The lagging nose-diving) economy is creating additional dimensions of customer need that may well force many companies to re-think their value propositions. Here's a good case in My husband decided to take a road trip with our 17-year-old this summer. With gas at a national average of $4.10 a gallon, ... more

It's always tough to use the word "feminist" or "feminism" in a post. Those terms can seem to throw all sorts of people of both genders into a tizzy. So, why would I risk the possible comment backlash looking at how feminism applies to marketing, anyway? Let me tell I ... more

Was it Shakespeare who said "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet..."? It seems that the Bard didn't know what he was saying, if modern surveys are to be believed. At least, when it comes to consumer product According to a recent Wall Street Journal book review, ... more

One of the natural byproducts of Twitter's constant downtime, is that users are changing how they spend their time on the site. Many are simply spending less time there, and more time on other sites such as and . But I'm also noticing that the site is becoming less Earlier ... more

We all have the friend whose quirks are mildly amusing in person. But place them under the magnifying glass of social media and those minor quirks become major, hard-to-ignore annoyances. Or, as one friend recently remarked about an acquaintance of ours, "I'm embarrassed for him every time I go on ... more

Last week we unveiled the agenda for our Digital Marketing , which takes place this October 22 and 23 near Phoenix. While the term "Mixer" might confuse some .... Attention, folks! This is not a singles party for .... the description actually is more It refers to the "mix" of ... more

Rather than storing data and software applications down the hall in your office or in a big data center .... there is a shift towards storing them on the web. And that's the shift that Nick Carr has built his book We (America) need to jump on this paradigm shift ... more

Weekly Reader, a publisher of materials for elementary and secondary schools, needed to improve direct mail renewal rates, which had been trending downward. A simple redesign and copy change worked to increase the response rate and orders for the fall school year. more

Fellow Daily Fix contributor Paul posted a comment to a recent post of mine Functional ) that got me thinking. Paul "With food costs going through the roof, consumers are getting less for more, or sometimes less for the same Isn't that the truth? It made me wonder about how ... more

One of my goals this year was to do a study on reputation management. As we all factor in the effects of new media on our brands, I felt this was a topic with long-lasting appeal to every My hypothesis going into the creation of these questions was that B2B ... more

To compete for lucrative Wall Street or consulting jobs, students across the United States are joining on-campus investment clubs to help prepare them for real-world situations. And while marketing students don't–yet–have similar clubs, students in all disciplines are racing harder and faster than ever to differentiate themselves before they graduate. ... more

Did you know that over 57 million Americans read blogs? U.S. blog readers average 23 hours online each week! An average of of Canadians visited blogs in 2007. And of online consumers in the U.K. read blogs at least once a I converted a valuable list designed for nonprofits Net2 ... more

As the July 11th launch date for the iPhone in Canada approaches, there's a real brewing up here in Canada. The question is, will it be powerful enough to achieve the change Canadians are desperately On Friday (June 27), Rogers, Canada's exclusive iPhone carrier, announced the voice and data plans ... more

Marketing recently conducted an interview with The CMO Council's Donovan Neale-May, who divulged some starting information. It appears that in a survey conducted by The CMO Council and the Boston Consulting Group of 1000 senior marketing execs, only of respondents felt that their "go to market" capabilities were "very good." ... more

I've been an beta tester for the couple months or so and I have to say -- love it! I think of it as a box I carry around with me and anything I might want to keep -- I toss in the box. In reality, I am clipping, dragging, ... more

B2B marketers with highly complex products and services have been given a gift in the last few years in the form of Social In my opinion, Social Media doesn't easily equate to Lead Generation for the complex sale. For example a prospect reading a blog entry doesn't mean they want ... more

Back in March, I posted on a new trend in the candy industry that in my view, was quite Caffeinated What's Now, Brandweek reports on a new take on a former idea in the mainstream candy business, in a recent article dubbed Wrigley, Cadbury, Hershey's Sweet on Functional . Functional ... more

Harris Interactive just released it's 9th Annual of the 60 most visible US companies. Their of consumers say the reputation of corporate America is "poor," but consumers will buy, recommend and invest in companies that concentrate on building their corporate What are those building ? More than emotional social workplace ... more

Lately I've been seeing a troubling trend on some blogs, and especially on Twitter. What I'm noticing is that some well-known and established players in the social media space are using these tools not as ways to interact and be "social," but instead as channels to "broadcast" the media they ... more

What is it with the British? They have a monopoly on great humor. This must-see video clip is for all you creative types out there - the writers, producers, bloggers, artists, designers, etc. Trust me; you'll get a kick out of this One of my company designers sent this to ... more

I am a stickler for marketing and sales results. Everything we do should be measured, including our social media and social networking efforts. If what we do doesn't return ROI, we should stop doing it. Of course, to measure ROI, it must first be defined. I define ROI by asking ... more

Ever wondered what the "rhythm" of your city looks like? In cities like Rome and New York, aggregated real-time data from mobile providers is helping government officials monitor traffic flows, efficiently utilize transportation networks, and even plan for large-scale events helping to improve overall "citizen satisfaction." Is real-time data visualization ... more

Ever notice how life lessons come when and where you least expect them? Sometimes, the best insights really do emerge, and the person becomes more engaged, when a negative (I could never do that!) transforms into a positive (I had no idea it would be that It's the same when ... more

Classically marketers have always been protective of their content locking them up in PDFs and then putting a registration page in front of them. This behavior is known to have a 1 in 10 download rate, which isn't bad by marketing standards. But on the flip side, that means there ... more

Entrepreneurialism is alive and well in America. Just ask Tom Szaky, the founder of . His big a commercialized liquid plant food made from biological waste–or as Szaky calls it "worm poop," in reused soda bottles from school recycling programs (after making donations for Cleaning the bottles, slapping homey labels ... more