Data rules, guessing drools. If you’re using social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook (or… shudder… Google+) for professional purposes, you need to get a handle on what works and what doesn’t. First, what are you trying to do? Attract followers/fans? Improve click through rates? Gauge your social reach? You should be doing all of …
Category Archives: Marketing
Perceptual Healing
A friend and colleague, Al Mastromartino, has a favourite saying for his students (I also studied under him while at Fleming College): Perception is more important than reality. It’s always stuck with me, because that statement embodies something I’ve intuitively known for quite some time. Optics are critical in everything, whether professional or personal. Those …
Facebook Pages: Where’s the Value?
Simple answer: everywhere. Musicians, filmmakers, celebrities, politicians, photographers… Facebook pages help add value to their brands by enabling the brand to be a conversation, instead of a presentation. But just how well is that concept leveraged by business in their communications process? How does a business or brand use Facebook pages to actually carry out …
Scan Me, Baby.
What’s this article about? 2D Barcode Integration & Execution Tips for Print Advertising Normally, this expertise and my experience in the space is reserved for paying clients. But today, I’m publishing a no-frills, five-minute guide to integration and execution of 2D barcodes (also called QR Codes*) into static print advertising. Why? Because this technology keeps …
3D What-Now?
Seems to be the week that I notice poor brand messaging in advertisements. Crest has a line of products on the market called 3D White – which contains everything from toothpaste to mouthwash to disposable whitening strips. I’m sure that they all work just fine…. but the brand messaging is simply godawful. First- the name. …
Throw Some Spaghetti Against the Wall, Would Ya?
I actually did this once, during my tenure working part-time at a restaurant in the 90s. I wanted to see if the customer who’d just complained was right (I was in high school, and sometimes lacked maturity). As it turns out, some of the spaghetti stuck… and some of it slid down the wall, canoodling …
Continue reading “Throw Some Spaghetti Against the Wall, Would Ya?”
DVR Avoidance
The bane of TV networks, large and small, is the Digital Video Recorder (DVR – sometimes also called a Personal Video Recorder, or PVR). DVRs allow people to digitally record TV shows and then play them back in the same fashion as was once done with Beta and VHS (does anyone still even own a …
The Future of Web Development
The speed and pace with which the web design industry evolves is absolutely blistering. Think about it for a second. The internet became mainstream in Canada circa 1994 (only fifteen-ish years ago). At that time, people were coding the web in HTML 2.0 (the initial draft standard for HTML had been completed mid-1993). In fifteen …
Marketing and Brand Messaging
I’ve seen some really offbeat messaging in marketing campaigns, and I’ve also seen some fantastic messaging that perfectly conveys ideas and perceptions which contribute positively to brand equity. Porter Air is an example of the good. Brand messaging is executed flawlessly by Porter’s creative agency (Winkreative) virtually every time. In fact, I’ve never seen a …
Splat!
Personally, I’m not a big fan of Twitter. For a guy like me, it’s just a huge time suck that I don’t really want to have to keep up with (speaking from the standpoint of my personal life). But the marketer in me sees it as another weapon in the arsenal that’s required to engage …