• ONLINE SPIN
    Online Display Has A Spam Problem
    I've written about this before, but because I haven't seen much progress, I feel the need to repeat it. The online ad industry has a spam problem with its display ads that it needs to fix -- or the industry is going to see its growth stop with major brand advertisers.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    WWCD: If I Were... Creating & Marketing A New Industry Conference
    There are lots of really great conferences in our business, loaded to the gills with information, insights and intelligence to help everyone become more effective in their day-to-day roles. That being said, it's easy for conference formats to become stale. The fact is, it's difficult to have a conference that offers relevant points of view in a way that's unique, and that you can repeat. With this week's column I wanted to throw out an idea for how I'd create a conference if I were to create it from scratch.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Modern-Day Marketing Leadership
    Hundreds of books and thousands of articles have been written on the topic of leadership. So there's no need for me to pontificate on the general traits of an effective leader or whether a leader is born or made. Regardless of the position or title you hold, current leadership or rank and file, agency, client or publisher - - developing specific leadership traits will make you better at what you do and will further your career path.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Does Our Disdain for Google Matter?
    Every hour of every day of every week, there are articles bullet-pointing all the reasons to "hate Google," articles that seem to keep recycling the same ideas. In some ways, that's OK. There will always be an audience for these articles and the ideas they recycle, just as there will be one for the agency-bashing commentary that seems to draw from an infinity pool of sameness.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    No Such Thing As Bad Publicity? We'll See...
    First there was Dave Carroll. Back in the spring of 2008, United Airlines broke his Taylor guitar -- and then rubbed salt in the wou by giving him the runaround in the customer service labyrinth. After he had, in his words, "chased their wild gooses" for far too long, he finally recorded a song about it in July 2009. And put it on YouTube. Where it received more than three million views. In its first week. Along with coverage in USA Today, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, and, in the ultimate sign of true Internet fame, a Hitler "Downfall" parody. …
  • ONLINE SPIN
    WWCD: If I Were... Marketing A New-Media Publishing Company
    Recently I was sitting and thinking a lot about how I'd do things differently if I were in the shoes of other people - which inspired me to write a series of columns I affectionately call WWCD: What Would Cory Do. It's not that I'm egotistical enough to pretend to know how to do everything, but I do have experience in marketing that might be valuable to someone in these same shoes. So with that out of the way, let's talk about how I'd go about marketing a new-media publishing company.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Tag, You're It: Are You Using a Tag Management Solution Yet?
    When it comes to digital marketing measurement, tags make the world go 'round. The number of tags deployed on marketers' websites has been increasing faster than the policies in place to manage the flow of data and the applications to our businesses. Enter tag management solutions.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    What Sharing Means To Consumer Reality
    I've been thinking a lot lately about disconnects between industry parlance, planning and buying methodology and the way consumer life really looks right now. With the day-in-the-life so always-on and so cross-platform, and with tool sets constantly evolving to keep up with this trend, things like channel planning and media mix look incredibly different now than they did even two years ago. Here's something else to consider: sharing.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Solving The Creative Problem
    Everybody seems to be complaining about the quality of ad creative these days, whether it is lack of a great idea, poor taste, poor production quality, mismatched message and product or brand, or too much copycatting. In fact, I don't believe that I have been at a media or advertising conferences this year -- and I attend a lot of them -- where complaints about the quality of the creative in media today wasn't a significant topic of discussion. I must confess I agree. I believe that ad creative is suffering today, and here is why:
  • ONLINE SPIN
    What's In A Name?
    In my business, we work with a lot of start-up companies, so one of the questions we get asked is "What do you think of our name?" When the start-ups don't ask the question, I typically ask them for the genesis and significance of their name, so I can gather some insight into who they think they are or what they think they do.
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