Insights –
Opinions, research and discoveries about marketing, emotions, target markets, digital media, storytelling and the business of branding.
The Basics Of Email Marketing
Many of the latest trends and buzzwords in the marketing world have centered around social media. And yes, social media is important – according to a recent Pew Research Study, 61% of all online adults are on social media.1
Business Leaders: Change Your Mindset. Change Your Future.
Who isn’t worn out from people complaining about how bad the economy is, how tough it is to make a healthy profit and aren’t we all working twice as hard as we ever have? Until business leaders realize that everything about their companies needs to change, they’ll continue to miss the mark, and sadly, fall far behind.
Marketing Operations – The Nerve Center For Modern Business
Today we have the ability to measure and analyze the outcome of our client’s marketing efforts. Marketing and advertising have come a long way from the days of flip charts and T-squares. Don Draper’s Madison Avenue is part of advertising’s great history.
Internet User Habits: A Plus Of Mobile Consumer Engagement
In the past it used to be publicly unacceptable to check emails, texts or browse the Internet in many social or work-related situations. Boy, have times changed.
Generation X: Overlooked Spending Potential
Generation-X is that smaller generation smothered between Baby Boomers and Millennials that lacks the attention it deserves. Sure they might be the second smallest adult generation in the United States, but affluent Gen-X’ers have deeper pockets than their younger and older counterparts.
Marketing Ingredients For Increasing Donors
Every foundation needs help building their donor base. Since we have worked charitable organizations from global to national to regional sizes, we offer tips on the key marketing basics most organizations should have in place.
Social Media Is More Social Than You Think
With more and more social platforms opening themselves up to selling advertising space, you would think that the field is ripe to increase online purchase sales. However, social media may not be as well paired to ads you think. Instead, it’s better for what its name indicates: being social. And this calls for a different marketing strategy.
Book Closing On Facebook
The powerhouse that is Facebook could soon head toward the networking junkyard wherein lays the remnants of once-popular platforms like MySpace and AOL messenger.
Google Glass: Could Pay-Per-Gaze Be Next?
Google Glass, the wearable computer with an optical head-mounted display, may become one of the most useful tools among marketers to gather data with. With the Glass Explorer program underway, Google continues to develop additional functionality to the Glass, especially within advertising.
Does Your Non-Profit Website Engage Young Donors?
Recent surveys have shown that non-profit organizations have some work to do. Young donors, generally born between 1979 and 1994, are getting more choosey with their philanthropic endeavors. The survey showed that they are tuning out when an organization’s website isn’t regularly updated.
Utilizing Social TV
Multiscreen media isn’t a new concept, I’ve been twitter ranting during football games for years, and advertisers have long known that consumers no longer limit themselves to one screen. Smartphones and tablets make it even easier to stay wired in at all times, so Social TV was a natural evolution.
Marketing To American Women
The days of Ricky shouting “Lucy! I’m home!” long disappeared along with cathode ray tubes as more and more women participate in the bread winning responsibilities of family life. In a 2013 report from Nielsen, American women enjoy remarkable spending power that continues to grow and currently ranges from $5 to $15 trillion annually.
Marketing To Millennials And Boomers – The Generation Gap
With social media and modern technology at the hands of everybody today, it’s no surprise different generations are cultivating their media intake to meet their specific desires. So when two generations are compared side by side, what are the differences?
Make Room For Gen-Z
Generation Z—the truly digital age. Members of Gen Z are often too young to remember events like 9/11, yet have spent their cultivating years in what has been a trying recession.
What’s The Digital Age?
Well, it turns out we’re living in it. Right now.
Remember all those articles published around the turn of the century? Everyone was unsure how we’d refer to the 2000s, what with how the 1990s were so easily labeled the “nineties” and the 1980s the “eighties.” You get the idea.
Thomas Range Goes To China
Immediately upon arriving in China, I found new motivation to stay fit—crossing the street. It turns out, having the right of way means something completely different in China than it means in the US.
