Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
This rectangle display ad from Omega caught my eye as I scrolled through a lengthy New York Times story about the Olympic games on my iPhone a few weeks ago. It looked pretty good, not surprising for a major Olympics sponsor. Still, I expected it to link to a product pitch on a corporate site. What I…
Hey there fans and followers, I wanted to shed some light on this topic of “local blogging” and why 97% of local businesses fail to increase conversions from it and I want to share my action plan for The #1 Reason Local Blogging Fails And How You Can Increase Website Conversions Alternatively | Marshall Adler…
Marketing is essential for companies. Throughout the customer journey, marketing both changes brand perception and awareness and drives sales. Simultaneously, companies need to justify marketing expenses — down to the last penny. Reaching a balance isn’t easy. Too often CMOs succumb to the pressure to keep costs down at the expense of their brand’s health…
Actor Paul Marcarelli is back on television, but with Sprint. He previously spent a decade as a pitchman for Verizon. Sprint Many of you will remember Verizon’s “Can you hear me now?” campaign. You know, the one that featured a horn-rimmed glasses-sporting “Test Man” asking the now-oft-repeated question. Well, the “Test Man” is back, and…
If you’ve ever tried to get your hands on a Black Widow toy only to be disappointed by aisles and aisles full of Hulk and Hawkeye merch, Iron Man 3 director Shane Black has some disturbing insider insight for you. In a new interview with Uproxx about his upcoming film The Nice Guys, Black revealed…
I’m not a traditionalist. But let’s face it — digital didn’t revolutionize ads the way we all expected. At the onset of the digital age, industry thinking was that banners would create a totally transactional marketplace in which consumers would click on an ad and watch a brand video, and even shop for products. Advertising…
Yesterday was a strange day full of surprises. The fencing contractor I’d spoken to last week about a site visit for an estimate didn’t show up. Later, when I tried to attend a local community meeting in my neighborhood, I discovered that the indicated room was totally empty at the appointed time—apparently the meeting had…
In corporate America, the most persistent refuge of outright charlatanism is “branding.” The only thing more offensive to honesty than a “rebranding” campaign is a breathless feature story about a rebranding campaign. What do we have in Wired today… ah, it’s a breathless feature story about a rebranding campaign! “The Inside Story of Uber’s Radical…
When Daniel Joseph, a York University doctoral student studying labor and technology, found out about Coca-Cola’s GIF the Feeling promotion, he knew exactly what he wanted to make with it: a Coke-branded critique of capitalism. An accessory for Coke’s newly launched “Taste the Feeling” global ad campaign, GIF the Feeling is a website that allows…
Would your son want to play with an action figure of Rey, the central figure in the latest Star Wars film? Would your daughter? It’s too bad they don’t have the choice; Hasbro, among other toymakers, left out the one key female figure in their The Force Awakens game sets. Hasbro says it was to…