The New York Times Saturday quotes Patrick McGurn, special counsel for Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), who states that “shareholder efforts to remove directors in uncontested elections rarely succeed or come close, even in egregious circumstances.” In 2012, there were elections for 17,081 director nominees at U.S. corporations. According to ISS, just 61 of those nominees [...]
Tag Archives | Consumer Behavior / Markets
TEDxNewEngland Talk – Nilofer Merchant on Inclusivity
How would you reinvent business, reinvent America, or reinvent the world? This is the question I was asked to answer a few weeks back for a #TEDtalk. TEDxNewEngland’s event was held at the WGBN station, just 3 weeks before the US National Election and the amazing organizers asked a range of politicians, economists, national policy [...]
Must-Read Weekend Reading
2 Consumer (Hourglass) Markets “P&G isn’t the only company adjusting its business. A wide swath of American companies is convinced that the consumer market is bifurcating into high and low ends and eroding in the middle. They have begun to alter the way they research, develop and market their products. Food giant H.J. Heinz Co., [...]
Stop Blaming the Systems
The next time a customer service rep says, “The computer won’t let me do that” or “The system tells me what to do,” remember this: Behind every such phrase is a set of processes designed, or at least endorsed, not by computers but by human beings somewhere in the corporate hierarchy. The system may tell [...]
5 Opportunities in ECommerce (Trend)
I’m an insane online shopper. Online wins over in-person for several reasons. One is research based; if I pick well, I only need to pick a few things that last. 2nd reason is that, most times, I know what it is I’m looking for, if only by category so that makes in-store shopping harder, not [...]
Trend to Watch: Mobile Payments
Starbucks has become that much more convenient. Today, the NYT showed us that we can use our phone to buy coffee. No more carrying your wallet, and your phone. At over 7000 Starbucks locations, we can start to do micropayments with our phone app. Anything that gives us easier, faster access to coffee deserves a [...]
Lifetime Opportunity Value Equation (LOVE)
One of the challenges with a qualitative process framework like the LOVE model is that it is hard quantify all the benefits, especially during the initial stages of adoption. The latest McKinsey Global Survey looks at the business benefits from Web 2.0. Operationalizing the LOVE model in practice leverages many aspects of Web 2.0, so the McKinsey data is perhaps the most relevant data we currently have for this type of approach.
Fill Your Company with LOVE (Framework)
As companies see increasing value in social media campaigns, it is becoming apparent that the transactional-centric models currently used for tracking and measuring marketing campaigns are not up to the social media challenge. With social media campaigns often focused on brand building and driving engagement, the tools used to measure the impact on sales and brand are ill-suited to accurately measuring the full impact and value of social media campaigns.
The buying or sales funnel that has served marketers well for many years no longer works in an environment now centered on two-way and unstructured communications. A new framework developed at Rubicon Consulting, Inc., building on ideas originally conceived by Harry Max, offers the relationship-centric LOVE model as a replacement–and enhancement–for the transaction-based buying funnel.
Smartphones as Appliances
The growth of the mobile data marketplace is one of the bright spots for business in the current recession. Mobile carriers report increasing demand for data services, and Apple and Research in Motion both reported strong earnings aided by sales of their smartphone products.
Understanding Twitters Growth
One of the hottest recent stories in the tech industry has been the rapid rise of the messaging service Twitter. Starting from a small base of enthusiast users, the service has rapidly risen to prominence in the media, with extensive coverage of its adoption by celebrities. In the last month, Google counted about 65,000 news stories mentioning Twitter, and the web tracking service Alexa reported a remarkable 400% increase in traffic to Twitter.com in the last four months. In April 2009, Alexa reported that daily visits to twitter.com surpassed those to cnn.com: