Marketing in a Social World

The business equivalent of making sausage is the marketing of marketing. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (November 29-30, 2008), Tom Hayes and Michael Malone explain the new world of marketing in a Web-based world. They have a provocative name (“Marketing 3.0”) and a new concept (the business meme or “beme”). In the end, they sound like apologists trying to make a pitch for why advertising agencies are still relevant and reminds me of this humorous video imaging what would happen if a modern advertising agency designed the stop sign. In short, they are marketing marketing.

Facebook enables Brand Affinity To Take place

Facebook now will give advertisers the ability to create their own profile pages on its system that will let users identify themselves as fans of a product. Let’s users (and the advocates amongst those users) show their beliefs, feelings, perhaps even needs. And with it, brand owners would choose to place their advertising dollars here as compared to the other companies.