QVIews

To raise awareness and get prospects to walk into HBSC branches, Renegade Marketing staged a ‘Wheel of Fortune’ type game on the sidewalk outside. Now, zany bank promotions aren’t all that unusual, but the attention to the details of the experience really sets this one apart. Read about the strategy and details as described by…

Effective marketing has always relied on a steady stream of creativity. You cannot produce effect communications without inspiration. And yet, innovation is poorly understood as a component of effective marketing. You have to test your many ideas and sort out the good ones from the bad ones. Matt Heinz explains below, and the complete article…

If you, like Carl Icahn, have ever wondered what the heck they are thinking over at Time Warner, here’s a great rundown of the current management approach. NY Times: Time Warner’s True Believers by Richard Siklos (free registration required, article archived after a week)

Rishad Tobaccowala of Starcom Mediavest Group is called a Media Strategist, but he also considers himself a "futurist," and perhaps with good reason. For over ten years he’s been able to correctly predict the most productive places for companies like P&G and General Motors to invest their advertising budgets, from internet sites to computer games.…

Southwest Airlines, which doesn’t list its flights with the big travel sites, has recently found great success with a desktop application for its loyal customers. Now Mario Sgambelluri has an excellent interview with the AdTools president Chris Heitmann, who explains the short-term, long-term benefits and relative cost. iMedia Connection: Desktop Apps & Branding. "Branded Desktop…

I just discovered a cool web site from a research firm called Marketing Experiments. It reminds me a lot of Marketing Sherpa, although Marketing Sherpa focuses on case studies, and Marketing Experiments performs all original research. Tons of this research is available for free. Plus, they have a very cool sign-up page for first time…

The new Disney chief recognizes that, in order for Disney to be the leader in producing entertainment content, they will have to give up trying to control how that content is delivered and let the consumer choose. WSJ.com: In Shakeup, Disney Rethinks How It Reaches Audiences by Merissa Mar (subscription required) Under Mr. Eisner, Disney…

Panasonic and Grey Advertising share how they developed an advertising campaign which avoided their competitors and sent their market share from 21 to 55%. I recommend the whole article, but you’ll probably have to be registered (free) at AdWeek to read it. (The dancing angel, left, is from the Panasonic web site, but I’m not…

Infinity Broadcasting is sponsoring a couple of speakers at Advertising Week called the Infinity Innovators. One of them, Carat Americas CEO David Verklin, set a different tone than the other executives complaining about advertising’s ‘broken model.’ He says now is the time for advertising professionals to decided what future they’d like to have–and go for…

An article at DM News has two excellent case histories with ROI reporting on retailers using blogs to improve conversion and customer involvement on their sites. DMNews.com: Blogs and Bling Bling by Christopher Heine "One of the great side effects of blogs is that they are search engine friendly," said Seth Greenberg, CEO of eHobbies.com,…