Second Life Enterprise breaths new life into Second Life

“Twitter is over,” my partner at work, David, constantly chides me.  Even though I point out that Twitter isn’t just about telling people what you had for breakfast.  He goes on, “Look what happened to Second Life, you thought that was going to change the world too. Now it’s dead.”  That’s not exactly what I [...]

From podcast to publication — the social media success story behind J.C. Hutchins’ The 7th Son

I just received the first 10 chapters of J.C. Hutchins newly published thriller, The 7th Son: Descent, in a free, down-loadable “special edition” pdf.  It was sent to me courtesy of CC Chapman’s podcast Managing the Gray.  I say newly published, because the novel has been around for awhile.
Hutchins originally released it as a serialized [...]

General Mills goes social

Here’s the killer chart…

During the launch of the Fiber One Bar, General Mills could see a nearly exact correlation between weekly online postings and volume.  As Mark Roddicks, General Mills’ CMO, points out in his inspiring presentation General Mills Goes Social, it’s the kind of chart you can take to management to prove the value [...]

On Digg, related content appears next to your ad, instead of your ad appearing next to related content

Digg is experimenting with a new ad format it’s calling Digg-fed content ads.  When you place this new kind of banner ad on Digg, it appears with links to former stories from the Digg homepage relating to your product or category or the interests of your prospective buyers.  Let’s say you’re advertising a food product [...]

Forget expensive dinners, Facebook is the new place to get to know your clients

Back in the eighties, when I started in the ad biz in New York, it was par for the course to take clients out for drinks, to dinner, the theater and other events.  For many, such outings happened weekly or even more often.  It wasn’t as excessive as in Madmen — those were really the [...]

Peer Squared fast forwards the convergence of online marketing and social networks

Peer Squared is a new platform that allows people to share commercial messages with their online communities and earn points that are redeemable on Amazon.  It’s an interesting concept and the first one I’m aware of that actively encourages people to share brand messages on their personal social networks by offering tangible rewards for doing [...]

Said the advertising to the academic, “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated”

I’m a little late to this one but I’d like to share some thoughts all the same.
Last March, Eric Clemons, who is a professor at the Wharton School, one of America’s top business schools, wrote a post on TechCrunch entitled “Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet.” It caused quite a stir.  Professor Clemons’s key [...]

Why are we so afraid to say “I don’t know” the ROI of social media?

Olivier Blanchard calls a spade a spade.  And he calls ROI, ROI.  I like that.  He takes to task those social media strategists who try to get around the question of measuring social media ROI with nebulous assertions about how it’s now all about “return on involvement,” or ROI is for the nerds and the [...]

A funnier Facebook profile you never will read

I have a friend on Facebook.  He’s a friend according to the old definition.  We met in New York years ago, before email, before the world wide web, even before Mark Zuckerberg was a twinkle in his father’s eye.  In the meantime our lives have taken us on different journeys, and we now live thousands [...]

I love plaid. Plaid Nation that is

I fell in love with Plaid today.  Not the pattern, the Agency and its road show Plaid Nation.  Plaid is a small shop hailing from the mega-communications metropolis of Danbury, Connecticut.  They do some cool work creating online communities and social media programs for organizations and brands that include Boehringer Ingelheim, Iron Horse Bikes, Segway, [...]