Monthly Archives: October 2008

Business

Opinionizing the $700 Billion Bailout Package

October 27, 2008 – 2:42 am

The necessity of a $700 billion economic bailout package is a complex issue. As a designer, marketer and communicator by trade, I’ll be the first to admit that I wished I had paid more a little more attention in those 8:00 a.m. finance and economics classes in college.Talking to my friends, most of them don’t have enough understanding of the issues to have an opinion as whether the bailout was good or bad.To help them and anyone else looking to understand our current crisis, I highly suggest listening to this Chicago Public Radio Podcast, entitled 365: Another Frightening Show About the Economy. The show hosted by Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson, assumes that the listener has little or no understanding of how the financial system works globally and nationally. During the show they focused on several issues, including: why credit markets froze, why something needed to be done, how finanical institutions are tied together, credit default swaps and the decision to deregulate credit default swaps.Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson are regular contributors to NPR’s money blog.On a marketing sidenote; I cringed when I saw this.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VvGW98D3XA]

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Advertising Business Internet Marketing Online Marketing

Social Media: What’s the buzz about?

October 14, 2008 – 3:36 am

When building a brand, reaching the masses seems always be of the utmost importance. We need to sometimes ask ourselves the tough questions and think about whether anyone in the masses really cares about what we are selling. Social media marketing, which often times can be tough to sell to a top level executive, has proven to be successful in niche markets. A new two-year study by Universal McCann, entitled When did we start trusting strangers? says that social media marketing can have a much greater reach than just niche markets. Below is an excerpt that I thought explained well, what all of the buzz is about in regards to social media. 

Today the web is driven by its’ users and peoples’ thoughts on everything are found across the web, personal blogs, to reviews on price comparison sites and wish lists on Amazon are just some examples. It is now incredibly easy to share opinions and cultivate influence, often without even trying. The result has been the democratisation of influence to the masses.This is a fundamental change in the way we source and share opinions and today anyone can wield influence far beyond their immediate social group. In the old days the conversations we had with our immediate peers generally stayed inside that network. Today opinions and experiences are shared worldwide. Never before have we been exposed to so many opinions and recommendations from so many people – most of whom are complete strangers, without the aura of expertise or celebrity recognition.The result is an influence economy that is forcing everyone in the public realm including the owners of products and brands to become more transparent, open, conversational and honest. They have to rethink the way that influence is distributed and the role of marketing communications in an information landscape dictated by consumers.

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Advertising Internet Marketing Online Marketing Search Engines

Social Media Marketing Breakdown

October 5, 2008 – 10:19 pm

Social Media Marketing Application Visual

Social Media Marketing Application Visual

Marketers who explain to other marketers that they specialize in social media marketing are often times met with smirks and rolling eyes. Social media marketing by most marketers is still seen as a waste of time as in most cases the campaigns fail to reach mass audiences.It must be understood that social media marketing is focused on allowing brand evangelists to be the spokespersons for a product in hopes that their enthusiasm will influence others.In order to achieve success social media marketers need to focus on building relationships and starting authentic conversations. The question then becomes where to host these conversations.Ideally the platform would be on a social platform that is all about the brand that the marketer is trying to promote, although utilizing an existing popular social network like Facebook, MySpace or YouTube will allow for greater reach.The key to connecting on an existing social network is bringing something of value to the users and allowing them to easily share it with their friends. This can be done by building a unique and useful application. Unless you are a developer, this should be done by contracting with a digital advertising agency. When contracting out, make sure to see examples of applications they have already built.Facebook Application Information Open Social (Myspace, LinkedIn, Ning, Friendster) Application InformationThe topic of social media marketing is huge. I hoped this helped your basic understanding. Look for more posts about this subject including case studies in the future.

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