Who Controls Brands Now? The Rise of 360° Marketing

At the most recent meeting of the American Marketing Association, Ad Age reports, “The speakers at the podium kept changing, but their words remained the same. One after the other, the marketing world leaders took to the stage and declared that it’s time to give up control and accept that consumers now control their brands.”
Of course, in some ways, they always have. A brand has always only been as good as a consumers’ experience of it. The difference today is that consumers have lots of ways of communicating those experiences and trust each other’s views instead of marketers’ overt sales pitches. A more interactive environment gave them the tools to be better informed and less susceptible to the traditional one-way communication model. Consequently, they are influencing marketing strategies as never before.

Will WiMax Change the Wireless Landscape?

Most companies that deal with the mobile industry are frustrated with the protected business models of the carriers. Unlike the wired Internet, it’s not generally possible for a software company to deploy a program to any cellphone without extensive reprogramming and often getting permission from the carrier. Deploying new hardware can be equally daunting — it’s often difficult to get a carrier to even offer a new phone.

Will Vista be the last great O/S?

George Gilder of Wired has a article worth slowing down and reading. What it supposes is that the desktop is dead and that the Internet cloud is our future. He

Symbiotic Relationships in Play

One of the fundamental truths about the high technology market today, is that consumers have tremendous power. Market power used to be much like a big castle surrounded by high

Technorati: Measuring Volume not Value

Technorati recently published a state of the blogosphere about 2 weeks ago. And I’ve wanted to write on it ever since as an example of being clear on what you

Employees Co-Create Brand

A bunch of writing has been done by myself and others about how “consumers now co-create the brand”. But what about employees? Are they co-creators, too? Many, many fortune 1000

4 levels of belief; 5 ways to market

Promise Phelon, CEO of the Phelon Group recently spoke at the fall WITI Conference in Santa Clara during a session called “the Changing Customer Conversation”, and introduced these 4 levels

Samurai vs. Senate

Entrepreneurs and go-get-em self starters act much like Samurai’s. They get to the goal, risking a lot because in many ways there’s not as much to protect. With a unit