If you feel a sense of deja vu when the topic of social media comes up, don’t be surprised. As with many approaches to building profitable customer relationships (think: CRM), social media marketing is going through its own hype cycle. Some companies have well-planned strategies with goals and metrics, while others are rushing in just to be a part of the action. Still others haven’t quite discerned the best approach to using social media as a customer strategy tool that delivers ROI. We’re here to help make sense of it all.

Continue reading "Welcome to Social Media Month" »

Posted by Ginger Conlon at 11:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Even before the IBM commercial where the employees play “buzzword bingo” during a meeting, anyone even tangentially connected to the business world could tell you that corporate America was turning the English language into its personal playground. Similar to the way politicians carefully choose their words to convey the proper emotion and stay on message, businesses have invented terms like “offshoring” to mask the negative effects of losing jobs overseas, and “result-driven” or “value-added” to emphasize positive terms. Sometimes this process goes too far, and someone steps in to say “enough!” In England, that responsibility fell to the Local Government Association, after a local town council began calling brainstorming “thought showers” instead.

Continue reading "Why Invent New Words? Just be Clear" »

Posted by Jeremy Nedelka at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

The concept of “marketing,” or the murkiness that exists around branding and the rest of the marketing world, is among the things Kevin Zimmerman discussed with author Rob Walker in today’s Marketing Xfactor. Walker also talks about the fleeting happiness that comes with acquiring things, and his belief that branding is as powerful a force in today’s media landscape as ever.

What do you think the future holds for branding? Are consumers really “brand-proof” as some experts say, or is Walker right that with some creative marketing, customer immunity to brands can be overcome?

Posted by Jeremy Nedelka at 7:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

After spending so much time covering such topics as social media and word of mouth, I decided to immerse myself in the social marketing experience. I got the opportunity to do this after a meeting with marketing services company House Party. Its site is a combination social network/party manager, where party hosts and party goers can interact on blogs and post photos and videos, and hosts can manage and track invitations, to-do lists, and more. The parties themselves are hosted by consumers—1,000 of them on the same day (or two), to be exact—for specific sponsors.

Continue reading "Customer as Marketer" »

Posted by Ginger Conlon at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Years from now, when our children ask, "What did you do in the mobile revolution, Daddy?" we may find ourselves saying something like: "Uh ... I was waiting for it to actually happen."

That was the somewhat surprising theme at last week's Mobile Marketing Forum in New York. On the one hand we heard outgoing Mobile Marketing Association president Laura Marriott say that about half of the world's population -- 3.3 billion people -- are mobile subscribers, compared with 1 billion worldwide Internet users. On the other hand, we heard Mozes Inc. founder and CEO Dorrian Porter compare the mobile environment to the movie Groundhog Day, noting that each of the past several years has been breathlessly heralded as "The Year of Mobile" -- only to see those hopes dashed. (Amusingly, Porter started giving the same presentation on the Forum's second day.)

So just what is going on?

Continue reading "Still Awaiting the Mobile Revolution" »

Posted by Kevin Zimmerman at 8:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)