Marketing Factoids

  • Of those people that recently made consumer electronics purchases in a store, 80 percent visited the store's website first. - Nielsen Online survey source ›
  • V users watch more TV than before (127 hrs, 15 min per month) and also spend 9 percent more time using the internet (26 hrs, 26 min per month) than they did last year source ›
  • Unaided ad awareness for podcasts was an impressive 68% on average (compared with industry benchmarks of 21% for streaming video and 10% for television) source ›
  • more factoids ›

Archive for December 2006

To view the latest BackPocket articles, visit the home page.


DEC 2006

Mistakes Were Made: What to Take Away From the High Profile Blunders of 2006

Wall Street Journal, December 28, 2006 — You didn't publically tell a botched joke about our troops in Iraq. You didn't drive drunk and then make anti-Semitic remarks to the police. You didn't come up with a scheme to put OJ Simpson on national TV to chat about murder techniques.

Category: Brand Blunders
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DEC 2006

Revenge of the Generic

Copying Target's model, chains such as Office Max and Costco are developing more upscale, store-brand products and customers are buying them

BusinessWeek, December 27, 2006 — It used to be that few people would admit to buying generic. You remember, those almost comically minimalist packages of food, starkly decorated with text indicating the contents—"Spaghetti" or "Frozen Peas"—produced and sold by grocery-store chains

Category: Brand Strategy
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DEC 2006

TippingSprung Fields Third Annual Brand-Extension Survey

Survey, in collaboration with Brandweek magazine, names best and worst brand extensions in 10 popular categories

TippingSprung, December 21, 2006 — Results from TippingSprung’s third annual survey of brand extensions, produced in collaboration with marketing newsweekly Brandweek, revealed which extensions are most effective, which have potential to dilute the brand, and what makes some brands more extendible than others. Major trends in brand extensions were also uncovered.

Category: Brand Blunders
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DEC 2006

World on a String

Brandweek, December 21, 2006 — They turned on their cameras, plopped Mentos into bottles of Diet Coke, and swamped YouTube with videos of erupting fountains worthy of the Bellagio Hotel.

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DEC 2006

Follies

Advertising Age, December 18, 2006 — Top 10 follies of the year

Category: Brand Blunders
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DEC 2006

Pulling Power of the Digital Age

Brand Strategy, December 18, 2006 — Technology is driving major changes in consumer behaviour but nowhere is this making a greater impact than among the first 'digital generation' - those now aged between 16-24 years old. As this group's use of media evolves, we must address how teenage behaviour will change the rules of marketing engagement

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DEC 2006

The Best of 2006: Ideas

The concepts that are reshaping the business world -- and all of our lives

BusinessWeek, December 18, 2006 — The year 2006 may well be remembered as the annus mirabilis of free work. Whether it comes from open-source developers, obsessive fans, angry customers, or lonely Web addicts looking to burnish their egos with a little attention online

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DEC 2006

Trends to Watch in 2007

Advertising Age, December 18, 2006 — Top 10 Trends for 2007

Category: Brand Strategy
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DEC 2006

Brands For the Chattering Masses

New York Times, December 17, 2006 — FOR many, many decades, successful branding — one of the corporate world's holy grails — involved a clear set of rules.

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DEC 2006

THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: 12-17-06: CONSUMED; Ad Play

New York Times, December 17, 2006 — About two years ago, the office-supply chain Staples began a new advertising campaign. According to Shira Goodman, Staples' top marketing executive, the chain decided to peddle the perception that it's a particularly easy place to shop. ''All of our ad gurus got together and said, 'How do we make this amorphous concept of ''easy'' very tangible, so our consumers can really hang on to it?'

Category: Brand Strategy
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DEC 2006

Virtual mirror on the real world ONLINE SIMULATION

Blue-chip companies are using Second Life, the web's immersive universe, to test out business scenarios

Financial Times, December 15, 2006 — Reuben Steiger's far-flung design team sounds like a Fantastic Four of superheroes able to reshape their world in the blink of an eye.

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DEC 2006

Finding and Harnessing Online Brand Advocates

Drive Sales by Directing Searchers to Forums

Advertising Age, December 14, 2006 — By now it's something every marketer knows: That smaller — albeit powerful — group of brand fans can have an exponentially greater influence.

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DEC 2006

Small B-to-B Brands Get Their 'TV Moment'

Industry's Been Slow to Come Online but Finds Promise in Narrowcasting

Advertising Age, December 14, 2006 — As more of the U.S. population moves online, B-to-B industries that previously thought they were immune to the migration have had to begin figuring out their web strategies.

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DEC 2006

Today’s Surprising Power Influencer: Mom

Companies are capitalizing on the impact of recommendations from moms.

Inside 1to1, December 14, 2006 — Moms will spend $1.7 trillion in 2007 on everything from fast food to shampoo, and companies are finding creative ways to execute campaigns that curry their influence, purchase power, and attention. These are not the stereotypical bored, free-spending "soccer moms" that politicians have been courting for years.

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DEC 2006

How to Keep Your School From Being Brand X

Wall Street Journal, December 12, 2006 — The Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, has long taught about the power and importance of branding.

Category: Brand Strategy
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DEC 2006

Finance Chiefs on the March Into Ad Sales

TREND WATCH: Yahoo, NBC, Other Media Bigs Bring in the CFO-Types

Advertising Age, December 11, 2006 — Here come the number crunchers. Sue Decker's ascension last week to run Yahoo's ad-sales operation is the latest sign of a major shift in the way media companies are reacting to fierce market pressures.

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DEC 2006

Outlook 2007

BtoBOnline 2007 Marketing Priorities and Plans

BtoB Magazine, December 11, 2006 — Marketing will get a big boost in 2007 as b-to-b marketers increase overall budgets, shift more dollars to online and try out new technologies, according to BtoB's "2007 Marketing Priorities and Plans" survey.

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DEC 2006

Q & A: On the Hot Seat With Lafley and Immelt

FORTUNE, December 11, 2006 — Star chief executives A.G. Lafley and Jeffrey Immelt, in a rare New York City public appearance, talked about everything from pleasing investors and the holy grail of R&D to paying the price for Enron and other corporate wrongdoers.

Category: Innovation
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DEC 2006

Thinking Simple At Philips

BusinessWeek, December 11, 2006 — A panel of outside experts is helping the electronics giant reinvent itself

Category: Innovation
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DEC 2006

Times Sq. Ads Spread Via Tourists’ Cameras

New York Times, December 11, 2006 — Advertisers have long been drawn to Times Square as a valuable place to reach consumers, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for space on billboards and blazing video screens.

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DEC 2006

Chartered Institute of Marketers - MARKETING TRENDS SURVEY; Economy over ecology

Marketing Week, December 7, 2006 — Social and environmental issues are still less important to most companies than financial results, despite consumer trends, but marketing departments are being seen as an increasingly vital asset

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DEC 2006

Disrupter Man goes after TV this time

USA Today, December 6, 2006 — Few entrepreneurs have truly disrupted a single industry. Niklas Zennstrom has done it to two — and he has his sights on a third.

Category: Innovation
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DEC 2006

Trailblazing Tesco

Forbes, December 5, 2006 — Ah, to make it big in America. So far it's been nearly impossible for British supermarkets like J Sainsbury and Marks & Spencer to set up shop in the U.S., but Tesco, the U.K.'s biggest retailer, wants to buck that trend.

Category: Innovation
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DEC 2006

The Future Of Web Ads Is in Britain

New York Times, December 4, 2006 — If you want a glimpse of the future of advertising, you can hire a consultant — or you can travel to Britain.

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DEC 2006

The Soul Of A New Microsoft

Edgy thinkers like J Allard are looking far beyond Windows for the next big thing

BusinessWeek, December 4, 2006 — At 3:32 p.m. on Oct. 19 an e-mail flashed across the screens of the 230 Microsoft employees working slavishly to bring the Zune music player to market. The sender was their brash team leader, J Allard, 37. The message included a link to an old video of Steve Jobs on YouTube, mocking Microsoft's creativity. "The only problem with Microsoft is that they have no taste," the Apple Computer boss says. "They have absolutely no taste."

Category: Innovation
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DEC 2006

Are Companies Getting Better at M&A?

The latest boom in merger activity appears to be creating more value for the shareholders of the acquiring companies

McKinsey Quarterly, December 1, 2006 — With announced merger activity approaching $4 trillion globally in the first 11 months of 2006, the year had already surpassed the record levels set in 2000.

Tag: M&A
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DEC 2006

Make a Grand Entrance

Major US brands are continuing their aggressive courtship of developing markets. Here are five strategies for successfully building brand awareness

The Advertiser, December 1, 2006 — Emerging markets are the new black. From the "Big Four" of Brazil, Russia, India, and China to the rest of the world, marketers are placing increasingly bigger bets on developing markets - and finally seeing positive returns

Category: Brand Strategy
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