Long-Distance Romance

If a marketer’s dream is to have an intimate relationship with and knowledge of his or her customer, then that marketer’s worst nightmare must be to know nothing about the customers who they so fervently hope will buy whatever it is they are selling.

Stop Circling the Wagons

This past week I had the privilege of attending The Economist’s 2009 Marketing Forum. As you might expect, the topics this year were focused on managing through challenging economic times, how to prepare for what we all hope will be better times in the near future and how we might know when better times are [...]

Just Ask

At this morning’s Social Media Breakfast (great discussion with Anneke Seley, author of Sales 2.0 on using social media in sales), I was talking with Sue of KITList and Clare about how to improve the conversation and engagement of the thousands and thousands of KITList members. The three of us wrestled with updating the blog, [...]

Your most important question

It would have been hard to miss the turmoil surrounding the change a few weeks back in Facebook’s terms of service. It appeared that they had changed the terms so that Facebook now owned complete rights in perpetuity (or something similar) to anything and everything anyone has ever posted or ever will post on Facebook.
It [...]

Reading Your Spirograph

I’ve been reading a lot over the past few weeks on the explosion of social networks. It’s hard to read marketing blogs and not read about Twitter or Facebook, and how they relate to Pownce and LinkedIn and all the other options. Oddly, I don’t find myself at all confused. I’m on LinkedIn and Facebook, [...]

Circle of Conversation

This image was not created to represent a market. But it does. And it shows a dimension of a market that’s often overlooked.

I found this on FaceBook, it’s an application called FriendWheel. You are at the center of the circle (this is a sample by the author of the application) with all of your friends [...]

The Visible Experience

Experience counts. I don’t mean work experience, or the kind of wisdom that gives you insight, but the experience your customer (or prospective customer) has interacting with your company. Your customer’s Experience is the heart of your brand, and the heart of your customer’s decision to stay your customer.
Last week, I had two experiences which [...]

Listen to the candidates debate

Earlier this week I heard a news report about the latest forum for the large and growing field of Democratic presidential hopefuls. The report said “…and as you would expect, the front-runners played it safe while the lesser-known hopefuls took more risks…”
Are you thinking risk doesn’t really work well in politics? Making a bold statement [...]