KnowNOW!

Global Economic Watch

Syndication

Recent Posts

Tags

View more

Other Useful Blogs

Archives

  • 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 .

  • 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:

  • Bob Garfield Rates the Super Bowl Commercials

    "If we can't depend on Anheuser-Busch at the Super Bowl, what can we depend on?" So asks Advertising Age's Ad critic Bob Garfield . Garfield was underwhelmed by the ads in yesterday's big game. In lamenting the quality of ads for this year's Super Bowl, he says there was a lot of "meh." Not a lot of bad, not much good. Just a lot of so-so. He says Anheuser-Busch's best ad was its simplest. He gave three stars for a Budwesier Select 55 15 second spot: No horses, no babies, no jokes. Just 15 seconds of interesting news: "The lightest beer in the world." The brewer's best spot of the game. The only ads to get more stars were from Audi, Chrysler, and Qualcomm (for its new FloTV). All garnered 3.5 stars from Garfield. You can read his full ratings by clicking here . And Garfield also breaks down the ads in a video over at AdAge . Click here to watch.

  • When Marketers Become Media Companies

    Ad Age editor Jonah Bloom says "the marketer has truly become the media owner." With technology lowering "cost of entry" dramatically in the digital age, some marketers are now able to take their messages directly to consumers. In this Ad Age video, Bloom discusses some of the recent success marketers have had, and suggests these are not exceptions, but signs of a larger trend:

  • Green Marketers Off to a Good Start in 2009

    Source: Datamonitor's Product Launch Analytics The global economic crisis has not slowed down the growth of so-called "green marketing." According to the lead article in this week's print version of Advertising Age, "package-goods products that claim to be sustainable, environmentally friendly or 'eco-friendly'" are hitting the market at a record pace. There were twice as many launches of green-marketed-products in 2008 as in 2007. And there have already been 458 launches of these products so far in 2009--well beyond the total for 2007, and approaching the total for all of 2008. As Jack Neff, who wrote the article for AdAge, points out, " green marketing is turning out to be surprisingly recession-proof." Consumers are still buying sustainable lines despite their higher cost. Nielsen Co. data show sales growth of organic food at 5.6% year over year in December from a year ago, though that's down from the double-digit pace of years past, and its SPINS tracking service showed sales at natural-food stores up 10.9% to $4.2 billion last year. Though growth slowed in the fourth quarter, it was still more than 7% in December, far healthier than the rates at even top-performing grocery retailers such as Walmart or Costco. "It looks like this green trend is going to survive the recession," said Tom Vierhile, general manager at Datamonitor's Product Launch Analytics. While the data shows that consumers have been willing to spend a little more for green products, price and performance remain key factors in purchasing decisions. Neff offers four tips for green marketers, and the fourth tip is to "address skepticism about price and quality more than the actual green claims." BASES (Nielsen's concept testing service) found more than 80% of consumers in all categories—including 89% of those most inclined to buy green but also 80% of those unconcerned about green claims—found green claims completely or somewhat believable. Only 9% to 16% of consumers said they believe green products aren't as green as claimed—fewer than half the proportion who said they completely believe such claims. Yet a vast majority of consumers said they believe green products cost more and don't perform as well as others. Read the full article here .