QVIews

Now that marketing is a conversation, many companies are surprised to realize they don’t know how to hold up their end. Over at ChasNote, Chas Edwards describes a program where WebEx offered free services and effectively "sponsored conversations" among their target audience. (Talk among yourselves…) In an August 2007 article in BusinessWeek about fashion marketers…

One sustainable way to strengthen bonds with your customers is to tap into the passions of your employees. Of course, it helps if your employees share a passion. For instance, Southwest Airlines has always recruited people who know how to use humor to defuse tense situations. Borders has decided to tap into the fact that…

I believe that communication is not achieved without a system of repetition. In the advertising business, the rule of thumb is that an advertisement must run three times in order to be effective. In speech-writing, we have the old adage "Tell ’em what what you’re going to tell ’em, then tell ’em, then tell ’em…

Do you believe that marketing is primarily a creative activity or a discipline? Would you believe that being more disciplined can dramatically improve your creative output? Marketing, like inventing, is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. As the marketing environment becomes more sophisticated, marketing professionals are institituting new discipline in their operations. What’s really surprising (and…

I enjoy being in marketing communications because I get to work with clever ideas and striking images, but I have come to believe those trinkets must serve a message and the message must serve a marketing system. To run an enterprise effectively you don’t need to have "marketing" or "communications," you need to have a…

Businesses in Seattle are lining up for a test program from Microsoft. To promote the Collections custom mapping feature on Live Search, Microsoft is mounting huge ballons on the corners of the buildings that look like pushpins. These businesses have been marked in the mapping program as part of a collection, making them appear very…

Restricting your communications with customers to email can be dangerous to the size of your audience. To keep up with everyone, you should provide a benefit for providing a physical mailing address (pocket calendar at Christmas time?), and then you should mail at least twice a year. For broken email addresses, Toyon Books created a…

If you can’t silence them, put them on the advisory board! Whether or not this strategy works depends on whether or not McDonald’s listens to mothers, not on how many of the mothers see inside McDonald’s. Promo: McDonald’s Brings Moms’ Voices in the Kitchen Via Blogs. 2007-Jun-22, by Amy Johannes McDonald’s is using real people…

Nike+ is a product–a shoe fitted with an iPod plus extra software for recording your run. NikePlus.com is the web site where runners can record their routes, times, and talk about their performance, challenges, music, etc. NikePlus.com has turned out to be the real innovation for Nike, allowing it to plug into the runners’ lifestyle…