I’ve been thinking a lot about collaborative marketing lately, and how we can turn co-existing businesses more into partners and less about missed opportunities. I think there’s a great untapped market for someone that really wants to grab collaborative marketing and run with it. For example – imagine you’re going on a trip. You have to fly to get there, so there are a few processes you need to go through before, during and after: Buying your ticket. Driving to the…

Often, we change things based on what we see in front of us, or based on perceptions of what we feel is in front of us. It may be that our sales channels are bringing in less than 12 months ago; so we change the sales team or manager. Or, our customers are leaving in numbers that are scary; so we change the customer service team or manager. The problem is, often what we see in front of us is…

Take a look at the video at the end of this post. It’s a fan-made homage to the band Dashboard Confessional and their song So Long, So Long. There’s nothing special about it. It’s a simple piece of video, made with Windows Movie Maker then put up on Youtube for the creator’s friends to see. And yet… Its simplicity is also its strength. The mood and pace of the video complement the song perfectly, and doesn’t take away from the song itself. There are no…

Want to know the only marketing tip you’ll ever need? People. Want. Things. That’s it. It can be anything – good luck charms; medicines; food; drink; news; shoe polish. Anything. With the exception of air, everything else costs. So there’s a need to be filled. How you fill that need is where the difference comes into play. Some folks will go for service; some folks will go for price; some folks will go for nationality; some folks will go for…

We’re an impatient bunch. We always want the new; the shiny; the next big thing. And we want it now. As consumers, we want the latest and greatest to show off to our friends and family. As businesses, we always want to be first to market to get a jump on the competition. The problem is, being first doesn’t always mean the best or the shiniest. The business world is littered with examples of companies that were first to market…

Every weekend without fail, my local electronics retailer runs a flyer in the local newspaper. It highlights special offers and discounts and proudly displays “This weekend only!” in the header. The flyer’s nice and bright and there’s a huge collection of images, from large-screen TV’s to computers to video games to smartphones and more. Great, you might say. Can never have enough advertising or marketing, right? Wrong. You see, every weekend the retailer puts out his flyer, it’s always the…

People ask where marketing fits in with social media, and if it still has a place as consumers and “normal people” enjoy a bigger say in how successful a product is. To help with this, here’s a short and simplified presentation that offers a new take on an old method (the Four P’s of Marketing) and an overview of what this means for you. It’s not meant to be an exhaustive look; more an easily digestible social media and marketing…

There’s an old saying that any publicity is good publicity – but is it? Kenneth Cole might be questioning it, after the tweet in the image above – that tied his retail chain’s sale into the devastating events currently happening in Egypt – was picked up and discussed on various PR and marketing blogs and news sites. I’ve also written on here before about examples of bad PR and PR that takes advantage of tragic or upsetting situations, and questioned…

As social media continues its assault onto the mainstream audience, one of the side-effects has been the emergence of the view that marketing isn’t allowed in the space. Conversations on blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn and elsewhere are vocal in the opinion that marketing is dead; we choose who we buy from and whose reputation we ruin; what gets our eyeballs and what doesn’t. Simply put, old school is dead; long live the King (of new media school). And, to a degree,…

Location based (or geo-located) marketing is getting a huge amount of buzz at the minute, as Twitter apps connect location tweets to its service, Foursquare is credited with Domino’s Pizza’s UK success and smartphone users get ready for augmented reality to guide their leisure time. And then there’s Facebook’s continued assault on world domination with its new Places app. All good stuff. And yet… For the most part, we’re still being safe and boring when it comes to how we, as marketers, use…