Taking a look at "social media" it is difficult to comprehend the dizzying number of sites, tools and applications that are proliferating before our eyes. I recently sampled 3,000 social media sites, tools and applications. Overwhelmed by the list, I then set out to classify these sites and tools to ... more

I came to Armenia to teach marketing and public relations as a Fulbright lecturer with the naïve belief that my subject matter was fairly universal. All I'd have to do is tweak my U.S. lesson plans a bit and – – brilliant lectures by the U.S. teacher would be imparted ... more

An interesting appeared in Supermarket News recently. "Can Safeway Become a Lab for Other Retailers?" discusses the food retailer's decision to expand distribution of its O Organics private label line and Safeway Select, Eating Right health and wellness line to other food Apparently Safeway's subsidiary, Lucerne Foods, will make these ... more

I shed a sad, sugary tear when I heard Krispy Kreme's about their plans to save the Cold ice cream. They are going to add ice cream to the On a brand who's #1 brand asset is the idea of HOT Even worse, they are removing the on-site baking machines ... more

As the forces of globalization continue to connect and intertwine commercial and financial markets, and new technologies come online in the marketplace, the time between "event" and "action" is rapidly In the past, managers could take weeks or days to make important decisions, however to effectively compete globally, some companies ... more

Here are a few companies in alphabetical order I thought had shown some real promise at the Web 2.0 Ascentium .... A model for the agency of the I spoke to the CMO, Romi Mahajan who explained 's go-to-market strategy to me. They are the nexus of a digital marketing ... more

As in The Committee of , a group of highly successful and highly influential female professionals. Last week, I was a guest speaker at The Committee of 200's (C200) annual conference outside of Dallas. Have you ever heard of the C200? Probably not - membership is by invitation only for ... more

This is a recap of a presentation by Michael Lazerow of Buddy from the Web 2.0 Social Networks are clearly here to stay with almost of the population is using these sites of Social Network have all opened up their platforms which means that brands have cost effective access to ... more

Why do some ideas go viral and others don't? Here's one People who are "bored at work" are a network bigger than any major network, including CBS, NBC, and so on. If ordinary people see something online and start passing it around THEY decide what is popular out of main ... more

Greetings from Yerevan, Armenia, where I am "posted" with a Fulbright grant. My original assignment was to teach graduate school-level marketing. However, after a bit of confusion, the assignment was changed and I am now teaching public Public relations in a post-Soviet world is an interesting proposition. Before starting, I ... more

Drop.io's CEO Sam Lessin presented "A Brief History of Privacy in this Data-Deluged World" at the Ignite II kick-off of Web 2.0 in I loved Sam's thought captured in the following "For the first time in history it is now cheaper and easier for people to be public than to ... more

A recent book review caught my attention. The book being reviewed, Obsessive Branding , was authored by Lucas . With a title like this, I figured the author would have plenty of controversial statements to make. Talk about an In all fairness, I have not read the book in question. ... more

Two years ago less than half of all consumers used search to find a local business. But today that number is upward of However, most small businesses today still don't have a website in fact less than of small business owners are online. For them the problem is not just ... more

The number of brands on a growing list of social media marketing . Just under two weeks ago, I posted a list of about 120 examples of brands either using social media for marketing or being impacted by users exerting influence in the channel. Since then, the list has almost ... more

A new Association of National (ANA) study this summer shows that of ANA member respondents believe their overall marketing budgets will be reduced up to with almost a third saying it will be in the range. What else is new? Isn't marketing seen as a luxury in some organizations? Are ... more

With global sourcing strategies in place, companies often assemble finished goods from raw materials from hundreds of suppliers. However, not all suppliers act ethically, and some take short-cuts in quality control. In order to properly manage our brands and take ownership of the "customer experience"–marketers need visibility into the supply ... more

Nothing happens unless leadership leads, which is very different from a leadership team that manages. Managing is yesterday's news. Great companies and those that want to be great will hire executives, directors, and middle managers who know the difference between leading and managing, and who themselves are Leaders show, they ... more

Have you ever heard of an advertising agency whose principals don't think their future is in advertising? Then, you haven't heard of Gary Koepke and Lance Jensen, Boston-based 's In a recent USA article, "Ad agency Modernista relies on out-of-the-box thinking", some rather interesting revelations were divulged. Profound, in fact. ... more

It's hurricane season here in Houston, and the weather weenie in me recently made a fascinating Web discovery. Then the marketing wonk in me started wondering... what could this cool find teach me (and maybe you) about creating a blog that "the locals" buzz about loud enough to draw readers ... more

Should the TV networks replace ad agencies? That's the question raised by Media " author Brian (no relation) at a recent New York Media Information Exchange session and reported by Advertising Brian says the TV and cable networks know what their audience wants, while at the other end are the ... more

If you have every questioned the power of , consider United Airlines lost of its value the other day due to the supposed re-posting (or careless reading) of a six-year-old Chicago article about the firm's 2002 bankruptcy According to the New York , a reporter for Income Securities Advisors in ... more

They may not be the ones you think I mean. No not the internal customers or your bosses boss like the CEO, CFO or COO. I mean real customers of marketing. Let me explain If you are like me working to drive thought leadership out of our organization and into ... more

Who says that social networking is just for kids? Or for tech-savvy marketing professionals, for that matter? The rise of niche communities has given everyone from knitters to animal lovers and doctors to truckers a place to communicate. But now even secret agents have a place to make * * ... more

The age of Google, which celebrated its birthday Google is a decade old. This may be longer than you remember; for many people, the company's watershed event was its IPO a little over four years ago at the seemingly expensive price of in a dutch The company now unquestionably dominates ... more

PJA On launching an internal innovation blog, and what we've learned In January, we launched PJA (as in money, or improvisation, or scratch pad), an internal blog for our advertising agency. The launch was quiet, and our expectations modest. Simply put, we wanted a better way than email for collecting ... more