How much control should be retained when collaborating with customers?
I was recently intrigued by a news headline saying that Ben Southall had won “The Best Job in the World.” The competition, created by Tourism Queensland, was a search for the lucky person that would...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tohato has Got Game: the Japanese Snack Maker’s Marketing Success
Often, I have seen a great advertising idea and thought that it’s too bad that the idea would not be applicable to most companies due to the nature of products that they sell. For example, in 2007, BMW...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fun new research topic: the NBA on Twitter
Much of my research at nGenera Insight is focused on how the Web 2.0 is changing the Marketing & Sales world. Because of this, I get to spend a lot of time doing stuff that many of my friends don’t...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Augmented Reality: Not Just For Kids
A colleague of mine, Alan Majer, first introduced me to augmented reality and indeed, he was the first to blog about an augmented reality game here on Wikinomics. Last year, he wrote about his...
View ArticleSocial media, and a structural decline in advertising spend
Yesterday a colleague sent me a link to a funny Onion article titled Pepsi to Cease Advertising. The key satirical statement was directed at shareholders in the company – declaring that PepsiCo is now...
View ArticleA future vision of CRM
Several weeks ago, my colleague Brian wrote about the emergence of Social CRM. The conversation touched on new applications of technology and analytics to help improve customer engagement and generate...
View ArticleMarketing Hierarchies Inside Social Networks – An Old Model with a New Twist
As the social networking world expands, not only are people finding new, different and many times more efficient ways to connect and stay connected, but new business models are appearing every day. Who...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Conversation Prism: Making Sense of Social Media
Surprise. Not all social media is the same. Brian Solis and JESS3 break new ground with an illustrative taxonomy that unravels some of the mystery concerning the use of social media. The power of their...
View ArticleGroupon.com: using minimum purchase thresholds to drive viral marketing
Groupon.com is one of the more interesting companies to have emerged in 2009. The basic premise of the site is simple – customers sign up to receive on daily deal from a local experience provider. Over...
View ArticleWould you rather own Yelp.com or Milo.com?
One of the major themes we’re exploring in our research this year is how to take a platform approach to business strategy. Two of the more interesting ones i’ve been researching lately are both driving...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What you need, when you need it: How context-aware machines will change how...
Getting the right information, to the right people, at the right time, requires a better understanding of the context in which information is shared. Sounds obvious, right? But, if you think about how...
View ArticleWhy I don’t trust the AdAge article about consumer trust
A couple of days ago Ad Age published an article entitled “In the age of friending, consumers trust their friends less.” The main finding that they presented, in the sub-title, was “Edelman study shows...
View ArticleSelf-destructing data: The return of Internet privacy
There is no such thing as privacy on the Internet anymore—anything you say or do lives on ad infinitum in Internet memory. In the intro of his Harvard paper, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger notes that “In...
View ArticleWhen you ask customers to dance, let them lead
I recently completed a report on Groupon.com for nGenera Insight research clients, as well as working with my colleague Jeff DeChambeau to put the finishing touches on a case study about Monopoly City...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Addressing the social media ‘support gap’
The a growing sense that amount of serious attention—and dollars—companies commit to social media is grossly inadequate when compared to the amount of time customer, prospects, and influencers spend...
View ArticleEarned Media, and the incredibily shrinking marcom expense line
Long time collaborator Sean Moffitt – who’s currently busy writing the upcoming book on “Wiki Brands” with Mike Dover – provided a link to an interesting presentation from Nokia yesterday. Much of the...
View ArticleMight social media give marketers more control than ever before?
When it comes to the impact of social media on marketing, I’ve been hearing phrases like “the customer is now in control!” more and more these days. But frankly, I don’t buy it. On one hand, I believe...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Marketing and the Meaning of the Web Collaboration Space
One thing people do on the web is create a huge and only slightly disorganized knowledge collaboration space. On a daily basis, just in the English language alone, they create about a half million blog...
View ArticleThe privacy discussion we need to have
I’ve written previously about gleaning insight into consumer habits by looking at log files, and profiled the so-called “bot mediated reality” of security consultant turned fiction author Daniel...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Are you addicted to social media?
Last year, former Wikinomics blogger Jeff Perron interviewed Jim Stolze on the virtues of social interaction on the web, posing the rather esoteric question: Does the web make us happy? Related to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Some quirky thoughts on ‘you are not a gadget’ and social production
I’m currently reading Jaron Lanier’s manifesto called “you are not a gadget”. While I find myself nodding along with some parts, and occasionally shaking my head at others, my most common reaction to...
View ArticleIs loss of privacy a risk of working in 2010?
I recently saw articles on Social Sentry from Teneros, which enables employers to monitor in real time employees’ social networking activity for potentially damaging posts or information, and...
View ArticleThe Real Truth behind Fake Steve
“Truthiness” is probably the best word to describe The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, a blog that more often than not does too good a job at parodying what Steve Jobs might be thinking on any given issue....
View ArticleQuestioning the idea that ‘the customer is now in control’
As I scan articles about the impact of social media on marketing, I commonly come some variant of the statement “the customer is now in control.” But the more I research and think about this statement,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Will Facebook be your CRM provider?
According to the Facebook blog (as of April 2010), the average Facebook user “Likes” nine pieces of content very month. With over half a billion users worldwide, that translates to more than 4.5...
View Article