I just read an excellent book on Big Data (titled, cleverly, Big Data) by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukier.
The authors made several points that were new to me:
I was reading the recent IBM Report on a survey of 1,700 CMOs. The findings are interesting – and depressing. Most disappointing to me was this conclusion: “Most CMOs are struggling in one vital respect – return on investment (ROI).”
As I have been recuperating from some surgery, I have inevitably seen
more TV commercials than ever before in my life. I wish I could laud
the state of the art in these days where technology enables creativity
to run wilder than ever. Unfortunately, I found a disappointing lot.
In working across a variety of industries on both market research and
marketing strategy projects over the last few years, we have seen a
growing focus on the customer experience, and specifically how employees
play an instrumental role in delivering that experience. In fact, our
interactions with brands have become such an integral part of our daily
lives, it is not hard to find examples in our own experiences.
The other day my two-year-old son became very excited about a greeting card I had just opened. “We have that movie!” he exclaimed. Puzzled, I turned the card over to find the logo for American Greetings, which I soon recalled owns the intellectual property rights to a cartoon video my children have watched a dozen or so times. He can’t read and he’s easily distracted, but somehow in the handful of times he saw that little red rose at the end of a video, the image was burned into his memory. THAT is the power of logos!
Is it better to be fast or slow? “FASTER!” you say automatically,
perhaps in the voice of a noisy child, thanks to the creative, popular
ad campaign by AT&T.
Continuing on what I see as misguided marketing moves, I submit the
merged American Airlines and US Airways. Poor marketing from this
combination should come as no surprise
Imagine the best management magazine decided to focus an issue on advertising. What would that be like?
Earlier this year, Chevy announced a change in their tag line from “Chevy Runs Deep” to “Find New Roads.”
Every bad acquisition has its own story. And, of course, there are almost no good acquisition stories (except for those who cashed out).