Back Seat Marketers

Let’s be honest, the stock market turmoil makes great fodder these days. Feeling like we’re getting out of the woods one day leads to punishment the next. I’ve learned to just tune it out and use a few tools to guide me on where things are headed for the economy.
First, The Conference Board posts a [...]

The Pew Research Center has found that the one-time and regular use of social networks by older parts of the US population are starting to take hold. This chart is the true sign of technology taking hold:

While many older parts of the US are not as well penetrated as younger ones, what we’re starting to [...]

This year, financial targets are already blown. Any idea of guessing, er, budgeting for 2009 is extremely difficult. Intel does the right thing and forgoes a 2009 projection and with it, the CEO reminds internal and external constituencies that there is work to be done during the downturn:
“Intel has weathered difficult times in the past, [...]

Windows 7 is launching in Beta and not soon enough. Generally, Vista was a bad launch in that it was years late, obsoleted in-market PC’s, and wasn’t well adopted. Honestly, Vista gets positive impressions from users that have done the switch, but the company struggled with getting demand for its system to make the switch. [...]

Is it too late for the Detroit 3 to tune up its marketing strategy? In good times and bad, having Unique Selling Propositions (USP’s) are important part of maintaining and growing share. USP’s create a reason to talk to consumers via advertising. In bad times, brand campaigns for the sake of brand recognition die, but [...]

[PhotoKeith's shoot of Josh Ritter at Southgate House on Flickr]
I was talking to PhotoKeith this past week who is a [very good] professional photographer about different ways to grow his business and we both realized just how much value there is in combining a traditional micro-marketing database driven marketing approach combined with Facebook and MySpace.
Professional [...]

While we’ve covered the purpose driven brands, the next two years will also mark the beginning of brands being driven by the people at the companies they work for, or their own businesses. Gary V. is the story worth learning on how a person can drive the sales and marketing of a business by creating [...]

Let’s face it, if you’re reading this, you’re likely as addicted to being connected as I am. One thing I’ve realized in 2008 is that one place that needs to be off limits for my online presence is in my car. I’m going to make a conscious effort in 2009 and beyond to avoid driving [...]

In a product marketing class we took in undergrad, we played a simulation game each week that was supposed to replicate a market with consumers that had shifting preferences over time. All of our teams were given comparative advantages and then had to determine where we fit today in the market, and had to read [...]

The WSJ reports that spending is far off, and the more luxury and discretionary, the less people chose it.

As people hunker down, lose their jobs, see iconic corporations change dramatically, and face a new reality of a more fundamental lifestyle, we’re going to see a shift of importance in creating value. Value in 2007 was [...]