Buying in Facebook and Twitter: A new data generator

Social media seems to be impacting nearly every aspect of marketing. It allows brands to interact with consumers in a digital space. Feedback and customer service happen in real time. Now, it seems social media may be simplifying the ecommerce channel, giving consumers the ability to make purchases directly in the ads and posts for products they see in their feeds. Both Facebook and Twitter have now begun testing “buy now” buttons to their sites and apps. In both...

25 July 2014 | Campaigns

Yo: Is it really that simple?

By Gram Bowsher Yo: A two letter word with ambiguous origins and typically inconsequential meaning. Or is it not that simple? One of the newest trends in social media and mobile apps has been the rise of the app named after such a seemingly innocuous term. Giving users only the ability to send the word “Yo” to each other, the app has already received $1.2 million in investment and has risen to the number one in the iOS app store. The fast rise of Yo was quickly followed by an influx of...

2 July 2014 | Campaigns

Listen up: How Beats Audio accelerates innovation to become a billion-dollar business

Did you hear that?  Did you hear the voice of the consumer singing a sweet song about their needs, dreams and desires?  Rapper/producer Dr. Dre and record mogul Jimmy Iovine heard it, and they crafted it into their latest hit:  beats audio. There’s been a lot of chatter about beats audio in the news recently, with speculation that Apple is planning to purchase the company for $3.2 billion grows louder and louder.  While we may not all agree that this is a smart business...

30 May 2014 | Advertising Technology

Cheetos & Doritos: Simplistic line extension or synergistic innovation?

A new addition to store shelves this month is a new snack mix from Frito-Lay containing two “playfully bold” fan favorites:  Cheetos Flamin’ Hot and Doritos Dinamita Chile Limon.

It would be a bold-faced lie if I said I wasn’t interested. I like Cheetos. I like Doritos. Really, the only bad thing I can imagine coming from this combination are orange-stained fingers.

28 April 2014 | Advertising Technology

Doing Lay’s a flavour: Frito-Lay benefits from crowdsourcing

As of January, Lay’s is reviving its Do Us A Flavor promotion in which they ask consumers to cook up original chip flavor ideas. This go-round, in addition to submitting a new flavor, participants have the option to put it on Original, Wavy, or Kettle Cooked Lay’s.

The grand prize for submitting the winning flavor is a million dollars or 1% of the chip’s yearly net sales, whichever is higher. Last year’s winner was a Wisconsin mom, Karen...

13 February 2014 | Advertising

Why celebrity is a poor substitute for brand equity

Remember the days when brands allowed product benefits to speak for themselves during market introduction?  Neither do I, but I do remember a time when a product endorsement at least implied that the endorser had some degree of affinity for the product. Now apparently the role of the celebrity endorser has evolved from the old model of persuasion to one of blatant attention-seeking behavior by brands (impact on equity be damned).

17 October 2013 | Advertising

Taco Bell thinks ‘outside the bun’ to create breakthrough innovation

Taco Bell Thinks “Outside the Bun” to Create Breakthrough Innovation

Back when I was in college, professors frowned upon the idea of borrowing the works of others and passing them off as your own (maybe they still do – I don’t know, I’m old).  They called it “cheating,” said it was “wrong” and “unethical.”  Not that I would know any of this first-hand, of course.

10 October 2013 | Advertising Technology

Why creating a social brand can become a differentiator for your bottom line

In the CPG space, we have been trained to believe that there are limited levers a brand can pull during the consumer decision making process. Brands try like crazy to build up brand equity to justify their price premium, while also trying to make you forget you’re paying for it. However, the idea that cutting prices is the easiest way to gain market share haunts us like a song from the 1960s we can’t get out of our heads. But the times “they are a-changin’”. As consumers become more...

11 September 2013 | Advertising Technology

Gamification revisited – delight your customers

Earlier this year, we discussed the opportunity for banks to make personal finance fun by injecting gaming dynamics into their products and services. We suggested that a bank can set up a system that provides incentives to reward saving behavior. The program should be created by a game designer and produce an ecosystem where the objective of the game is to save as much money as possible in an account serviced by the...

10 October 2011 | Gamification

Is Kindle Fire a game changer? An iPad killer? A Netflix buster?

Today Amazon announced the Kindle Fire priced at $199, or about $300 less than the lowest cost iPad. It’s Wi-Fi only. It only has a 7” color screen. It has a slightly inferior processor but includes Amazon’s new Silk browser that caches and compresses data that lives on both the tablet on Amazon servers, consuming less bandwidth. It’s made by Quanta who also made RIM’s Playbook. Hmm, guess what it looks like? It runs...

29 September 2011 | Advertising