When I was a kid, I loved Tony the Tiger. He told me that his Frosted Flakes were “Grrrrreat!” and I believed him, getting up early so that I could scarf some down before my brothers would eat them all.
The character was created by Leo Burnett, a man and an agency famous for positioning products through iconic characters, such as Tony, the Jolly Green Giant and The Marlboro man.
Other famous campaigns, such as Volkswagen’s Think Small (DDB) and Nike’s “Just Do It” (Wieden and Kennedy), defined brands in the marketplace. While the principles that led to those legendary campaigns have lost none of their power, they are no longer sufficient. Marketing creativity is breaking out of old confines and making new rules.
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With all the endless babble about paywalls, “free” content, social media and other things, it’s easy to lose sight of the true values and cost of journalism. It is a profession with character, a soul and a purpose that is essential to a well functioning society.
Running a media business can be a lot of fun. You get to work with talented people. It can be exciting and glamorous, interesting and cerebral. It also has its downsides. Inevitably, someone – an advertiser, government official or even an everyday consumer – doesn’t like what you publish and calls you screaming for blood
When that happens, it’s your job to protect the product. Unfortunately, as this story will show, some people take that responsibility more seriously than others.
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Beware of consultants bearing gifts.
A while back, I wrote a post about false gurus, those with loud voices and negligible expertise who babble on about things they don’t begin to understand. They are sometimes nefarious, sometimes well meaning, but always a waste of time.
Yet just as bad (and sometimes worse) are the elegant gurus. They work with gold-plated advisories and consult for blue chip clients. They have real acumen and even true insights to offer, but then chose to deal in hyperbole and sophistry rather than sound analysis.
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Are you smart? Really? How smart? Socrates famously said that “the only true knowledge lies in knowing that you know nothing.”
More recently, G. H. Hardy wrote that “For any serious purpose, intelligence is a very minor gift.” Einstein himself said that his gift for “fantasy” was more important than his ability to retain facts.
Those are some pretty smart guys, so they would know.
That some of history’s most brilliant people hold such opinions about what it means to be smart should give the rest of us pause. To paraphrase Forrest Gump, “smart is as smart does.” So the question is, what does smart do?
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Does your business need Social Media? Really? What for?
Unfortunately, that’s a question that rarely gets asked. Social media has become so trendy that many people rush in without really thinking about what they want to achieve. Just as you wouldn’t select your tools before you know what kind of house you want to build, you shouldn’t undertake any marketing action without clear objectives.
There are, however, good reasons to incorporate social networks (and social media) into your marketing program. Here are four:
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As a young student, Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner took up physics because he felt stupid in math class. John von Neumann, his classmate at the Fasori Gimnázium and one of the great mathematical geniuses of the 20th century, was simply in another league.
Another student, Edward Teller, would later gain fame as the father of the Hydrogen bomb. John Harsanyi, who won a Nobel prize for completing von Neumann’s work in game theory, also went to the school, as well as others of notable accomplishment.
Was it the people or the place? That is the crux of the structure/agency debate that has dominated sociology for over a century. It’s also an issue that’s becoming am increasingly important management concern. How we treat the structure/agency question will determine how we operate our businesses, hire employees and drive strategy.
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Ask not for whom the bell tolls, the bell tolls for social media marketing.
I’m usually not one to whistle past the graveyard (seriously, I’m not!), but I have to admit that the trouncing which social media marketers are taking lately is delicious! For the past few years, anybody who has failed to drink the social media Kool-Aid has been mocked and insulted by triumphant social advocates.
Now it seems that the worm has turned. A recent flurry including an Ad Age column and an Ad Contrarian post expose supposed social media successes to have indeed been failures. Additionally, TechCrunch shows MySpace’s decline is actually accelerating. What happened? It’s time to do a post mortem.
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Here we go again…
The NY Times’ new paywall has ignited once again the rancor between mass media and bloggers. I’m a blogger, but have spent a career in media and gained enormous respect for journalists, so I am sensitive to the merits and passions of both sides of the argument.
At the heart of the debate is one of the central questions of the Internet era: What makes quality content? That’s a tough one, but I’m gonna take a stab at it.
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What makes a good strategy? Ask a collection of management gurus and you’ll get a variety of answers. Some say that you need a vision. Others emphasize focus on your core competencies. Still others would insist that you innovate your business model and on it goes.
There is also a divide on who should formulate strategy. While some hold that it is a management function, others believe that it should emerge from the bottom-up. Often it is developed by high priced consultants who specialize in strategy (many of whom have never actually run a business themselves.
The veritable Noah’s Ark of voices and theories can be downright stupefying. I would submit that one reason for the confusion and cacophony is that, far from being monolithic, there are three levels of strategy and each requires a very different approach. Here’s an overview:
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Stupid is as stupid does.
As most are aware, The NY Times recently announced that it is finally rolling out their paywall. It’s a classic case of “blame the victim,” trying to punish users instead of learning how to run their business profitably.
They are, in effect, attempting to fit an old newspaper model that depended heavily on classified advertising (they never really made money on distribution) into a new medium. Instead of owning up and adapting to new realities, they are masquerading old myths as a serious business plan.
It won’t work. Here are five reasons why:
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