"Imitation is the sincerest form of collective stupidity."—W. Carroll (Bill) Munro, marketing director, PepsiCo

"Don’t give me best practices, they are yesterday’s news. Give me emerging practices, they are tomorrow’s news."— paraphrased from Barry Diller (I believe).

Can anyone help validate who said the second one?

...continue to read "Quotes to Ponder: Best Practices"

Get yourself a YouTube, Digg, Flikr, del.icio.us, furl.net, or __________ (insert your favorite online popularity tool here) account. Get out your handicam, pen, digital camera, blogging software, word processor, or __________ (insert your favorite communication tool here) Find something to say that’s relevant, salient, and transparent to such a mass audience, it overcomes each visitor, infects them (er, eh, like a virus in such a way they can’t quite articulate, at their core they just have to pay it forward.…

...continue to read "3 simple steps to create a viral campaign…"

Your business can use transparency to its advantage, turning ordinary customers into tireless advocates for your brand

Do you ever get annoyed when a business’s online communications are as poor, if not worse, than their offline customer service? One of the most sacred promises of the Internet is that we have the power to chat with total strangers, regardless of how fragmented the information or disproportionately strong the opinion, to piece together the bigger picture about a given experience anytime, anywhere.…

...continue to read "The Transparency Imperative: Moving Beyond the Suggestion Box"

It’s not every day a client sends a FW: my way which causes me to literally laugh out loud (and clog other’s inbox as well), but today’s the day.  Apparently, our constant ranting about technology rarely being the solution to a Marketer’s problem is seeping into to those who listen to us most often (and who’s the worst offender of the "world domination through technology).  Take a look at what had me rolling, the official See-no-evil-hear-no-evil-and-certainly-do-no-evil Monkeys:

For the record, our…

...continue to read "Do no evil, Google?"

Well forgive the shameless plug, but we’re finally 100% publicly shipping our latest book Waiting for Your Cat to Bark: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing.  Amazon, BN and Sam’s Club jumped the gun a bit, but we forgive their exhuberance.  After all, there’s probably no better time to start shipping than when a book is recommended in the Sunday edition of the New York Times.  We couldn’t be more proud of it, and the reception we’ve received thus far. …

...continue to read "Stray cats barking throughout the office!"

In an experience economy, customer experience is the brand – you are in control of how you shape that experience

I purchased my round trip ticket for a Continental business flight online. I even got a confirmation email the day before departure that let me check in right online. That was wonderful! With my confirmation print-out, I managed to forego the large lineup at the airport. I thought I was off to a great start.

But then the brown stuff hit the…

...continue to read "Practice What You Preach!"

“Push your agency out of the way,” insisted John Nardone, chief client officer at MMA, in the day’s most controversial statement.

“They’re your single biggest barrier to measurement.”

And I thought we were harsh in our Ad:tech 1mpact presentations! Talk about impactful quotes. How about this one as well:

“I don’t need to hear from you,” snapped Dr. Don E. Schultz, professor emeritus-in-service of Integrated Communications at Northwestern University.

Speaking in an ad-barraged consumer’s voice, Dr. Schultz continued, “If I need something,…

...continue to read "Your agency sucks!"

I awoke at 7:15 this morning, exhausted from yet another weekend juggling family & friends in town, squeezing out the last 15 hours of the work week that couldn’t be fit into 5 workdays, and barely sitting down long enough to catch the Sopranos.  The first thing greeting me in my inbox was the same as it is each week, Roy’s Monday Morning Memo.  Talk about salience:

"Men think about it every seven seconds or so. Women romanticize it. Teenagers yearn…

...continue to read "Sex in the city?"

In keywords searches, your customers identify the scent trail they want to follow – it’s up to you not to blow it off

Let’s say you live in Montreal, and you’re desperate to move up a rung or two on the apartment ladder. You open your search engine and type in some words that reflect what you hope to accomplish. Something like “rent montreal apartment.”That’s just what my friend Melissa Burdon, a Conversion Analyst with Future Now, Inc., did. In under…

...continue to read "Montreal What Where Huh?"

Hype-y online copy only persuades your visitors to say goodbye

As sound-bites and sight-bites rain down like those proverbial cats and dogs (maybe worse!), folks are becoming hypersensitive to hype. Collectively, we are just not buying it.1 Yep, our bullshit meters are meticulously calibrated to ring when messaging sounds over-the-top, and we stand only too ready to believe that if it sounds (or looks) too good to be true, it probably is.Hype lives in your copy, in words that beg comparison…

...continue to read "Persuasive Online Hype in Action"