Category

Brands and Marketing

06.15.08

Get Your Viral On
Brands and Marketing
So you want to make your product or company go viral. The first thing to know is you don’t choose viral; viral chooses you. The best you can do as a marketer is position something to have viral potential. This is accomplished by positioning your product in three ways: Psychological Undercurrent Social Value Proposition Maneuverability Psychological Undercurrent. Sounds almost military, doesn’t it? That’s because it is. Psyops and captology relate to the art of influence. If you want something to become viral you need to appeal to that which is cool, unique, novel, sexy, exclusive or shocking. These are the things that make an ...
06.11.08

Startup Marketing: Starting from the Inside, Out
Brands and Marketing
You are about to launch a new product or service and you *think* you’ve decided on a key demographic to target: say the 18-34 crowd. However, instead of focusing on marketing to a theoretical audience based on attributes such as age, sex, income, etc (standard acquisition marketing) first priority should be developing a strategy driven by user life-cycle. Specifically, life-cycle related to product engagement. If this sounds confusing, don't worry, it's not. Acquisition marketing is important, but should initially take a back seat to retention marketing. And to get the most out of a retention marketing strategy, it’s best to ...
06.11.08

Real-World Value Litmus Test for Startups
Brands and Marketing
Maybe it’s because I studied a decent amount of economics in school, but I think the first step in marketing anything on a large scale is to know the economic conditions and trends you’re selling into. The best products will address gaps and problems being actively discussed on the public record. While a valuable product will sell regardless of economic conditions, strategic positioning can still be influenced by astute economic observations. The best place to get a quick overview of macro trends and conditions is by paying attention to quality newspapers. As an example, here are paraphrased quotes lifted ...
06.03.08

The Obama TwitterFountain
Brands and Marketing
I have used the new application TwitterFountain to show instances of the keyword "Obama" in Twitter superimposed over images tagged 'politics' on Flickr. This is sweet! There is some great potential here for brands
06.02.08

Anything Can Be Hacked. Everything Should Be Hacked.
Brands and Marketing, Social Media
Umair Haque has a great post on how to hack the industrial economy. Umair’s main point is that hacking should be encouraged and applied to the world’s big problems. Why is everything hackable today? Because in the edgeconomy, the universe of the economically possible has exploded: resources are more and more accessible. And if you can get your hands on it, you can hack it. The point is simple: nothing is impossible when you’re hacking. In the comments the idea of a shared wiki for hacker collaboration is shared. I believe that Workstreamer will immediately be able to make an impact in ...
06.02.08

Life Cycle of Cool
Brands and Marketing
As an MBA student I learned about the product life cycle, explaining how the conditions in which a product is sold changes over time as it moves through a succession of stages. While I didn’t have time to make a pretty graphic, I thought I’d take a crack at what the lifecycle of “cool” might look like. You can see the main axis correlation between time and impact. The longer a product can keep its status of cool, the more of an impact it can make on a large scale. Figuring out how to make something cool or viral is really ...
05.29.08

Exclusivity and Social Design
Brands and Marketing
Exclusive: Adjective. a) Excluding or having power to exclude b) Limiting or limited to possession, control, or use by a single individual or group Good Magazine has an interesting dissection this month of the world’s most exclusive groups. Not surprisingly almost all the groups have very limited information available about who they are, what they do, or what they believe in. Examples include the Order of Skull and Bones, the Bilderberg Group and the Bohemian Grove. However, the group that Good determines to have the most power – and the most exclusivity? The World Economic Forum. Interestingly, Davos is completely open ...
05.15.08

Update: I Got Kicked Off Facebook
Brands and Marketing, Social Networking
Just an update for RSS readers becasue many have inquired what happened that resulted in my Facebook Account being deleted. Nick O'Neill has a post at AllFacebook explaining what happened. I have been in contact with both Ralph Lauren and Facebook and hope to be back soon. I will provide an update when/if that happens.
04.13.08

Twitter’s Branding Problem
Brands and Marketing, Social Media
I believe that Twitter has a major branding problem. As I have written before, Twitter’s biggest barrier to entry is its own branding. I have recently suggested to a number of my friends that they sign-up and join Twitter. Although they enthusiastically check it out, their use of Twitter generally lasts less than a week. During that time they typically make 10 posts. Do they not get it? Are they not cutting-edge enough? No and No. The reason they loose interest is because they follow the directions. They literally answer the question - just as Twitter requests - “What are ...
04.07.08

Special Ops Media Sold to LBI: Interactive M&A Still Hot
Brands and Marketing
Acquisitions of creative agencies continue. This morning, LBI purchased Special Ops Media for up to $45M. Special Ops, a DUMBO Manhattan-based firm started by friends from Brown University, has found great success working with top-tier entertainment brands. However, the most valuable asset is its creative talent; an increasingly scarce resource in a high-demand market. Acquisitions of creative talent have been occurring at a frantic pace, though the deals have largely flown under-the-radar. Validating that the time is right to sell, a survey of buyers in 2007 showed 83% believing the time to buy for deal-makers in interactive is now. For LBI, ...

Copyright © 2005-2008 Leveraging Ideas. All rights reserved.