How do you explain to your wife that you signed the house away to the Bellagio and spent a couple grand in various adult establishments on your weekend get-a-way to Las Vegas? Well, if you have Restless Leg Syndrome, try telling her that the medication made you do it.
The more I pay attention to prescription drug commercials, the more I realize just how complicated it must be to create an advertising campaign for a product when you’re required to list all of its negative attributes. Some soft, soothing music and a friendly voiceover do a lot to help but it’s tough to…
I recently completed an amazing book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott and it is a book that readers of BTB will certainly find useful. The book sets out to educate the reader about “how to use news releases, blogs, podcasting, viral marketing and online media to reach buyers directly” and it succeeds in doing so.
Many business books tend to spend too much time on ideas and leave the reader with few actionable items. This is not one of those books at all
As you’ve probably heard or read elsewhere, Microsoft announced yesterday that they’ve purchased a very small stake in Social Networking juggernaut Facebook. The deal, which gives exclusive rights to Facebook’s third party advertising platform, came days after Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, denied his company’s intention to purchase Facebook, which is now valued at 15 billion USD.
The move comes as a surprise to many industry insiders who, like me, figured Google would have secured any advertising deal with Facebook.
What does Microsoft have in store for Facebook’s user community, and will this move impact the site’s impressive 2007 growth? One can only wonder…
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Ever notice how some advertisements take on a life of their own? How some brand icons become so powerful that you remember exactly how they were marketed?
Take for instance, the Dairy Fairy for Kraft or the Serta Counting Sheep for 
Serta Mattresses. Sometimes all it takes is a little luck and knowledge about what will entice your product’s customers, but usually it takes a huge budget.
However, I find it really interesting to see PINK mini dogs, still selling (or being given away with purchase) at Victoria’s Secret. They change the colors of the small stuffed animal frequently to entice more ladies to collect…
One of the most basic problems with advertising is also one of the most challenging to overcome: supplying relevant information to a receptive body. Of course, Craftsman will always have a television audience during a NASCAR event, and there are a plethora of beer commercials on during any football game. But commercials are the most expensive form of advertising and chances are your product or service isn’t as well known as Budweiser or your budget as large. So, how do you avoid wasting your money on an Ad you don’t even know will reach your intended customer-base?
Social Networking has provided a simple…
In this new fragmented world, marketers are forced to hunt their target markets all over the media landscape. It is no longer as easy as placing a 30-second spot in a television show on a specific channel (that still has its place).
The advent of fragmented media and a major shift in consumption patterns has resulted in a stronger focus on the audience and the various ways that they interact with content and each other. If you want to sponsor a web-only show, you should be less concerned about the anchor website and more focused on the distribution of the show…
With the weaken (and near collapse) of the real estate market at the hands of over development and inflated pricing, the multi-family industry has also taken a huge hit.
If one can rent a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 1500 sq. ft. house with a pool for $900 a month, why would one rent an 800 sq. ft. shack-of-an apartment for the same price?
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to come up with convincing marketing to justify renting in an apartment community as flippers and real estate investors/developers scrabble to get someone- anyone- to help them pay the mortgage.
Besides having presence…
Walmart - a company that has had major image problems that none of us would want to deal with - has recently been talking about going green, but there have been tons of skeptics.
They are certainly walking the walk and putting the money where their mouth is because they have unveiled a new shopping bag that is “recycled, reusable and washable”. Read the whole story here.
Other brands can certainly learn from this move because this move is sure to have a positive effect on Walmart’s brand, especially when ‘green’ is such a big thing. Many companies say they are green…
If you missed it, Joost, the latest venture of the founders of Kazaa and Skype launched earlier this week. I decided to sign-up and learn how a brand might be able to benefit from this new peer-2-peer television service.
I love it!
As a consumer I have to say that Joost immediately got me hooked. I found it easy to use, easy to find content on channels and most importantly, the quality was better than I expected. They even have an option to create your own channel by dragging programs to your bar at the bottom, making it even easier to find your…
Here’s my take, thus far, on YouTube and its effect on marketing:
YouTube is the first of its magnitude to offer large scale video hosting and has opened the door to the progression of the internet from the two-dimensional world of documents and still images, to the three-dimensional world of video and motion.
In a two-dimensional world, knowledge and creativity are limited. With the introduction of user-generated video content, the public can now decide for themselves what content has entertainment value.
The heads of the media conglomerates and big business will now take a back seat as the public dictates impending…
I recently started to research a newer development in the blogging arena for a case study. It came to the surface in late 2006 - paying bloggers to post about a company, product or service.
Sites like Payperpost, Blogsvertise and Smorty allow bloggers to sign up and get paid to post and allow companies to connect with bloggers of their choice. At first I felt that this was a bad idea but I have a slightly different view now and will take a wait-and-see attitude.
A company often hires a PR firm to get publicity but if you cannot hire one, your options are…
Just like your mother always said… you should try new things. Apparently, I really listened to mine. I’m always trying new things. I’ve got brand loyalty for quite a few products, like laundry detergent, perfume, soap, cleaning agents and plenty of others.
However, for some reason when I see an ad for something I would normally purchase, but offers an advantage over what I currently purchase, I’m in. What’s even more interesting is that I know most of the tricks of the trade, which are enticing me to try the new product, but I can’t seem to help it.
If for instance,…
Many people have bought into the idea that social networking is only for connecting with people you know. Only a few brands have begun working with sites like MySpace.com and Facebook.com to create profiles that can be added as friends - a great way to actually engage potential customers.
I have noticed that the ‘brand profile as friend’ has been successful but I think that more could be done to identify brand evangelists - that small percentage who LOVE your brand and will gladly tell their friends about new products.
When you do a search on Facebook for ‘Nike’, you find a…
