Back Seat Marketers

No doubt, these times are increasing the focus on value marketing. What is becoming more obvious is the need to increase the focus on ensuring that a company’s strategy has meaningful purpose beyond the financial statements.
What do I mean by purpose? Umair finally kicked me in the head on this one last week [...]

Picture via the WorldRenownedPhotographer
If you haven’t voted, go do it. If you have, good for you.
If election polling is directionally correct, we’re going to see a whole group of people feel inspired in a way they never thought they could. Good. We can use a change in tone and our collective view on the [...]

Dilbert is spot on today about writing up a business plan:

A bit of optimism goes a long way in getting a new project off the ground. I guess folks that start businesses and new projects run at a 10 out of 10 on the optimism scale (which is hard in times like these).
The other [...]

Per BCG on the recent events (thanks to Ryan):
Saving will be more attractive than consuming. Many of the trends we have seen in the past, like trading up, luxury etc. will be stopped or reversed for many consumers – so companies must not simply extrapolate the trend of the past 20 years.
The real key to [...]

from psuedopop via Flickr
The Pew Research Firm is helping define the middle class. A battle ground for politics is also so critical for marketers to understand.
Per the Pew summary, here’s a portrait:
12 Percentage of the middle class that say “being wealthy” is very important to them.
14 Percentage of middle class that lost their jobs in [...]

via Flickr and Cishore
Stepping outside the norm on marketing, a couple thoughts on short selling and the furthering risks of being a public company.
Fred on shorting:
I’ve been uncomfortable with the “no shorting” rules that the gov’t put in place thursday night. I couldn’t really articulate my discomfort with them, but my buddies Howard and Roger [...]

Gary V. does a masterful job of laying out the new branding world:

Some deals just don’t create the value promised. AOL and Time Warner ranks pretty high in that category and many, including me, wonder how a deal for so much money could have been so wrong.
Confession: I made a bet on AOL + Time Warner back in the day and lost when it went South. [...]

I watched Disney’s latest tween movie made for TV (with the kids): Camp Rock. OK, standard fair as far as made for TV movies go, but I have to say that Disney seems to be figuring out an updated model for successful media management.
Beyond Scarcity Marketing with events such as Hannah Montana, Disney is [...]

Even the top tier brands are beginning to feel the US consumer pinch.
To appreciate our situation, consumer sentiment is reaching long time lows (source: St. Louis Fed):

Value marketing isn’t about going for cheap, it is about getting more for less = benefits / price. Wal-Mart forged value merchandising into almost every consumer category they served [...]