by Jared Stivers on Oct 16, 12:30 PM
Bacardi recently launched its latest campaign, called "Islands," which is poised to make a splash (pun intended) in the world of social media -- but in the end, what is the company trying to accomplish? Like any successful marketing campaign, a social media push should do two things: build the brand and sell more rum. The real question social marketers want to know is, how does Bacardi go about dropping a good amount of marketing money in social media and drive sales?
by Catharine P. Taylor on Oct 14, 3:55 PM
And, do big, consumer-facing businesses have even the slightest idea of how to synthesize the "information" provided to them by all of these newly empowered whiners? The answer to the first question is "yes." And to the second? No.
by Catharine P. Taylor on Oct 7, 1:52 PM
If self-regulating were entirely up to advertisers, that would be one thing - I'm normally a supporter of self-regulation. But in social media, as we've learned time and time again, the message is essentially out of advertisers' control.
by David Berkowitz on Oct 6, 11:31 AM
Have you heard the one about the hare and the owl, or the watering hole, or the Hall of Wonders? These are no ordinary tales. In fact, they're of an entirely new genre: folktales for social media marketers.
by Catharine P. Taylor on Oct 1, 11:00 AM
Per usual, I wasn't invited. In this case, I wasn't invited to test out Google Wave, the new communication and collaboration tool (with the badly timed name) that Google dispersed to 100,000 developers and invitees yesterday. I did, however, look at the video of most of the one-hour-and-20-minute presentation Google gave to developers back in May It got me thinking about how Google Wave further flattens the distinctions between email and IMing, blogging and collaborating, while also expanding the definition of social media, and media itself. Whether this particular platform catches on isn't exactly the point. It's a significant step …
by David Berkowitz on Sep 29, 10:15 AM
It's time to atone. Some may appreciate the timing, as it coincides with yesterday's observance of Yom Kippur, Judaism's Day of Atonement, the climax of a period of repentance. Everyone has some sins to atone for, including marketers and agencies trying to engage consumers through social media. Today, we'll confess.
by Catharine P. Taylor on Sep 23, 3:47 PM
Being out at Advertising Week events this week proved to me that I'm not the only one obsessed with the fact that a business model needs to be developed for media companies and advertisers to make real, bottom line-lifting hay out of random, lightning-in-a-bottle media phenomenon. Things like Susan Boyle, Kanye West's MTV diss and other events that are increasingly huge reach vehicles, but exponentially less predictable than big, annual media events like the Super Bowl. In fact, their power and their problem is that they aren't predictable at all.
by David Berkowitz on Sep 22, 3:00 PM
Not all mobile applications are social, but those with social elements will keep pushing social media's boundaries forward.
by Catharine P. Taylor on Sep 16, 4:01 PM
Maybe I suffer from too much skepticism, but this social media headline from Ad Age certainly grabbed my attention: "Facebook Finds Profitability Despite Nascent Advertising Model." Drilling a little deeper this morning, I discovered that this information came straight from Mark Zuckerberg at the Facebook blog, who, in the second-to-last paragraph of a post yesterday, said, in a "BTW" kinda fashion: "Earlier this year, we said we expected to be cash flow positive sometime in 2010, and I'm pleased to share that we achieved this milestone last quarter."
by David Berkowitz on Sep 15, 4:15 PM
Given how obsessed people are with social networks, especially younger consumers who use it to religiously keep in touch with their friends, it's hardly surprising that mobile social network usage is skyrocketing. So which networks are benefiting the most from the trend?