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  • AdAge: Top 10 Apple Ads

    One more Apple/Steve Jobs story to highlight. This one is about Apple's success in mass marketing during the Jobs era. Advertising Age has a collection of the most effective ad campaigns during the era. Like the Mac vs PC series. This example is an online version of the ads that John Hodgman and Justin Long made popular: Check out The 10 Best Ads to Come out of Steve Jobs' Reign at Apple here .
  • Google+ and Brand Marketing

    In what we might simply term the power of G, Google's Larry Page says the Google+ social networking site has reached 10 million users in 2 weeks. And those users are sharing 1 billion items per day. That didn't take long. While it is of course too early to say what the impact of activity is for brands, but marketers are now trying to figure out how to best operate in Google+. We expect they will apply lessons learned from other online spaces, Facebook and Twitter in particular. AdAge 's Irina Slutsky writes about the potential opportunities that Google+ may provide. And the big advantage comes with the data Google already has on consumer behavior. Slutsky writes: Building out brands on Facebook has turned into big business -- costing up to tens of thousands of dollars a month -- and if Google has its way, companies such as Buddy Media, Vitrue, Blinq MEdia, WildFire, 22squared and many others could be adding Google+ optimization to their offerings. "We're seeing Google+ as a strong competitor in social media from an advertising opportunity," said David Williams, CEO of Blinq Media. "The brand pages need to roll out, an ad model needs to develop, and we want to take advantage of all Google+ has to offer." Mr. Williams, who works with brands including Baskin Robbins and Mentos, says that because Google has expertise in search, what has always been true for Google and Facebook remains: While Facebook knows who you are, Google knows what you want. That difference could be a major advantage when it comes to advertising. "Facebook has interest data, but not intent data," Mr. Williams said. "Google will have a tremendous amount of intent data that could allow them to create a better ad model for social than Facebook -- a very, very powerful ad model." Read Marketers Intrigued by Google+ but Questions Abound here .
  • Connecting with Neglected Markets

    As Director of the Lab for Social Computing at the Rochester Institute of Technology , Elizabeth Lane Lawley is impressed with a lot of the ideas of creative directors these days. But she believes a lot of them aren't connecting with some potentially valuable customers. In this talk at CaT London --now available from AdAge --Lawley argues that by ignoring consumers because of where they live, or their age, or perceptions about the way they live, limits the reach and viability of social media strategies:
  • Samsung's Ralph Santana on Building a 'Culturally Relevant Brand'

    Speaking at the 2010 ANA Conference , Samsung Chief Marketing Officer Ralph Santana spoke about his company's need to become a "culturally relevant brand." He considers this his main challenge, and he has to do it in a global business climate that seems to present a lot of moving targets. Here is an excerpt of that speech, provided by AdAge:
  • The Recession-Proof Doughnut

    Some curious everyday products can be strong signs of economic conditions. For example, Alan Greenspan once told NPR's Robert Krulwich that men's underwear sales are a strong indicator --sales are usually flat, so if they go down, the economy is in trouble. So what's the flip side? Donuts, of course . Or at least that's what retailers Krispy Kreme and Dunkin Donuts have found. Dunkin Donuts has shifted its marketing strategy to put the focus back on the donut:
  • A Beard Index?

    Perhaps you work from home and realized that you can be lazy more productive by not shaving every day. Or perhaps I'm you're part of a protest movement and didn't even realize it. Salon owner Rodney Cutler , "grooming editor" for Esquire and brand spokesman for Norelco , tells Advertising Age "he believes more men are letting it all grow out as an act of 'playful rebellion,' a sign of defiance and of not being a 'corporate slave.'" Sales of electric groomers rose 3% last year, and beard trimming kits rose 4%. Norelco itself saw a 24% rise in sales of groming producst. So c an we now look at a Beard Index as an economic indicator to rival the popular Lipstick Index ? Or is this just savvy marketing on the part of Norelco? Both? Read the AdAge article here .