Tom Friedman insists that the “The World is Flat.” Richard Florida says that it isn’t; in fact the world is “spiky” with towers of activity and flatlands of obscurity. Both offer compelling, but seemingly polar opposite views of the way our world is changing around us and what we need to do to compete.
Who is right and how should it affect the way we run our businesses?
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Marketing is, to a large extent, about communication. Consumer desire needs to be translated into a product and, in turn, the consumer has to understand how the product will make his life better in some way. A good marketer is a communication professional.
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In 1865, Gregor Mendel published the paper that established him as the father of genetics. However, it went largely unnoticed until it was rediscovered decades later and became widely recognized as one of the great discoveries in the history of science.
Why do some ideas quickly spread far and wide while others go nowhere at all?
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Leo Tolstoy wrote, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” It’s a similar story for web sites. To be successful you have to get the basics right.
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Measuring return on investment (ROI) in marketing is an important and complicated issue. As with any other investment, businesses want to know they are getting value and increasing their bottom line. However, there are some fundamental differences between marketing and financial investments.
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As markets become more competitive marketers’ jobs become more complex. New categories are created while old ones add more segments. Novel marketing channels compete with traditional media outlets. Marketing has never been harder or more abstruse
There are those, however, that offer a false solution to all of the drudgery. They have a simple formula that explains everything. I call them “Cargo Cult Marketers“ and they are people to avoid.
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The digital world is fraught with myth. A common fable is of a visionary idea executed flawlessly and pursued with certainty by those with superhuman powers of insight. How things really work is considerably different. It is usually a tale of confusion, doubt and more than a little trial and error.
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At the heart of the disconnect between the online and offline worlds are Publishing Walls. The walls which magazine editors erect to arrange each issue and maintain independence are essential edifices for magazine publishers, but seem ridiculous to the online world.
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Today we all use the web, but Tim Berners-Lee drives it. It’s his vision, uses his protocols and he presides over it at the World Wide Web Consortium. What was a childhood obsession with connections has become a movement that has transformed the planet.
Surely, Berners-Lee ranks with Gutenberg, Marconi and Alexander Graham Bell as one of the most influential people in the history of communication. However, his predecessors stopped at one major innovation. Berners-Lee is going for an encore.
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There is no media company today that is unaware about the great opportunities in Digital. Many of these are fantastic companies, with strong management, fabulous brands and some of the world’s most talented people. Yet when it comes to Digital Media, industry paragons flounder. Why is that?
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