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Academia Meets Social Marketing November 12, 2008 Marketing has always had an uneasy relationship with academia. However, with the rise of social media and its transformative impact on digital marketing, there's a new imperative to look towards academia -- to understand how people form networks, influence each other and organize into online communities. Read Full Article

Save Your Career, Start a Blog

November 10, 2008

Layoffs. Layoffs. Layoffs. Those three words seem to be more certain these days than death, taxes and change.I lived through several rounds of layoffs during the infamous bursting of the Internet bubble.More

Beating the Recession

November 10, 2008

You can stare down the recession. It's a time of opportunity, not fear. Everything is changing. Greed is out and communities are in. (Photo: Walker, Goodson.)More

Failure to Communicate

November 05, 2008

Ladies and gentlemen, what we have here is a failure to communicate. Traditionally, brands have spoken in a "monologue" form to consumers.More

The Pitfalls of Nascar Blindness

November 03, 2008

Just four years ago, the late playwright Arthur Miller wondered, "How can the polls be neck and neck when I don't know one Bush supporter?"More

The Italian Job

November 03, 2008

Last December, Italy's Puglia region (the heel of the boot) announced it was looking for agencies to handle its tourism account for 2008. The money was 7 million euros (roughly $10 million), a large ad budget for Europe.More

The Psychology of Sameness

October 29, 2008

It was a morning like any other. I sat in traffic, looking through my windshield at a highway dotted with cars that all looked more or less the same.More

Why Do Clients Deserve the Advertising They Get?

October 27, 2008

You don't have to watch much TV or read many newspapers to see there's bad advertising out there. But why is there so much of it?More

True Innovation = Invention

October 27, 2008

True innovation can occur in virtually any product category. It just doesn't happen very often. In its purest form, we call innovation "invention."More

Mandatory Football Analogy

October 22, 2008

This past weekend, as I watched the Texas Longhorns dismantle my Missouri Tigers, my mind turned to advertising. Why? Well, for starters, to take my mind off the pain, but also because neither team used a huddle.More

Guilt by Association

October 20, 2008

Folks think that you're cheap, 'cause you're known by the company you keep." Dolly Parton may have put this little life lesson into song, but each of us probably heard something similar from our parents. As adults, we don't usually get told who we should and shouldn't associate with, but as advertising professionals, this lesson has important implications.More

Tired and Wired in E-Commerce

October 15, 2008

I recently conducted two transactions online: booked a trip to Florida and purchased flowers as a gift. The two experiences showed me how far some e-commerce categories have come -- and how far others still have to go.More

Players of Character

October 13, 2008

Last week was about as bad a week as I can remember at Ground Zero. We lost two employees.More

Why Advertising Is Different Today

October 13, 2008

Wells, Rich, Greene. Scali, McCabe, Sloves. Ally & Gargano. Ammirati & Puris. Levine, Huntley, Schmidt & Beaver. RIP.More

Was There a FOG Over Advertising Week?

October 08, 2008

It's becoming nearly impossible to attend a marketing trade show (and there are plenty of them) without someone making a comment about how Google is planning to overtake the industry.More

Crisis Control

October 06, 2008

These are challenging times, which is as much of an understatement as referring to Hurricane Ike as a pesky wind. Bear Stearns' collapse was a harbinger of things to come.More

You've Got to Tell to Sell

October 06, 2008

There are many schisms in the world of marketing: above the line vs. below the line, traditional vs. digital, and so on. But I think I've uncovered a new one, and it has huge ramifications for brands to win in the digital age: reductive vs. expansive.More

The Future CMO -- a Publisher?

October 01, 2008

Who would have guessed that the next generation of CMOs would need an in-depth understanding of a trade that goes back to the days of Benjamin Franklin?More

Strategic Thinking 3.0

September 29, 2008

Next year will undoubtedly be full of further surprises for the world's marketers, with changes in political leadership both in the U.S. and other world markets creating challenging environments for businesses of all sizes.More

An Open Letter to the Board of Morgan Stanley

September 25, 2008

At this writing, our nation finds itself in a severe financial crisis. It is for this reason that I would like to be considered for the position of CEO of Morgan Stanley.More

Do You Value Ideas More Than the People Who Create Them?

September 24, 2008

Uh, oh. It seems the Open Source Movement has crept into the halls of ad agencies and has now started to shape the way we farm for ideas internally. But instead of user-generated ideas, it is everyone-generated ideas.More

The Specialists

September 22, 2008

In our move to the suburbs a few years ago, my wife and I bought a house built in the early 1920s. The previous owners had neglected its beautiful bones and it needed extensive rehabbing that I couldn't possibly do; I can't tell the difference between a glue gun and a blow dryer.More

Analysis: Political Ads Must Be Fact-Checked

September 19, 2008

Columnist Sarah O'Leary writes: If a toothpaste company were to claim its product was the No. 1 cavity fighter in a TV spot, the broadcast censors from every network would demand reams of quantifiable proof and substantiation before the commercial hit the airwaves.More

Researchers Must Expand Their Horizons

September 17, 2008

The same people that are best trained to observe patterns and tell a data-based story are all too often relegated to the back room -- or worse -- being completely left behind.More