The Story

As advertisers, we are always thinking of new ideas for marketing to different parts of the community. There are all kinds of categories in which people can be bunched: male, female, parent, cyclist, automobile owner, dog owner, couch potato, active, young, experienced and so forth. Many of these qualities overlap and finding the right tactic […]

Being one of the biggest fans of the critically acclaimed movie, “Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory” (the original with Gene Wilder of course), I was immediately drawn to a recent blog post on innonate.com about using a Golden Ticket marketing tactic for product promotion and personal brand building. The man behind this non-traditional marketing […]

I came across a quote recently that made me think. Ken Simms, Avidia Bank’s senior vice president of marketing, was quoted in the Worcester Business Journal in reference to his bank’s recent name change following a merger. He said:
“You don’t want a long, involved name, or a name that doesn’t readily come to […]

Earlier this month, to address all the rumors and speculation, White House hopeful Barack Obama launched the “Fight the Smears” Website in an innovative attempt to protect his personal brand.
Not too shabby, Mr. Politician. Way to not only realize you are a brand, but extra props to you for knowing you’ve got to feed […]

Attention-grabbing, brilliant, tacky, non-trad, childish, irritating - a range of adjectives have been used to describe Tao Lin’s self-promotion strategy. Though people can’t come to a consensus about the author, they can firmly tell you whether they love or hate him.
Tao Lin has been putting stickers around New York that say “Britney Spears” to […]

As business people, we talk a lot about “managing expectations.” That’s a fancy way to say, often, “let’s set the bar low enough to make sure we jump over it.” You know what I mean…gotta make sure you don’t over-promise and then under-deliver.
But there’s a whole different side of expectation management, I’ve come […]

Yesterday, I attended the AMA’s Forward 08 non-traditional marketing event. There was a notable concentration on word of mouth marketing - what works, what doesn’t, and why it’s important. The importance is pretty obvious (people trust their peers more than they trust advertising). But some people might still be asking: what creates […]

I had a tremendous, highly personalized experience recently with a local mortgage broker, Mortgage Trust (a CBC client) and it made me realize how un-personal my other loan experiences with banks have been. Most banks marketing themselves as customer-centric have a long way to go to compare with this company.
After completing a loan transaction, […]

Max Havelaar, the label that was the world’s first Fairtrade Certification Mark, recently released a viral marketing video to help promote fairtrade. I personally find this cool for two reasons. A) I got to hear one of Max Havelaar’s team members lecture about corporate social responsibility during a student conference in Copenhagen (back […]

Good news–after a bit of drama, I’m happy to follow up to my previous post, It’s Hard To Eat Your Own Dogfood, and report that we did the right thing. We’ve separated from a client who was not a good fit. Does it hurt revenue? Yes. Is it frustrating as hell? […]