Back when my day job was advertising, the Holy Grail of advertising was WOM: word of mouth. If your spot or print ad could generate positive WOM (“buzz” in those days was something only insects did. By the way, this was only 8 years ago), it was golden. I just blundered across an eMarketer report […]
I recently took my 6-year-old son to the Ringling Brothers Circus and was really impressed with the focus on the customer. Buying tickets from Ticketmaster was comparatively easy (though the nanoseconds you have to actually make the purchase could be extended), and printing out your tickets ala airline e-tickets was great, but the really impressive […]
I have a Starbucks card, given to me as a thank-you by some folks at school. I don’t drink coffee (after drinking 7-8 cups a day my first year at the ad agency, I gave it up forever), but I do drink tea, Izze, and eat chocolate chip cookies and iced lemon loaf. Oh, and […]
I’ve been faculty advisor this semester for a Master’s Project that involves marketing and building brand presence on Second Life. Consider these statistics: nine million members. 1.6 million online in the past month. Three hours, average time spent each login. And our Fortune 500 client wants to be in front of them. Why? Nine million […]
We are full-on into what Joseph Pine and James Gilmore dubbed “The Experience Economy” in their 1999 book of the same name. No news to marketers, right? Well, maybe. Although Amazon comes up with 48 books in the immediate neighborhood of “experiential marketing,” and Google weighs in with 495,000 hits, do you really treat marketing […]
Look around. What are people doing? If you’re at work reading this, chances are pretty good that you and all those around you are banging away on a keyboard, that you’re interacting more digitally than you are humanly. Admit it: when you’re in a meeting, how often are you more focused on checking your email […]
I learn a lot talking with customers, but I learn a lot more talking with lost customers. I think losing a customer should hit a company like losing a friend or lover hits a person: you should (usually) just feel darn bad about it. But even losing a customer can be turned into a good […]
A few weeks ago, right before school started, my six-year-old son and I went to Herseypark amusement park, in Hershey PA. It’s about a three-hour drive from home, so going there was a commitment, and expectations were high, particularly since going there with his older brother and sister had been a ritual that we absolutely […]
We’re surrounded by RF, IR, EM, and God-knows-what-else. My six-year-old son has his own iMac (the original Bondi Blue one; a hand-me-down from his big sister). He “checks it” early in the morning before school. He’s been able to launch apps and change screen resolution since he was three. He knows the difference between Safari, […]
In 2008, Pittsburgh will mark its 250th anniversary with a yearlong celebration. With the anniversary approaching, we thought about all the voices and ideas in Pittsburgh, and about Pittsburgh’s enormous potential still to be realized.We decided to challenge the region to look forward, and ask: What do you want Pittsburgh to be like in the […]