QVIews

Over at iMedia Connection, John Cass of Backbone Media has a terrific article on how large companies can effectively manage the blogging community, using Macromedia as an example. This article is stuffed full of good ideas, and I’ve only clipped the sensible policies they use to guide their decisions and actions. Read the whole article…

Shades of the Cluetrain Manifesto, Universal has decided to try authenticity in the marketing of King Kong. I doubt this will be the start of a trend. People who’ve clawed their way to the top of the corporation can seldom be convinced to cede control. Unless to a king kong of director like Peter Jackson.…

Music aficionado Jason Fry, one of two writers for the Wall St. Journal column Real Time, has been avidly tracking the development of the long tail in music recordings, watching to see how quickly low-demand items become available–with some frustration. One of the bright spots is the Verve Vault, but Jason explains that many publishing…

I’m bowled over by a new web portal at www.Start.com. Just to remind you that Microsoft is a big diverse company, and some its people are very innovative, give it a look. I love this disclaimer at the bottom of the page. this site is not an officially supported site. it is an incubation experiment…

The new FLY pentop computer is extremely cool and gets the launch it deserves with this cool web site. Now this new tiny computer apparently costs thousands of dollars, and when the web site asks if you have a high-speed connection, it really means it! For those who can afford to play…go www.liveonthfly.com. MediaPost Publications…

In a profile of wine marketer Yellow Tail, CMO magazine bumps an emerging trend in product development and marketing: simplicity. We now have so many options, so much pressure to become educated consumers about everything we buy, that Yellow Tail is succeeded by making the decision process easier on the consumer. Part of that process…

Branded entertainment is not really new–it’s been around at least since the early days of television, but it’s beginning to be a discipline that marketers can use to build an emotional connection with their target market. Agencies which cater more to the marketers than the artists are being formed, and research is being recorded on…

Okay, at first we thought they were just advertising a new show by putting stickers on dollar bills, but now we realize that NBC is trying to get the target audience to participate in a certain activity…granting wishes. Now that’s a much cooler idea. MediaPost: NBC Fall Promo Strategy: Granting Wishes NBC will surprise shoppers…

Reading about the movement toward TV stations using VJ’s (video jockeys, I mean, journalists) that record and edit their own footage, brought flooding back memories of Max Headroom and Edison Carter (both played by Matt Frewer), pictured here in a shot from Max Headroom – Twenty Minutes Into the Future by Joe Struss. (Copyright for…

Great coverage by Stuart Elliott of the spending and tactics of US Open sponsors, especially American Express, which says it’s becoming devoted to ‘experiential marketing’ where the audience and interact and have a more emotional experience. The percentage their budget spent on TV has dropped from 80% in 1994 to 35% in 2003. They may…