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  • 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:

  • American Consumers: Resetting Behavior and Refocusing the Economy

    John Gerzema , Chief Insights Officer for the marketing firm Young and Rubicam , sees a major shift in the "post-crisis" behavior Americans. He says the American consumer is "de-leveraging," and he is bullish on what that means for the future of the US economy. The consumer is newly empowered, in Gerzema's view, and he outlines how this will bring about positive change in the economy in this Ted talk:

  • The Waiting Game=A Losing Game for Small Business

    Lisa Barone of Small Business Trends lays out some straightforward advice for entrepreneurs and small business owners: if you are waiting for the "right time" to launch a great idea, you'll probably miss your chance. Barone: We all suffer from this type of paralyzing perfection. The voice in our head that says it’s not ready yet, that it’s not good enough to go live. But at that rate, you’ll never take that next step. You’ll sit on the product until it’s not “new” anymore, you’ll suck the excitement of everything that you do. One of the great things about being a small business is the freedom you have to experiment. Things don’t have to be perfect right out of the gate. You can try things. You can launch unfinished. You can fail and you won’t be crucified for it. You may even be applauded for your efforts. As a small business owner, you need to take chances. Your whole business is a chance. Be true to that. Get rid of the negative thinking and just do it. If you wait for “perfection”, your business will never grow. There will always be enough distractions and more important work before you can launch. Iteration is an important part of a design process, and it only makes sense to put ideas forward as they are developing rather than waiting for them to be perfect. Read How To Kill Your Small Business here .

  • Woodstock's Lasting Legacy in Marketing

    A lot of media outlets looked, and listened, back 40 years this weekend, commemorating the anniversary of Woodstock . The music festival and subsequent documentary may or may not have "changed the world" as so many participants predicted or hoped. But, as you can see in this Wall Street Journal video, it did change the music business. And, as the narrator says, Woodstock :"usher[ed] in a whole new era of marketing."

  • Reducing Friction and Connecting Better with Customers

    Successful retail businesses find ways to make it as easy as possible to connect with buyers. This, according to Olivier Chatain , professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, means eliminating "friction": You can access an abstract for the working paper to which Chatain refers here .

  • Twitter Touted for Small Biz

    The growth of the social media tool Twitter has been one of the leading tech and media stories of the last year. But skeptics abound as the business model for Twtter seems elusive, secret, or nonexistent. As Twitter's founders play their cards close to the vest, some businesses have found a great deal of utility in the tool. Small Business Trends writers have frequently highlighted the potential value of Twitter to small business owners--most recently giving it a key mention in their list of 16 Things You Can Do Yourself to Create Word-of-Mouth for Your Business . Zane Safrit writes: Join the millions of people who’ve looked like fools at least once in their life. It’s a party. And join them as they connect with millions of customers, prospects, partners, vendors, ideas, innovators solutions. And the New York Times is getting in the act. In today's paper, Claire Cain Miller profiles some small business owners who drank the Twitter Kool-Aid and are seeing big results after relatively little effort: “We think of these social media tools as being in the realm of the sophisticated, multiplatform marketers like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s , but a lot of these supersmall businesses are gravitating toward them because they are accessible, free and very simple,” said Greg Sterling , an analyst who studies the Internet’s influence on shopping and local businesses. Small businesses typically get more than half of their customers through word of mouth, he said, and Twitter is the digital manifestation of that. Twitter users broadcast messages of up to 140 characters in length, and the culture of the service encourages people to spread news to friends in their own network. Read Mom-and-Pop Operators Turn to Social Media here .

  • Crocs Added to Endangered (Shoe) Species List

    Crocs in Parma by Ze Eduardo at Flick.com Listeners to the classic BBC radio series, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy , know the utility of shoes as an economic indicator. The Shoe Event Horizon theory holds, in part, that when people are depressed, they look at their shoes. Prompting them to think, "Hey. New shoes will make me feel better." They then buy new shoes. Of course shoe makers have no incentive to make quality shoes at that point--the quicker shoes wear out, the more people see that they need new shoes. That may provide one explanation for the problems the makers of Crocs are now facing: their shoes are too durable and in a recession people stick with the pair they have. As Ylan Mui writes in the Washington Post , Who needs a second pair of Crocs in a recession, particularly when the first pair is holding up just fine?" Another possible explanation: the company overextended: The company used money from its public stock offering to diversify and acquire new businesses, such as Jibbitz, which makes charms designed to fit Crocs' ventilating holes, and Fury Hockey, which used Croslite to make sports gear. It built manufacturing plants in Mexico and China, operated distribution centers in the Netherlands and Japan, and forged into the global marketplace. More than half of Crocs were sold outside the United States. Whatever the explanation, the company went from profits of $168.2 million in 2007 to losses of $185.1 million last year. So put on one of your five pairs of microbial foam shoes and read Once-Trendy Crocs Could be on their Last Legs here .

