Ubiquitous Marketing

There is no consensus about mighty Google once you leave the search realm behind. Personally, I get a little excited everytime Google releases a new product. I use Google Docs on my Macbook instead of spending hundreds of dollars on Word (oh, but what will I ever do without Passport!?!?!), switched from a Yahoo!/Hotmail confluence [...]

[Read more →]

There’s an interesting article on Starbucks in BusinessWeek, with CEO Howard Schultz walking the magazine through his vision of Starbucks 2007 and beyond.
Let me state that Schultz is a visionary on par with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. How Starbucks grew is the stuff of legends. He’s brilliant. [...]

[Read more →]

More than a few Americans start their days with coffee and a morning cake.
What, you’ve never heard of morning cake? Maybe you’ve heard of its “nicer” appellation: muffin. Yes, muffins, the sweet breakfast treat that consists of eggs, sugar, flour, and butter. It sounds like a cake to me, complete with untoward calorie and fat [...]

[Read more →]

I find AT&T’s decision to fold the Cingular brand into AT&T Wireless odd, honestly.
Cingular’s quality of coverage issues aside (because, let’s be honest, which cell phone service is endorsed by everyone?), the CIngular brand has always been associated with mobile phones, as opposed to the much older AT&T. Plus, there’s always the cost of ads [...]

[Read more →]

Considering the news coming out of Lost camp that exec. producers may be leaking false “spoilers” and the fact that the show’s fanatics are rapt with excitement rather than disillusioned by chicanery, it is apparent that nothing gets a crowd going like a tease. That leads to a Tickle Me Elmo, an item perhaps long [...]

[Read more →]

Despite a lingering fear that I resorted to too many cliches (though I hope the slight tweaks made it bearable), I really enjoyed writing my recent PRWeek column - to appear both online and in print. Here’s
a snippet:
What Renegade was getting at - and what bears repeating - is that marketing is not spackle, and [...]

[Read more →]

I know; I know. Many (perhaps, even PRWeek) will focus on how GM pulled out of its Survivor sponsorship curiously close to the announcement that teams will be divided by races. And that’s fine. But the question I have, about television sponsorship, in general, is this: what exactly is GM buying with its attachment to [...]

[Read more →]

In the same conversation alluded to two posts agao, the intersection of Apple, design, and marketing came up. My contention, flawed or brilliant as it may be, was that Apple gets a huge pass on glitches and iPod frowny faces. Dell, on the other hand, gets no such pass because its design conveys a product [...]

[Read more →]

The recent news that the Academy Awards and IRS (two tastes that taste great together!) have reached an agreement to pay back taxes on swag (the ever-present “gifts” given to celebrities as a product seeding endeavor) will likely have great implications for the consumer marketing community.
What you need to know: come next tax cycle, celebrities [...]

[Read more →]

Because, perhaps someday, everyone who at least swam near marketing in their careers will be judged on the astuteness of their take.
1) Think of the children! Effect on recruiting will be a muddled affair, with ultimately a negative effect. It will scare off all “good talent” because would you really want to work for that [...]

[Read more →]