Do You Know the Promotional Industry

Let’s face it, we all find statistics a little bit on the boring side. However, add a few simple graphics and hey presto the boring suddenly becomes something of interest and often allows us to see the wood from the trees. If you are like me and ‘mathematically challenge’ then infographics represent the perfect way […]

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Media Train Your Executives

The marketing department of any company–even if you’re your own marketing department–should always be trying to increase the firm’s visibility by getting its CEO or other top leaders out in the press. Sounds simple, but this is a process laden with potential land mines. The CEO may be the most knowledgable person on the planet […]

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Is What You Said What They Heard?

At first, the role of the marketer should be pretty easy. Let’s say you represent a great product. You have a media-genic CEO who does well in interviews and doesn’t freeze on radio or TV. We all speak the same language, right? Well, no. Different words have differing meanings to different audiences. There’s a whole […]

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What does Facebook produce?

What does Facebook produce?

The dog days of summer have arrived early at Facebook, which has been Dis-Liked by investors of late. Facebook greeted the month of August on a downer, with shares trading in the low 20s. Shares are now down 45 percent below the IPO price of $38. But, the Facebook selling frenzy could get a lot […]

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Is there ever a good time to go negative?

Ideally, marketers would just be able to sell the virtues of the product we represent, the products would fly off the shelves, the client would get “puff” interviews on CNN, and we’d win awards and kudos from the trade association for our creativity. But remember the “Five Stages of a Project.” I first came in […]

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Is Apple a religion and if so, why?

Let’s take a moment to marvel at the marketing machine called Apple. Cool, shiny, game-changing products. A customer base that camps out outside its retail stores even during a recession. Quirky, jumpy, but cool (that word again) advertising. Sure, you may be sick of it. You may not be an “Apple fanboy” or girl. You […]

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What’s The Consumer Mix?

What’s The Consumer Mix?

Every product or brand strives to market to a certain kind of consumer who seems most likely–either because of the consumer’s demographic or the product’s unique selling features–to embrace the brand. There are customer relationship management systems available that can sift through thousands of characteristics to paint a portrait of what the ideal customer for the […]

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Beatle Brand Rams On

My friend texted me with the news: he had procured a vinyl edition of the recently released reissue of “Ram,” Paul McCartney’s second solo album. The album, initially released in 1971, contained the hit Admiral Halsey (“Hands Upon the Water”) and was the last of the “homemade” albums before Wings’ 1973 hit “Band on the […]

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Marketing Examples Abound

Marketing can be a lonely enterprise. Sure, at first it’s fun to know you have a hand, or maybe an entire arm, in fashioning a message for your product or client, but soon enough the marketer is confronted with the “down in the weeds” decisions over medium (print, TV, Web?), message, cost, and reach (who […]

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Brands to Say See You Later?

The Website 24/7 Wall St. has come out with its list of 10 big-time American brands predicted to be no longer marketing by 2013. The list says a lot of about the relentless nature of having to build a brand even when the product is as motionless as a possum. Or, the product may be […]

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