Like the scene in “Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer” when Santa realizes that the eponymous feature he and others had treated as if it were nasal leprosy actually could be really, really useful, the idea for this blog entry came in a moment of pure annoyance. Rudolph annoys Santa into a state of creative problem solving. […]
Today, Indiana Pacer center Roy Hibbert ought to be reflecting on a big win in the NBA playoffs against the defending champion Miami Heat. He’s earned a day to rest up, ice his knees, and watch reruns of AMC’s “The Killing.” But that’s not what Roy Hibbert’s doing today. Instead, he’s been slathered up in prepared statements to […]
The mobile apps business reminds me of a child prodigy. On the one hand, we see the potential to do amazing things. On the other hand, kids are kids, and even tremendous young talent can make their parents want to pull their hair out from time to time. So it is with mobile. Customers increasingly […]
I’m going to write about a trend in advertising that excites me more than any movement I can recall in my career, one I could not have imagined 10 years ago, before the advent of digital, social, and mobile channels that have connected consumers with brands. I’m talking about companies that feature real people at […]
Much of how we consumers feel about advertising today is based on its oldest formats. I fondly remember Budweiser and Miller 30 second TV spots that clearly were designed to entertain as a way of achieving brand recall. I also can recall flipping through my favorite sports magazines and emerging with fingers rank with nauseatingly […]
One of my favorite shows is Food Network’s Restaurant Impossible. For those who haven’t seen it, the program follows celebrity chef Robert Irvine as he tries to rescue failing family restaurants. He does this in spite of two limitations: a spending limit of just $10,000 with which to redesign the restaurant and only 48 hours […]
This past Friday, I learned that authorities had apprehended the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing via Boston.com’s Live Blog, which aggregated tweets and short updates from reporters, police, and citizens into a single, curated stream. Watching and waiting for the Live Blog to update every three to five minutes made me feel more […]
Count me among those who felt that Facebook could have gone the way of MySpace. Looks like that was as solid as most of my NCAA “March Madness” predictions. One of the company’s few mobile missteps was the introduction of Facebook Home. It’s an app that came preloaded on the HTC First handset. It delivers a […]
In my very first blog post, I recommended things brick-and-mortar stores could do to take on the rise of e-commerce companies like Amazon. I suggested that they press their advantages, including immediacy and the ablity to provide store visitors with digital experiences that enhance their shopping. You can find that post here. Well, it looks […]
In preparation for my appearance at this week’s SWIPE 2.0 conference, I read The Association of Magazine Media report on magazine readers and smartphones. You can view the report here. The data in this report suggests that the industry is doing a lot of things right in what is undeniably its early days. It also […]
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