QVIews

This new campaign from Diet Coke falls under my category of "useful marketing." Since the campaign has just launched, it’s too early to tell if people will really latch onto it, but it’s a terrific idea. You can actually sign up to have ‘lighter note’ Reuters news sent to your cell phone by Diet Coke.…

To the left is a view from one of the Esquire apartments in New York. In the past, magazines that cover home design have decorated aparments, but Esquire does a great job of creating a complete brand experience. View the entire apartment through photos by Yale Wagner. NY Times: Esquire Gets a Temporary Bachelor Pad…

Storytelling continues to boom as a marketing technique. In the article excerpted belows, Joseph Carrabis of Next Stage explains how to use a story to turn your web site visitors from tourists into locals. The whole article is well worth reading. I’ve only reprinted about half the rules. iMedia Connection: Usability Studies 101: A Little…

Sorry for the mixed metaphor but whenever my friends used to complain about the grocery collecting their personal information, I always laughed and said the store would never figure out how to use the overwhelming amount of data they collected. Well, apparently Kroger finally found someone who can. Dunhumby got the start in the U.K.…

We spend so much time trying to anticipate what people will like that we sometimes forget to notice what they like. At Lifetime, Lisa Black didn’t make that mistake. NY Times: The Grandchildren of ‘The Golden Girls’ by Julie Bosman After nearly 200,000 people registered for a "Golden Girls" online newsletter, the network realized that…

Zipcar customer Paula Thornton is uniquely qualified to explain their success. She is a leading proponent of “experience design,” the creation of business models which are driven by disciplined focus on fulfilling the expectations of the customer, not the expectations of the employees, suppliers and competitors. Paula explains that the business premise of Zipcar is…

iMedia Connections is quickly growing into one of the most vibrant sites for news on the leading edge of marketing. Editor Brad Berens responded enthusiastically to comments by myself and another blogger about the appearance of "pay for play" in a recent article (see previous posting). I don’t believe they sold an editorial placement, but…

These are the eyes of a man who runs a company famous for placing adware on people’s computers. Do you trust him? Well, as a database marketer I’ve always been more accepting than most people when it comes to advertisers tracking my behavior. Despite frequent complaints from my pc-health software, I had the Alexa toolbar…

We have an excellent summary in BusinessWeek of how Jones Soda has created a brand community by assuming they need their customers’ help to market the product. BusinessWeek: Keep Up with the Jones, Dude! from the Corporate Design Foundation Internet-savvy and youth-aware, Jones Soda makes customers prime participants in marketing the brand and keeping it…

To encourage its readers to try the new online comments feature of its web site, the Toronto newspaper The Globe and Mail has launched a fun new contest featuring wacky prizes ripped from the headlines. If readers comment on a news story, their name is entered in a drawing. Winners can get their $10,000 (Canadian)…