Online Marketing for Marketers

The ‘Get a Mac’ ad features two men standing side by side in front of a seamless, gray/white background. “Hello, I’m a Mac,” says the young guy on the right. “And I’m a PC,” says the guy on the left (sporting dorky glasses, business casual khakis, and a jacket / tie).

This well known, highly successful ad campaign from Apple promoting their Mac computers against Microsoft’s PC is closing in on its’ third year. Apple has attempted to cement the perceived wide gulf between the PC/Mac in terms of ease of setup, use and operating system stability and security - see Vista vs Mac OS spot. Or see the South Park version here.  Read more

The worldwide excitement and energy generated from the election last week turned a lot of marketers moods (53% if we line up with the popluar vote) into ones of optimism.  For others, concern and caution.  But for all, we wrestle with the economic uncertainties which I believe mirror the duplicitous nature of Online Marketing pudits as we try to determine what will happen to the industry over the next 6 months. So, in all the readings of late, interviews done at the past 5 marketing conferences and general conversations had with fellow marketing peers, I have been able to finally gather my thoughts, review my notes and decide on my top 5 priorities for 2009.  My hope is this helps others with their clouds of confusion. Read more

The day after our historic election in NYC, I had a lunch meeting to discuss a marketing conference I was pulling together with an old association partner and the subject of “what do we call this conference” came up. Phrases like Emerging Media, Digital Marketing and of course my favorite, “New Media.” was tossed around. I stopped mid-sentence and said, “New Media…. what the heck is that? What does that really mean?” and my counterpart shrugged as if to say, yeah I don’t know either.  Read more

There was a time when Marc Evon Enterprises enjoyed a comfortable living manufacturing skate blade guards. You see Marc had the patent on the product, and little in the way of competition. Everything changed when his patent ran out, and the world of skate blade guards changed forever. The first to seize on the opportunity were the Chinese. The marketplace was almost immediately flooded with exact copies of Marc’s blade guards costing many dollars less. Alarming as this was, Marc decided he wouldn’t just roll over and play dead - he would fight. Read more

Rovian Politics Ends with the Internet

Today at MarketingProfs, we all had the great pleasure of hearing Arianna Huffington Keynote at lunch.  The story of how she created her Online Publishing Empire at Huffington post and her take on Politics today was one of the few entertaining and inspiration speakers that truly provided a good show for all.  One of her main tenants was how “Citizen Journalism” really is driving the future of publishing.  As she wove her story of huffington post, Arianna did not miss the opportunity to take her political shots like “saying Iraq is a mixed bag is like your doctor telling you have cancer, but the good news is your acne is clearing up”! Read more

Yesterday’s  Association of National Advertisers’ CMO Rountable comprised of Gary Elliott, Vice President, Hewlett-Packard Company; John Harrobin, SVP, Marketing & Digital Media, Verizon Communications; Becky Saeger, Executive Vice President and CMO, Charles Schwab Company, Inc, Steve Sullivan Senior Vice President, Liberty Mutual revealed some real insight into where the minds atop the major brands of America are, if you could read between the lines.   Here are some of the ideas shared that I thought we’re most interesting as it relates to Fear, Faith and Ignorance at the top… Read more

After 3 days in partying and networking Las Vegas at the DMA show and day 2 at the ANA show here at the Ritz in Orlando …  I get this sinking feeling that these may be the last extravagant well attended parties we see for a while. I have not met one marketer yet who has told me that they are not freezing travel budgets and cutting expense (let alone staff).  So, with everyone committed to the shows here in October before the major economic collapse, they had no choice but to show and make this one “Count” as it could be the last for awhile.    Read more

The Association of National Advertisers’ annual conference is in full swing here at the Ritz, Orlando.  Kicking off the festivities was the Marketer of the Year Awards Dinner, where the C-Level Marketers and Advertisers for about 500+ voted for the Marketer of the Year …  the finalist we’re Nike, Zappos, McCain Campaign, Obama Campaign and Apple.  And by an overwhelming majority the Obama campaign won.    The interesting part to me is in a crowd of very wealthy c-level execs from major brands around the world the enthusiasm shown for Obama.   Read more

Like most business and marketing professionals, I find myself planning and budgeting for 2009 today.   And as I do, one of my objectives is to find new ways to help clarify what’s needed in our industry of Online Marketing and simplify what is a very complex space.   So, lacking the creative energy, I took our old 4 Ps of traditional (which TRULY do not apply to Online… would love to hear comments on that) and turned it around to the 5 Ps of Online Marketing on which I will be basing our Tracks and “Field Guide to Online Marketing” for the Online Marketing Summit in San Diego this upcoming February.    Moreover, if I have enough positive feedback from this post, then I will have myself and other experts expand on each area each week to really dive deep into the “How”. Read more

Monday, I had a chance to speak on a panel about “New Technology and the Digital Changes” affecting all of us at the Electronic Retailer Associations Convention at the Paris Hotel in Vegas. And after my, of course, riveting session, I bumped into my old pals John and Barack. It was a rare instance to have them together in the same room.

So I took the opportunity to interview them (can see on FB page at http://www.new.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=32714841463) … moreover we discussed the future of digital marketing and how it will effect the economy, our government and business in general.  Read more