2008
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Brand Managers Anonymous
Jun 18
“My name’s Ralph, and no one knows my brand…” If brand managers had their own twelve-step program, it would start with admitting you’re powerless over your brand, and turning it over to the customer.
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Marketing to Disaster
Jun 4
One of my business school professors blamed marketers for every great disaster in business. Looking at today’s gas prices, he might have been right: we marketed global warming and peak oil so well that, for once, people took every word as gospel.
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What’s in a name?
May 19
Two identical computers, same parts, same operating system: one says Mac and one says Dell. I asked people which they’d buy. Nearly all of them picked the Mac.
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Segmented Advertising
Apr 25
A History Channel ad showed the Space Needle collapsing — to a Seattle movie audience, with no explanation. Segmenting advertising too far is costly, but not segmenting far enough can cost you more in certain markets.
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Marketing Sustainability
Apr 7
In graduate school I chose sustainability over logistics and marketing, then switched to marketing. Sustainability is a product like any other, and it has to be sold to people who want to see the effect on profit, not theory-laden white papers.
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Mindshare
Mar 31
Everyone knows market share, and most know heart share. Mindshare (the reason every tissue is a Kleenex and every search is ‘Google-ing’) is the third and arguably most valuable concept in marketing.
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YouTube
Mar 28
Show-and-tell sold me more toys than any catalogue ever did. YouTube lets businesses do the same thing: record a quick product demo for free and put it right on your website.
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Fresh Marketing Theory
Mar 18
McCarthy’s four Ps always felt dry, and no one seemed to care about the customer. A new model, the ‘five Ps’ of marketing, finally puts the customer at the center. It’s about time.
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Why Guerrilla Marketing?
Jan 21
With guerrilla marketing, the quarry searches for the hunter. Cloverfield’s cryptic teaser sent people scouring the Internet for clues. Imagine your customers devoting that much energy to your product.
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Guerrilla Marketing
Jan 14
Guerrilla marketing works like guerrilla warfare: small-scale, gaining ground in small steps, using what you know about the territory that the competition doesn’t.
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Discounts
Jan 12
I work in a luxury store where clearance runs 40–60% off and every other item carries a “discretionary discount.” Now every customer expects one, and I worry discounts have warped how consumers perceive value.
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Preview
Jan 11
A preview of a coming series on retail marketing: divide products into necessities and luxury goods (the everyday minimum versus a temporary escape from it), and each calls for very different marketing.