Commitment - the holy grail of relationships. It’s what Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and the City finally got from Mr. Big and what Jennifer Aniston could never quite achieve with Brad Pitt. It’s also increasingly what savvy marketers hope to foster with programs that eschew loyalty in favor of solutions that create committed customers.
Conventional rewards […]

Who says grass roots marketing is just for Democrats? Last week, the GOP launched a new web-based social media campaign to lots of fanfare (including an appearance on Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room). Organized around an interactive toolbar downloaded onto a constitutent’s browser, campaign cash is raised via incentivized search (through a partnership with Yahoo) as […]

Let’s suppose you’re the mayor of a medieval village (read on—this really will go somewhere). The town commons is open for all to graze their sheep. One farmer has a sheep, fat as an elephant, with a particularly voracious appetite. She’s always getting in the way of the other sheep and leaves little for them […]

In May 2008, Facebook, MySpace and Google each announced the release of their own platform that will allow users to take their on-line social network data and make it available to other websites, such as blogs, shopping portals, or hobby sites. Once adopted, these platforms will fundamentally change the way individuals and companies use the […]

The NY Times had a big piece on Sunday about Americans digging themselves into debt. Much of the article was beating up the banking industry for extending subprime loans. But, hey, why not take a swipe at the credit card industry too while they’re at it. Journalists and certain public intellectuals have been hyperventilating over […]

Esquire magazine, once known for its witty and sometimes racy covers, is about to raise eyebrows once again with its September issue. According to the New York Times, their latest cover shot is a battery-powered cover with a life of 90 days, to commemorate its 75th anniversary. Esquire’s exclusive deal with E-ink (the guys […]

David Carr in his piece entitled, “Hey Friend, Do I Know You?” laments that the real losers on Facebook are you and your real friends. His proclamation stems from his observation that Facebook is increasingly morphing into a platform for tapping into “friends of friends” for business purposes. He further comments that this gives […]

In the latest sign of an industry that is headed for oblivion, a new study released by the Pew Research Center concludes that 64% of American newspapers publish less foreign news than they did three years ago citing editor’s opinions that foreign news is not “essential” to their business any more. And, right behind the […]

The bad news it that HR 5546 which exempts merchants from the antitrust laws so that they can set up a cartel to negotiate lower interchange fees squeaked through the House Judiciary Committee with a 19-16 vote. The goods news is that it seems to in enough of shambles that few think it will ever […]

B2C social networking and social media have a ways to go in regards to successful targeted advertising. However, the market is making progress in determining what makes advertisements successful on these sites whether it be Facebook applications, MySpace and Facebook business pages or even internal social networking sites for businesses. However, what makes B2B social […]