When In Rome…A Story Of Fried Chicken
KFC, a restaurant NYU President John Sexton describes as a “rather lack-luster American fast food brand” currently operates 2,200 branches across China, almost three times as many as McDonalds, and is continuing to expand at a rate of 300 new restaurants every year. In fact, when I first landed in Shanghai and asked a Chinese friend where was a good place for me to go to try good Chinese food, he offered to take me to KFC.
Disasters In Chinglish
Sometimes the missing link between a brand and the hearts of the Chinese people is not habitual, but lingual. What a brand positions itself as in the West means an altered version of itself in the East. Why? Because words are like humans: what counts is what’s on the inside.
Rub A Dub Dub. Three Men In A Tub
China has 1.3 billion people, 670 million of which are men. Lynx, Europe’s bestselling brand of men’s hygienic products, saw opportunity there. If even one percent of those men became Lynx customers, Lynx would have a lot of new customers. Although Lynx was excited by the prospect of these men, these men were not excited by Lynx—the product was irrelevant to a culture without a phobia of man-stench.
How Love Is Going Digital
If you’re in the Valentine’s retail market or marketing services or products that have anything to do with romance (flowers, chocolates, jewelry, gifts, travel, candles, greeting cards, etc.), you’ve got to be on the web.
The Importance Of Authenticity In Branding
A box of chocolates can cost $50, if it is exposed to meditating monks for five days, as in the case of Intentional Chocolates. However, a box of Hershey’s will only sell for roughly $6, because, frankly, an industrial factory is not quite as romantic or as picturesque a heritage as a secluded monastery in the far-off goat-laden mountains of Tibet.
The Single And Ready-To-Mingle Consumer – How To Adjust To The New Demographic
It’s sleek, yet robust. It “exudes masculinity,” offering “more power, more steam, more performance.” It “helps men turbocharge,” and from the front, it even looks like a high-performance racing vehicle.
It’s an iron. For ironing.
How To Inspire Real-World Change: By Losing The Muffin Stumps
The power of humor in influencing an audience has neurological roots. When we laugh at a funny idea, our brains are temporarily flooded with endorphins, oxygen is pumped through our bodies, and for the moment, we feel great!
What Seinfeld Can Teach Us About Writing Good Copy
Jerry Seinfeld has a calendar with all twelve months on one page, and a red magic marker. He also has 46 Porsches, but that’s a conversation for later. Every day that he takes the time to write material, he draws a gratifying X across that day on the calendar.
The Neu-Metric In Marketing: Brain Activity
It is estimated that 95% of brain activity happens subconsciously. Decision-making, memory retention, learning and sensory observation—all are processes that crucially matter to marketers—and can now be measured by cutting-edge Neuromarketing technologies. How it works: Neuromarketers will show volunteers a product: a website, print ad, TV spot, etc. Using electrical brain wave measurements (EEG) and eye trackers, the brain activity of a consumer is measured in real time as he or she digests specific aspects of the product.
How A Video Becomes Viral – A Lesson From YouTube, In 3 Steps
Given the subject matter, it’s appropriate that this blog is posted on a Friday.
Don’t sigh and turn away yet—we’re all sick of the song, but in order to understand what makes a video go viral, it’s crucial that we look at the video that last year spread as virally as smallpox.
The Fate Of A Tweet Is In Your Hands
After fully dissecting the Twitter-webs, researchers from UCLA and HP have stumbled upon a simple algorithm that can predict 84% of the time what Tweets will be most popular.
MarketMe Suite: The Nimbus 2000 Of Mobile Social Marketing Platforms
Heard of it? It’s becoming more and more commonplace, used by now over 25,000 companies all over the world. Like its well-known precedents HootSuite and Tweet Deck, it allows you to conserve time and energy by posting to multiple or all social media platforms at once and to schedule posts in advance. However, MarketMe Suite is exciting in that it includes features that give you unprecedented control.
Can You Guess What The #1 Most Addictive Sound Is?
It’s the sound of a giggling baby! Although it’s important to note, it’s not just any giggling baby; it’s the right giggling baby. Specific nuances in sound matter. Take, for instance, the struggles of a Philippines coffee company to sell their products in the rainy season. Their marketing depicted whole families sitting inside together, sipping coffee as the winter rain poured outside.
