revolucionando la forma de comunicarnos y en especial, la forma de hacer marketing. Es por esto que, a partir de los cientos de comentarios y debates que se generan día a día en nuestras cuentas de Twitter, Google Plus, Facebook y LinkedIn, hemos desarrollado este trabajo de recopilación y clasificación, para dar con estas 20 tendencias 2012 que en definitiva, están modificarán aún más nuestro mundo. A continuación detallamos cada una de.... Continuación.

Speak to Me: Mobile, Voice, and Your Ad

2011-10-22T08:17:00.000-07:00

By Gary Stein | October 21, 2011 , ClickZ.

We've long dreamed of being able to talk to our computers and have them respond. I suppose it is based on some deep need that we have to have an assistant or a Girl Friday or Jeeves the Butler or whatever - someone who is totally loyal and always willing to help with any request. The trouble with having a person of course, is that they tend to actually be people: they cost money and we end up feeling bad about just barking orders at them all the time. So, a computer surrogate that we can talk to is just perfect.

Of course, the big news here is that Apple released its latest iPhone with the Siri software built right into the interface. It's getting a lot of attention, but Google has had a tool called Voice Search for a while now that provides many of the same functions. It isn't quite as well integrated into the operating system, but it's the same idea..... Read more.

As Walmart Prepares to Turn Corner, CMO Quinn Is in a 'Sharing' Mood

2011-10-22T07:41:00.000-07:00

By: Published: October 21, 2011, AdAge.

Walmart may be earth's largest retailer and employer of more than 1% of the U.S. labor force, but it also would like a little help from its friends.

Speaking as a marketer at the Association of National Advertisers convention in Phoenix today, Walmart Chief Marketing Officer Stephen Quinn, took on the role of media vendor, too, unveiling a newly developed "Retail Development Kit" aimed at attracting more spending and participation from the small army of suppliers in the room....... Read more.

Marketing magazine and Econsultancy launch A/NZ digital survey

2011-10-22T03:51:00.000-07:00

By Sean Greaney, October, 21, 2011, Marketingmag.com.au

Marketing magazine and econsultancy have partnered to conduct research into Australia’s digital marketing and ecommerce landscape.

The survey, accessible here, will look at the proportion of digital to traditional spend by brands in Australia, which digital channels are seeing greatest uptake, whether digital budgets will grow in 2012 and whether this will impact traditional marketing spend..... Read more.

TOYOTA HELPS METROLAND’S LARGEST MOBILE APP LAUNCH

2011-10-22T03:43:00.000-07:00

By Evra Taylor, October, 21, 2011, Marketingmag.ca

Newspaper publisher Metroland has rolled out five versions of mobile apps – iPhone, BlackBerry, Nokia, Android, and Windows – for each of its papers, totaling 550 new apps. Toyota Canada, a long-time Metroland advertiser, is helping the company celebrate with a prize giveaway of a 2012 Camry LE.

To enter the contest, which began Wednesday, readers must download a new app for a Metroland paper and enter the contest from within the app.

The promotional campaign features banner and wallpaper advertising on Metroland sites, and uses Google Ad Words and Flyerland.ca..... Read more.

Old Navy Targets Hispanics With Online Telenovela

2011-10-21T13:17:00.000-07:00

By Lisa Lacy | October 21, 2011 , ClickZ.
In a bid to reach fashion-forward, hyper-connected, 20-something Hispanic women, Old Navy has partnered with Spanish language media company Telemundo to launch a web and mobile telenovela,Estilos Robados, or "Stolen Styles."...... Read more.

Windows 7 is on a (Slow) Roll

2011-10-21T13:01:00.000-07:00

By Robert L. Mitchell, October, 20, 2011, CIO.

Jim Thomas, director of IT operations at Pella Corp., expected to be wrapping up his Windows 7 deployment by now. The window and door maker, an early adopter of Microsoft's latest Windows PC operating system, began deployment in February 2009, just four months after the product shipped. Plans called for half of Pella's 5,000 desktop and laptop users to transition by the end of 2010, with the rest following by this December.

Windows 7 Bible: Everything You Need to Know About Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system

"We are not going to get there," Thomas concedes. Today, Pella has 1,800 machines running Windows 7. The rest remain on Windows XP, whichcelebrated its 10th birthday in August...... Read more.

Apple Launches iPhone 4S TV Campaign, Starring ... Siri

2011-10-21T12:36:00.000-07:00

By: Published: October 21, 2011, AdAge.

As we predicted earlier this week, Siri is front and center in Apple's TV campaign for the iPhone 4S. Creator TBWAMedia Arts Lab manages to show Apple's voice-enabled personal assistant as the lifesaver in 12 everyday crisis, all in 30 seconds with time to spare.

Typical of Apple TV work, it isn't about the technology, but how the technology makes life better. This, of course, is the same tact Apple took with prior iPhone releases: most recently for version-4, it was ads showing for video-chat FaceTime and, most famously at launch, iPhones rich store of apps..... Read more.

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich: Best New Features for Business

2011-10-21T12:17:00.000-07:00

By Al Sacco, October, 20, 2011, CIO.
Earlier this week, Google officially announced the latest version of its popular Android mobile OS, v4.0, a.k.a., "Ice Cream Sandwich," along with a brand new device that runs Android 4.0: The Samsung Galaxy Nexus--formerly referred to as the "Nexus Prime." ..... Read more.

The Rise of Political Video Advertising

2011-10-21T04:55:00.000-07:00

By Kate Kaye | October 20, 2011 , ClickZ.
Political advertisers continue to debate whether the web works to persuade voters. But even the biggest spending campaigns are giving it a try. The campaigns of Michele Bachmann and Barack Obama - to name a couple - have begun to recognize the value of video for persuasion as well as Get-Out-The-Vote efforts. Not only can they use it to sway voters through emotive sound and imagery, they can combine influential messages with immediate calls to action, interactivity, and extend the reach of their television spots.... Read more.

When disaster strikes, email supplies nonprofits with speedy response rates

2011-10-21T04:34:00.000-07:00

By Dianna Dilworth, October, 1, 2011. DMnews.
When a tornado hit Tuscaloosa, Ala., this past April, the American Red Cross had to act quickly to create a response plan. The organization, whose motto is preparedness, takes this philosophy to heart, from disaster relief down to its marketing programs.  .... Read more.

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