From a recent interview with Hal Varian, chief economist at Google and professor of information sciences, business, and economics at the University of California at Berkeley: We’re in the middle of a period that I refer to as a period of “combinatorial innovation.” So if you look historically, you’ll find periods in history where there […]
Hal Varian on flexible innovation Read More »
At the most abstract level, your organization is a single entity. At the most detailed level, each of your customers is an individual, unique and special. Perhaps the greatest challenge in marketing is reconciling these two forces: the unity of your brand and the individuality of your audience. You want to speak to people as
The most important strategic choice in online marketing Read More »
The law of propinquity states that the greater physical (or psychological) proximity between people, the greater the chance that they will form friendships or romantic relationships. Other things being equal, the more we see people and interact with them, the more probable we are to like them. The classic example of propinquity is that two
Twitter and the law of propinquity Read More »
This was a fascinating week for social media and disruptive innovation in marketing. Take these 4 stories: Yesterday, eMarketer reported that people all over the world are spending more and more leisure time online, on both a daily and weekly basis. A study by TNS Global found that in 2008, US adults spent 30% of
4 stories of disruption in marketing Read More »
Forget the usual stereotypes of IT and marketing. Start with the assumption that all marketers and all IT people are smart, talented, enthusiastic, and dedicated to the success of the company, above personal preferences or departmental jockeying. They’re each very good at what they do. So why is there such legendary frustration at the intersection
Why IT and marketing are diametrically opposed Read More »
I believe that marketing — as a function, a profession, and an industry — is experiencing transformational changes and disruptive innovation, driven by the evolving capabilities and culture of the Internet and a new generation of marketing technology software. It is becoming more distributed in execution, more personalized in communications, and more fluid across boundaries
Reflections on marketing technology for a New Year Read More »
A colleague of mine recently said her New Year’s resolution is to blog, blog, blog. She’s a busy executive, with little time to spare, and always a hundred other things competing for her attention. But she also knows that active participation in the social media sphere — blogging, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. — is increasingly
Social media personal trainers Read More »
Just read a great article in the MIT Sloan Management Review, The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World. The authors interviewed more than 30 executives and managers in both large and small organizations that are at the forefront of experimenting with Web 2.0 tools in marketing and came up with a set of
Marketing technopologists Read More »
Read a great article on how to avoid contextual tragedies by J. Brooke Aker, the CEO of the US subsidiary of semantic technology firm Expert System. The article discusses the promise of semantic advertising (in particular, the kind that is better at figuring out what a page really means when deciding which ads to place
Semantic advertising to avoid contextual tragedies Read More »
A reader recently commented on my semantic advertising post with a great question: exactly how well does semantic advertising do compared with plain old contextual advertising? Can the difference be quantified in a way that’s independently verifiable? It should be. I understand why it’s not today. There are hundreds of advertising networks, each with their
Semantic advertising contextual corpus Read More »