How To Utilize Instagram For Your Brand
In March, Instagram announced that they had surpassed 27 million registered users. That number is incredibly high considering the app was only available on iPhones. Instagram just recently launched on Android, and the app was downloaded over a million times in the first day.
Instagram allows users to add filters, share beautiful photos, comment, like, hashtag, @reply, see popular pictures and follow friends, celebrities and brands. Instagram feels intimate as users are now getting a glimpse into someone’s life.
Using Cooler Colors To Connect With Your Audience
In order to connect with an audience, understanding how people perceive and respond to certain colors is important. The colors you choose to brand your company, product or service can greatly impact success. The color palette should be consistent throughout all brand elements such as the logo, packaging, digital environment and all marketing materials.
Marketing To Women: 30 Stats To Know
The first step to building a successful campaign is to know and understand your audience. Did you know that 91% of women say that advertisers don’t understand them?
Our research partner, Carol Simas at Pinpoint Sage, provided us with some key insights about marketing to women. These facts may prove to be very useful when strategizing for an upcoming campaign.
5 Tweeting Tips
“Tweet”, use to be a noise birds made. Now that Twitter is a social media network with almost 500 million users, “tweet” has a whole new meaning.
Many companies are still finding it difficult to master the art of tweeting. Although every company is different, we have created some rules to help you connect and engage with your audience on this social media platform.
Color Can Help Your Company Better Connect With Your Audience
Have you ever wondered why McDonalds uses red and yellow, or why many large corporations use blue? We can tell you why.
At Sagon-Phior, we view color as very powerful tool that can stimulate emotions. Color can evoke different reactions depending on culture, gender, age and context. I recently interviewed Rio Phior, Partner and creative director at Sagon-Phior who has taught Color Theory at California State University.
It’s St. Patrick’s Day – Think “Green” Marketing
In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, we thought it fitting to talk about the trend that is sweeping through the marketing world, Going Green.
Our research indicates that eco-friendly brands that are first out-of-the-gate in their industries have the opportunity to take leadership positions among others in their space. Implementing a green campaign can give brands a competitive edge and positive consumer perception – all while helping the environment.
Facebook Brand Timelines – What Marketers Need To Know
After the announcement of Facebook Timeline at the F8 Conference back in September, marketers have been wondering when Timeline would be available for brand pages. Now, Timeline for brands has arrived. Here is what you need to know to get your company ready for the switch.
Emotionally Conncecting With Affluent Audiences
In order to connect with affluent audiences in an emotionally compelling way, it is crucial to understand what interests them and what the most effective media channels are, then determine key factors for encouraging engagement and trial.
Pinterest Is Getting A Lot Of Interest
Pinterest has been getting a lot of interest lately. This new social media platform is a virtual pinboard, for visually organizing and sharing all the beautiful, interesting, innovative, inspirational things you find on the web.
Social Media: A Major Factor In Search Engine Ranking
Google announced in late 2011 that they would be implementing two changes to their business model and to the functionality of their search engine. First, they are consolidating user information and activity across multiple applications, including YouTube, GMail, Google Search, and Google+. Second, they are going to use this information to tailor search results in their search engine to individual users.
5 Steps To Develop A Successful SEO Plan
We have clients in a variety of fields, from cruise-lines, to non-profits, technology products, banks, beverage companies and many more. Regardless of the industry, Search Engine Optimization is crucial to the success of their products or services.
In the past, if we needed to find a Sushi Restaurant for dinner, we would look it up in the Yellow Pages. Those days are far-gone. Now, we just type “Sushi” into our Google Search and 10 sushi restaurants in your area pop up instantly with reviews, directions, phone numbers and menu. This is why SEO is so critical for any business. “If Google can’t find you, neither will anyone else.”
5 Step Process To Developing A Fantastic Name For Your New Company
We are often engaged to develop innovative and meaningful new names for companies, services and products. This process can be enjoyable, however it also takes strategic thinking and a lot of time. Here are some helpful tips to developing an innovative and memorable name.
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