Blog

28 May

Posted at 12:14h in advertising, social media by
Those who may be familiar with Seth Godin know that he's been a pretty good predictor of what's coming in business and marketing. For me it started with his book Permission Marketing where, by his definition, he states that  "Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them." Think about that concept - people who actually want to get them. Not "roadblocks", not "takeovers", but actual engagement by choice. Such a novel concept, except most marketers disregard this basic premise: people don't like ads. Seth's genius continued in his book "Small Is The New Big", a concept that's undoubtedly unfolded in truth through micropayments, micromessaging and microplatforms. Yes, Seth's written a few stinkers along the way, but a man has to eat and Seth has a large home in Westchester to maintain. That being said, I was reading a sister agency's report on digital ad spending in 2009 and was completely blown away by what I saw.

17 May

Posted at 09:30h in social media by
An article in AdAge by called "How Location-Based Social Networking Gets Creepy" shows the peril of an imaginative (and somewhat perverse) scenario for the author, Jim Louderback. In this article Jim's alleged pedophile neighbor became mayor of the local elementary school but turned out to be a decent guy. The article points out one potential situation where putting certain information out to a network of friends can be misread. Given the news that Facebook will be also unleashing location-based checkins, it's worth shining the spotlight on a few more real perils that could be misread when using location-based networks.

08 May

Posted at 23:08h in social media by
We've all heard the perils of not following your own advice, but this is pretty ridiculous. Apparently a "social media consultant" in Iowa has been stalking "former female business acquaintances" using social media, but it was his harassment via texting that pushed things over the line and got him arrested. From the Des Moines Register:

26 Apr

Posted at 09:00h in Uncategorized by
The practice of geolocation services, or the ability to locate a potential customer using GPS-enabled technology, is all the rage in the tech and marketing world right now. However, there are very few written rules for marketers as to what to do. Thankfully some brave marketers are testing and learning with the various location-based platforms. VaynerMedia, the marketing company co-owned by @garyvee released a case study this weekend showcasing their work with the NBA's New Jersey Nets and Gowalla. The case study concludes that there are real opportunities for brands to move consumers as evidenced by the 15% of Gowalla users that showed up for a recent NJ Nets game. The 15% redemption was called a success. I'm calling bullshit.

21 Apr

Posted at 09:00h in Google, social media by
Facebook F8GigaOm has a great blog post previewing what Facebook will be launching today at their F8 conference. In short, they're launching Facebook Connect 2.0 (auto-logins), the Facebook Presence Bar (think of the one at the bottom of this page), Share/Like buttons, and Facebook Locations, which is their answer to Foursquare. This furthers the notion I've been telling clients for a while now: it's a flat out war between Google and Facebook for your attention and more importantly - your data.

12 Apr

Posted at 08:30h in social media by
I've been telling clients that 2010 is going to be the year of accountability as it relates to social media. This means  accountability using real numbers (read as: sales) and not fluff (read as: Twiggler.net says we reached 2,001,450 Twitterers with those 3 re-tweets!!1!). With this accountability would come the fall of the social media expert. Talk can only take you so far before it hits the fan and you're called out. That doesn't mean the "experts" are going away, though, at least not without a fight.