Barbara Corcoran knows brand. As she says in this Big Think video, she owes her wealth to her success in building her brand more than anything else. And she says brand is now even more important than ever, with the barriers for entry in publicity so low...

Time is money. Or so we're told. But time is also happiness. That is what Wharton professor of marketing Cassie Mogilner has found. She studies happiness, and in that she has been looking at the effect of "drawing people's attention to time"...

Over at the Business In General , or BIG blog , Scott Campbell has some timely advice for business owners: " recognize and forgive oneself of things beyond your control such as natural economic cycles and political dynamics." Just about every...

Retailers and marketers were an important part of social media's strong growth in 2010. And eMarketer is suggesting that this year retailers will take the next step and move "beyond simply offering Facebook pages and Twitter profiles for their...

In China, "people want to stand out by fitting in," says Tom Doctoroff . Doctoroff is China CEO for J. Walter Thompson and author of What Chinese Want: Culture, Communism and the Modern Chinese Consumer . In this Big Think interview, Doctoroff...

eMarketer is projecting that 220 million consumers in China will make online purchases this year. That will exceed estimates of U.S. online buyers by almost 30%, but it will soon look fairly small. In four years time, eMarketer expects 434.4 million people...

Lev Ekster graduated from law school last year and faced a bleak hiring picture for newly minted lawyers. So he made the most of a bad situation. Specifically, he made cupcakes. And he started Cupcakestop.com , a mobile business in New York that delivers...

It is hard not to raise an eyebrow when someone names the airlines as an example of an industry ahead of its time in being customer-centric. But Wharton marketing professor Peter Fader does just that, pointing to airline loyalty programs as innovative...

With new tablets on the market and smartphones all but taking over the phone market completely in the U.S., Americans' commercial interface of habit is only getting more mobile. So while this year desktop web traffic remains king, it is down to 71...

A year ago we pointed to an article in the Wall Street Journal on the rapid rise in the number of entrepreneurs starting small, "craft breweries" during the recession . And it seems a lot of small brewers did well for themselves in 2009. CNN...

By now, most marketing professionals realize that they need to consider how their messages are transmitted differently depending on the technology consumers are using. What works for a website viewed on a laptop may not work on a smart-phone, or on a...

For companies that depend on a specific day, week, or month for a big percentage of their sales, preparation is key. Savvy marketers start preparing for the high season months in advance. And these days, that means preparing search engine optimization...

Members of the Internet Intelligentsia have been declaring RSS dead for a couple of years now, but it just won't go away. And as more small business owners and marketers recognize the importance of tracking industry news on the Web and via social...

One small step for Google , one big leap (or fall) for many businesses. Google made a change to its search algorithm at the end of February . The idea was to improve search results by moving high-quality content sites (rather than content farms and...

Seth Godin says "the cost of being first is higher than it's ever been." But is the payoff worth the rising cost? Godin suggests it is not: Have you noticed how often stock analysts quoted in the news are wrong? Wrong about new products...

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...

Local businesses are taking their time shifting their marketing to reach consumers online. eMarketer notes that online advertising accounted for just over 14% of overall ad spending for U.S. local businesses in 2010. That share is expected to rise to...

The Social Media Examiner 's 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report is now available. This is the third such report, and it shows that more and more marketers are using social media as a pillar of their work. The report breaks down how much time...

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...

So maybe the teenagers in your life roll their eyes when you mention email, as if it were an extinct form of communication. But for the moment email still matters, and a lot of marketers are finding it remains an important outreach tool, especially when...

The rise of social media is bringing out a lot of new creative tools and ideas for marketers. SMStrat Sujata Ramnarayan , is a believer in social media as a game changer in the brand-customer relationship, and he sure likes getting customers to like brands...

Apple will be introducing a new version of the iPad later today . And while the new features (a camera, for one) may or may not change the user experience considerably, it appears that whoever gets an iPad, or perhaps just about any of the fancy new tablets...

Americans watch a lot of television. But our addiction to our smartphones may be cutting into our quality tube time. According to eMarketer (off of data from Flurry Analytics ) time spent with mobile apps rose 35% over the last year. So mobile apps have...

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...

It seems even adopters of new technology might still fear change when it comes to branding. Big-time international retailer Gap has decided to scrap the new logo it just released after some pushback from fans on Facebook and followers on Twitter. Gap...