  • 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:

  • Protecting Your Brand in Web 2.0 World

    Kern Lewis , president of small business marketing consultancy firm GrowthFocus , says marketers need to stop fretting about how little control they have over how messages spread in the viral, social media-driven world of Web 2.0. In reality, customer "have always been in charge" or how brands develop, he says, "the feedback loop is just a lot faster now." Customers can spread negative opinions about a product or company more quickly and widely than ever before, so brand managers need to know the digital turf better and they need to be quick. At Forbes.com , Lewis shares some advice at how to act on feedback. He says "be vigilant," "be active,' and "be honest": Given all the mud being slung at corporate America these days, honesty and clarity have never been more important. If you make a mistake, own up to it and demonstrate that you are taking steps to fix the problem once and for all. Remember: Giving customers what they paid for is nice. Demonstrating your commitment to quality and improvement will keep them coming back. And that's what building a strong brand, in any age, is all about. Read How to Maintain a Brand here .

  • Seth Godin on the Power of Tribes

    Seth Godin is many things: internet guru, entrepreneur, best-selling author, blogger. In the past, we would have said he "wears of many hats". But in the web 2.0 world, it might be better to say he is a member of many tribes. He is especially adept at sharing ideas--whether his own or those of others. And he says that in today's world of growing social media outlets, tribes--groups of people founded on shared ideas and values--are back. And thanks to the growth of tribes, the age of mass marketing, he says, is dead. Here is Godin speaking about leadership and tribes in a TED Talk :

  • BlogHer Survey on Women and Social Media

    BlogHer —“the online community for women”—surveyed women on their use of online, social media, and it makes clear that if you are a business owner trying to reach female customers, you better have an online marketing strategy. Or as Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends puts it, the BlogHer report “may cause you to re-think your entire marketing outreach.” The report estimates that 79 million American women are online, and 42 million of them participate in social media activity at least weekly—“social media” being defined as Blogs, message boards/forums, status updates (Twitter) and social networks like Facebook and MySpace. The breakdown among those four areas looks like this: Even more instructive is this diagram of the influence and reach of different social media activity: You can read the report here . And read Anita Campbell’s reaction at Small Business Trends here .

  • TV Exec Says Advertising is About Money, Not Brand

    Longtime television executive Henry Schleiff runs the Hallmark Channel as head of Crown Media Holdings. Despite the brand-identiity push of adverstisers in recent years, he believes television advertising is not about building brands after all. It is, he says, about selling products. In this AdAge video from the 2009 Upfront Summit , Schleiff says it is time to blow up old myths about television viewing and ads.

  • 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 .

  • Modern Day Prospectors and the iPhone App Store

    The iPhone application store has allowed people other than Apple to profit off of the company's innovative product. And what the New York Times calls the " iPhone Gold Rush " is on. The Times profiles a former Sun Microsystems employee who has now started his own company (he's the only employee) after making big money off of a target-shooting game he developed and sold on the app store. While it is easy to envy a guy like Ethan Nicholas --who has made nearly a million dollars off of his game, iShoot , it is hard not to see the benefit to Apple: the company has thousands of people investing their time in the success of their product: There are now more than 25,000 programs, or applications, in the iPhone App Store, many of them written by people like Mr. Nicholas whose modern Horatio Alger dreams revolve around a SIM card. But the chances of hitting the iPhone jackpot keep getting slimmer: the Apple store is already crowded with look-alike games and kitschy applications, and fresh inventory keeps arriving daily. Many of the simple but clever concepts that sell briskly — applications, for instance, that make the iPhone screen look like a frothing pint of beer or a koi pond — are already taken. And for every iShoot, which earned Mr. Nicholas $800,000 in five months, “there are hundreds or thousands who put all their efforts into creating something, and it just gets ignored in the store,” said Erica Sadun, a programmer and the author of “The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook.” Whether the applications sell or are ignored, the programmers are part of the marketing success of the iPhone and the app store. They assure that the owners of the iPhone are always finding new uses for their big purchase. And that helps explain Apple's creation of a $100 millon investment pool for program developers--the iFund. Read the full article here .
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  • 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 .
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