Separate Advertising And Pubic Relations At Your Own Peril

Every time someone attempts to divide advertising and public relations into two distant camps, it makes my skin crawl. They always make it sound like both fields have to be at odds with each other, with cliché conversation starters like advertising is paid and public relations is pray. There doesn't have to be such a stark division. No one has to choose one over the other. After all, while it might be true that advertising...

Welcome To The Petri Dish. A Great Big Thumbs Up.

Don't expect the fervor over what some people are calling a breach of trust by the social network Facebook to last very long. Despite the growing distaste that most people have for it, big data is here to stay and the abuse of it will always be a few clicks away. The Internet is a petri dish. If you missed the story, Facebook (in cooperation with Cornell and the University of California) conducted an experiment...

Having Engagement Problems? Make Your Audience The Content

It doesn't matter what study you look up. Marketers always struggle with the same measurements — engagement, lead generation, and sales. They aren't the only ones. Americans feel miffed too. According to a recent Gallop poll, a clear majority of Americans say social media has no effect at all on their purchasing decisions. A whopping 62 percent say social has no influence over them. Even when respondents were broken...

Have Social Networks Become The Colosseum Of Our Times?

There are hundreds of news headlines that will break today. Some of them, such as extreme insurgents gaining ground on Baghdad, are important. Others, such as the giraffe gaffe made by Delta Airlines, are not. And yet, outrage over the latter easily outpaced the outrage over the former. What did Delta do wrong? There isn't much of a story. In an attempt to bring visuals into its social media mix, Delta congratulated...

Marketers Renew Their Interest In The Customer Experience

Content marketing might have a lion's share of the social conversation, but more and more marketers are starting to see customer experience (a.k.a. CX) as the single most exciting opportunity for business this year. According to one recent study conducted by Adobe, customer experience even edged out mobile by a narrow margin for the first time in recent years. It only makes sense. Content marketing and mobile are...

The Written Word Is More Visual Than You Think

A recent article in The Guardian recalled a 1974 study conducted by Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer. The psychologists asked students to watch a video clip that involved a multi-car pileup. After watching the video, two-thirds of the students were asked one of two questions: How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?” or “How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?” The other third,...