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The computer design has left the building
Poor Apple. Hours after it announced a much-awaited smaller iPad (plus a sexier, thinner iMac), Wall Street pushed its stock down 3%, perhaps disenchanted at the relatively high iPad Mini price of...
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Upscale Quartz skips banners, goes mobile first
This is rather interesting. David Bradley, chief of Atlantic Media (which publishes The Atlantic), has launched a new elite business publication that is already challenging The Economist. In September...
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Hm. What if Apple's Siri is learning from us?
While many of you ask Siri questions on your iPhones, have you ever considered that Siri may be monitoring you as well ... and getting smarter because of what you ask? I wrote over at Google+ a while...
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What's wrong with Groupon?
Poor Groupon. The stock price of the cost-cutting online coupon service has plummeted below $3, down nearly 90% from its IPO launch high. Nearly two years ago I dissected the pitfalls of Groupon's...
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Facebook's new matchback tracking finds you at the mall
Facebook has made an old marketing measurement trick new again, getting many marketers excited that it could finally match online ad impressions to offline shopping behavior for better ROI...
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Tis the season for fake savings
Savings is such a marketing game. Nothing is ever 30% or 40% off, and yet consumers respond in droves when retailers announce "savings" or "discounts." Why is this so?About 30 years ago behavioral...
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How to make $382,000 before the end of the world
We don't know if Damian Campbell makes $382,000 a year from his Facebook campaign. We do know his ad and web landing page, shown here, are pretty ugly, with enough disparate font treatments to send...
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PETA pulls a porn site bait-and-switch
Oh, the cleverness. PETA, the pro-animal-rights organization known for racy ads showing naked people who refuse to wear fur, teased the major media outlets this week with news it was launching a real...
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The NRA goes silent. Is this good strategy?
That quiet sound you hear is the NRA not saying anything ... which makes an interesting case study. Regardless of your politics or emotions about the tragedy in Newtown, Conn. (which happened just...
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Ho ho ho, it's finally time to shop inside Facebook
Forget advertising revenue. The real money play for Facebook may be breaking into e-commerce.Facebook has launched holiday promotions for its online gift service -- a brilliant ploy, because it adds a...
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Chevron's use of global warming for bold branding
Mention climate change and you'll get hot responses from some conservatives who believe the risk is falsified, earth's temperatures are not rising, satellite data is fudged and human-made CO2 and...
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The advertising challenge of concurrent media use
Recent media research points to a trend: U.S. consumers are using tablets or smartphones at the exact same time they watch television. Nielsen reports that TV use is still high in the U.S., with the...
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In group decisions, beware the risk of propinquity
A riff on group dynamics that could save your next meeting.Decisions are difficult in business because hierarchies and org structures, however well thought out, culminate in small groups trying to...
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Stop & Shop's mesmerizing 1% gasoline giveaway
Stop & Shop, the northeastern U.S. grocery chain, has created a fascinating loyalty program tied to gasoline. If you use a loyalty card to buy groceries, you can later swipe that card at...
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The curious case of consumer time with print
Oh, print, you have a problem.When Henry Blodget presented the current state of media, he noted that ad spending by media channel is out of sync with how consumers really spend time in each format....
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At Rate My Teachers, the kids give the grades
The best teacher I ever had was a man named Bruce MacLean. I still remember his high school lectures on history, his hilarious stories about partying in Europe, the controversy about him hanging a...
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Fox News' upside down report on the sun
Poor Fox News. We hate to call it out for misinformation, but its headline this week "UN admitting solar activity may play significant role in global warming" is so out of context, so upside down,...
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Nemo? It's time to sell ad naming rights to storms
Dear U.S. government: In an age of constant budget worries, here's a simple proposal. Sell advertiser naming rights to major hurricanes and snowstorms.Apparently the National Weather Service is upset...
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Going for global metrics, comScore dismisses clicks
ComScore recently published a manifesto that would have you believe popular digital advertising metrics such as click-through rates, or clicks themselves, don't matter anymore. Before we evaluate...
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Look out. Mobile is now dinging your web strategy.
Everyone is excited about mobile, but it sure is creating problems for both advertisers and publishers.First, the whopping trend. In December 2012, comScore reports, 37% of U.S. consumers' "digital...
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When to pick engagement vs. broadcast
Here's a grid that explains when you should use social media, or when an ad on TV will suffice just fine. It was born out of my frustration a year ago with some communication gurus saying "everyone...
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On the evolutionary aversion to ‘native ads’
Native advertising is the latest buzzword circulating among agencies and publishers. There’s nothing new here; “native” means crafting a marketing message in a format that appears to fit within the...
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The accelerating crisis of advertising visual inventory
Five years ago in Businessweek I wrote the real threat to Google wouldn't be Apple or Facebook, but instead the migration of consumers to mobile devices that have less "visual inventory" — physical...
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Rebuilding your organization to face uncertainty
There are many smart ideas in Richard Daft's 2009 book "Organizational Theory and Design," with the most vital one being not all organizations should be structured the same. Your group is a band of...
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The future Eternity App will end loneliness for the elderly
Len Kendall wrote a poignant post about visiting his elderly grandmother and realizing that most people in the retirement home seemed lonely, because so many of their friends were already gone. He...
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