Content strategy

Bankshot Analysis: Related Change Drivers in Online Marketing Trends

June 10th 2009

At the Quad Cities Ad Federation in Moline we discussed how sometimes related drivers combine to precipitate market trends, and ended up with a diagram that I’m calling a “bankshot.”  The general pattern is that a predictable driver causes a predictable outcome, and a modifying outcome builds on that to create a  second condition, which […]

The Revolution Will Be Mobile: Competition for the Handheld Web

April 17th 2009

I spent a few days this week at the Rhode Island School of Design discussing mobile design.  Naturally, when I picked up the news, it  seemed to be bursting with stories about mobile. Marketing VOX is reporting on AT&T research showing that 49 percent of men like watching live sports on mobile devices. As web […]

Society Doesn’t Need Newspapers; It Needs Journalism

April 16th 2009

Disruption of Technology =  Growth of Journalism I’m holding something cool in my hands this morning: the first weekly edition of The Christian Science Monitor.  They publish the news online daily, free for all, and print a weekly review with some print-only content just for subscribers.  In it you’ll find an editorial about the return […]

AP & Newspapers See Internet as a Threat

April 10th 2009

The Associated Press plans to go after news aggregators legally and through legislation (whatever that means) who ‘take’ AP headlines and related content. Despite the obvious arguments of Fair Use and the fact that aggregators drive traffic to AP affiliated newspapers or even to the AP itself, AP Board Chairmen Dean Singleton sees it very […]

B2B Newsletters With Something to Say Sure Beat the Alternative

March 31st 2009

You may recall that last year I wrote about how holiday e-cards are a window into brands and how companies think about customers. I spend much more time on e-newsletters, and just like holiday cards, there’s a difference that separates the few with vision from pointless marketing blather. Mark Brownlow illustrates this in his video […]

Optimizing for Blended Search: Additional Search Categories for Organic Listings

February 19th 2009

Have you heard of blended search? (That’s “search,” not “scotch.”) It’s when a search engine presents your search results from more than just webpages. It can include things like images, books, news and video. In 2007, Google released Universal Search, their flavor of blended search. On top of Google’s search engine results page, you’ll see […]

Obama and Technology in the White House

January 26th 2009

Many have argued that the Internet put Obama over the victory threshold in the Presidential race. We’re starting to see this influence in the new administration’s policies and use of technology, which seem to recognize that people who use the web (and geeks) are a constituency. Change Geeks Can Believe In Jason Kottke notes the new […]

Knight Rider Move Over

January 14th 2009

Lexus believes it’s a good thing to speak to its customers about certain things occasionally, and that’s usually an indicator of excellent marketing. But of course, choosing the right communication channel can make all the difference. USA Today reports: [Toyota] announced Wednesday that new Lexus vehicles will start being delivered later this year with a system […]

B2B Holiday eCards: The Best Branding Canvas Ever

December 23rd 2008

Holiday cards are perhaps the purest opportunity for marketers to put brands on center stage without pesky offers or product data messing getting in the way.  It lets us see pure branding and get some sense of how firms think of their clients and themselves. Here are three examples from internet marketing companies, the very people who […]

Google’s “Editorial Input” from Personalized Search Could Kill Objectivity

December 17th 2008

According to an article in The Register, Google’s Vice President of Search Product and User Experience, Marissa Mayer, observed that editorial judgments may play a key role in Google searches in the near future. Mayer made her comments at the Le Web conference in Paris on December 10th. If this change does materialize, the editorial […]