Campaign mobile: it’s 1996 all over again

Every time a new medium catches our attention we have to endure this awkward period where people who have decision-making and spending authority but no understanding of the medium at all treat it like it’s the old media they’re used to. Old assumptions, old practices … failure. It’s like in 1996 when ad agencies discovered [...]

Campaign mobile update: from bad to worse to what the heck?

A couple days ago I had some comments on Obama, Clinton and Edwards and their respective mobile marketing activities. Turns out I was wrong about a couple facts, but finding that out has now opened the door to some new questions and concerns.
Here’s where we currently stand:

Obama campaign launches mobile, screws it up

I yarped for months that political campaigns weren’t launching mobile. There’s this massive youth generation that’s setting records for political and community activity, the mobile phone is one of their favorite things in the world, and all these politicians and their high-priced communications groups were doing … nada. I’ve talked to some of them, too.

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Where does mobile fit in the social media discussion?

If you’ve snooped around the site, you probably know that mobility is coming along a lot more slowly than I feel like it should. For every business out there doing a good job ramping up mobile marketing there’s probably a few thousand doing nothing. Why is a little hard for me to fathom – mobile [...]

The problem with measurement

In yesterday’s MediaPost Marketing Daily, Douglas Brooks touched on a subject I’ve been yarping about for some time – measurement. He offers some prudent advice, but sidesteps the issue that’s been bothering me: to wit, our rage to quantification is driven by fear, not expertise, and it often leads us to ignore a whole suite [...]

Addressing the “praise deficit”: young workers putting a strain on organizations and organizations are responding inappropriately

One of the things Black Dog specializes in is how generational dynamics affect organizational behavior and effectiveness. As I wrote a couple weeks ago, companies across the US are flying headlong toward a massive macro-succession pile-up, and the collective personality of the Millennial Generation (born from ~1980-2000) is going to play a major part in [...]

Software patent item of interest…

Brian Angliss has an interesting take on software patents and patent trolls over at Scholars & Rogues. I’m no expert on either (although I wholeheartedly agree on the troll issue), but since software development bears rather directly on the world of innovation marketing, I thought I’d point you to it….

Progressive capitalism: Tocqueville, RJ Reynolds, and taking back our American birthright

This is a song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles. We’re stealing it back. – Bono

Business ethics have been much on my mind of late. Gavin (Whythawk) has pounded Scholars & Rogues (a politics and culture blog I contribute to) with a steady stream of posts that come from some really different angles. The S&R [...]

Sprite Yard is the right idea

And this morning, a glimpse of the future:
Sprite Launches Mobile Social Network
by Tameka Kee, Thursday, Jun 7, 2007 6:00 AM ET
MOVE OVER, MYSPACE AND FACEBOOK. Coca-Cola’s Sprite is debuting its own social network, called the Sprite Yard.The brand’s global interactive marketing team is betting that the mobile platform will set new benchmarks for consumer brand [...]

Free white paper: what is social media?

Today’s Online Spin column by Joe Marchese addresses a topic that’s been front and center around here lately. To wit, what exactly is “social media”? It’s a term that’s being tossed around pretty enthusiastically these days, but as is so often the case with particularly fresh and buzzy marketing jargon, not everybody is 100% sure [...]