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 […]

Embrace Failure
Don’t be afraid of failure, it’s part of the creative process. Platform2: Art and Social Engagement, launched the Failure Support Group, an open forum to discuss failure and it’s relationship to art and production. Guests were invited to share 5 minute presentations about their failures and then discuss them with others.
On a related […]

There are so many amazing guerrilla marketing innovations out there. Sometimes they exist solely to get people thinking. The fact is that regardless of the purpose, guerrilla will be noticed. Guerrilla works. It’s easy to share, memorable, and generates talk. So take a look at some of these ideas and think, what point do […]

Greetings from the newest member of CBC! I’ve recently stumbled upon a fun site called WebUrbanist.com an “urban design, culture, travel architecture and alternative art” website. While perusing the headlines I came across a style of Guerrilla Marketing called Shopdropping or Droplifting. The names are so delicious I can’t stand it. Here is how WebUrbanist […]

brass is the magazine about young adults and money. Fresher than Forbes or Fortune, this publication targets Gen-Y with articles, interviews, and statistics that are relevant for them. Not only is the content original – so is the marketing. At brass, they know that the under-30 crowd doesn’t respond well to flat […]

I realize Forward ‘08 was a while ago, but there were some important points made at the conference that I didn’t discuss in my last post, Successful word of mouth marketing. Namely, word of mouth marketing as it applies to services and B2B.
After Andy Sernovitz’s speech - which was mostly about word of mouth […]

I write this blog with apologies to Jeff, our CEO here at CBC, who is about as far away from a science-fiction fan as Romulus is from Earth. I just can’t resist going where no CBCer has gone before for this post. I was recently watching a documentary about the making of the first Star […]

It didn’t occur to me until after spending 30 initially uncomfortable minutes in the pedicure chair next to my significant other that we at CBC ask our clients–CMOs, CEOs, managers–to continually get outside their comfort zone with the wildly innovative bank marketing ideas we present, but we don’t, however, take the time to advocate they […]

Hotels get it…and slowly, banks and credit unions seem to also.
At last week’s MAC Conference, we were lucky to be in a pretty nice, swanky hotel - one that understands the impact of multi-sensory marketing.
When you walk into the lobby of the Newport Beach Marriott, you instantly notice a distinct aroma - a calming, mellow […]

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 […]