MarCom Professional

What follows is the complete version of my recent post on Mashable, “Why Brands are Becoming Media.“

One of the greatest challenges I encounter today is not the willingness of a brand to engage, but its ability to create. When blueprinting social architecture and the engineering that connects people to other people strategically, enthusiasm and support typically derail when examining the resources and the commitment required to rhythmically produce, distribute, and support content.

Indeed, we are programming the social web around our brand hub and as such, we’re required to capture attention and also hold it through the introduction of engaging dialogue, interaction, and the introduction of relevant information packaged and published as social objects. More...

Foursquare seems to be in the news a lot recently, and is starting to be exhibit a similar hype curve to that of Twitter.

The über adopters and innovators get on first, try it out (as they did at SXSW last year when Foursquare launched) and then tell their friends, build a fan base then the celebrities get on it and the rest they say is history.

For those who have been on holiday or off-line for most of 2010, Foursquare is a location based social media service where you can arrive at a location or venue and “check-in” (manually) to tell other people that you are there (or have been there). 

To those who have just stumbled across Foursquare for the first time, it seems like a great waste of time (remember what we all said about Twitter in 2007…).  For those Location Based Services (LBS) purists out there (and I can see you scrunching up your face as you read this post) you will hate Foursquare because the user has to physicall More...

Baby boomers will eventually adopt smartphones and the Mobile Internet, and at the front-line of this movement are the younger boomers. But boomer mobile Internet adoption rates will be similar to their social media uptake -- that is, slower than the typical early-adopters.

According to the latest U.S. market assessment by eMarketer, boomers must see the benefits before they adopt smartphones and mobile Web applications (Apps).

Back in 1995, boomers were the pioneers of basic mobile phone usage, exceeding or equaling other age group's uptake of the devices, according to the Pew Research Center. More...

As a fellow member of the publishing industry, I’ve been struggling a bit lately to wrap my head around our emerging role on the internet, in the marketplace, and in society.

In that struggle, I hope to point to a few basic and critical issues at the heart of the debate. From what my research is telling me thus far, the primary issue for us—even beyond copyright considerations—is (and I don’t mean to be flip here) remembering how the internet works.

First, on content

On the surface, the issue is that when paper goes away, so does how we’ve been built to operate. More...

Marketing Convergence and Social All Over

I've had the pleasure in the last two weeks of working with a dozen of the finest Brits in PR, branding, digital / Web, public affairs and news distribution. We've joined up to work voluntarily on an apolitical campaign in the run up to the UK general election (invincecable.org.uk if you're interested).

I'm telling you this because, having blogged about the convergence of marketing disciplines over the years (as distinct from "integrated"), this campaign of ours has revealed just how far the best practitioners' expertise is now "converged". More...

As you know, there’s an abundance of horribly written corporate websites out there – with too much back slapping self praise and not enough focus on the customer.

For us copywriters, this presents an opportunity: if you can point out to a company why their website’s copy is ineffective, they might ask you to give it a makeover. Many companies complain about how poor their websites are at generating sales - often weak copy is to blame.

Here are a few classic corporate web copywriting mistakes you might want to point out: More...

There is a great Social Media conference being held in London next week and looking at the conference program,  it looks like being a great event and very timely. From their website…

Europe’s leading social media event. Two day event featuring four dedicated conference streams, workshops and exhibition to be held at Olympia conference centre in London.

Conference streams include: Social Media World Forum, Enterprise Social Media, Social TV , Mobile Social Media Cloud Computing Congress.

The conference will be featuring key speakers from global brands, organisations, social networking publishers and developers, pioneering social media leaders, agencies, content producers plus many more. More...

Perhaps the most difficult aspects of Social Media to embrace are the changes in our behavior and overall philosophy it necessitates in order to earn relevance and ultimately prominence in consumer hearts, minds, and markets.

Simply put, Social Media makes us vulnerable and officially ends an era of perceived control threaded by the illusion of invincibility.

Everything we thought we knew and valued is now in dire need of reassessment. We are entering into a time when we are affected by voiced sentiment in the public spotlight and backchannels of the social Web. What we hear, see and observe can and should touch us. More...

To announce and promote their customer loyalty programme Sprize, the GAP store  in Vancouver, BC completely flipped everything upside down and adhering to their tagline rather nicely of turning shopping on its head. This I like.  So all of the mannequins, displays and signs were flipped, as well as some cars and a hot dog stand outside of the store. Brilliant.

It seems to me like a clever customer retention tool and keeping those existing customers happy. More...