• Refer a Friend?: How Ally Turns Customers Into Influencers
    We all know that word of mouth, influencers and off-hand advice from friends are some of the most common ways people come to new brands. But what happens when the company you work with tries to goose this organic channel with incentives? ALLY's Executive Director, Head of Product and Lifecycle Marketing David Hixon tells us this week about the financial brand's Refer a Friend program that in just a few months is responsible for 14% to 17% of new deposit customers.
  • The Yankee Peddler, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and the Social Cost of Segmentation
    In trying to sell to us effectively, are marketers also inadvertently helping to divide us socially and politically? Could seemingly benign techniques like audience segmentation and profiling, demographic targeting and personalization have unintended consequences for our ability to connect and communicate with one another? Annenberg's Joe Turow has been exploring the rise of direct marketing techniques, from the 19th Century traveling Yankee peddler to the focus on performance and behavioral targeting in the digital age. He raises important questions about the social and ethical implications of letting advertisers define us.
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