Publishers OR Platforms? Cyberbullying and Increased Accountability by Social Networks
At a time when finally, the common man has been given a platform to speak his mind, to let his voice be heard and to give way to enormous change at the behest of millions of like-voices, we’ve also reached a pinnacle where suddenly the voice of the individual has created an environment of mass opinion […]
Big Data Will Change Advertising Forever
I had several meetings recently with friends from “traditional digital agencies”. That sounds so oxymoronic! The reality is that this new course of big data, gleaned from a wealth of unstructured information on the web, has the ability to turn advertising on its head–– at least enough to make media people rethink algorithms for maximizing […]
Quid Pro Quo: The Ultimate Dance Between the Brand and Consumer
The sustainability of today’s business in a world increasingly controlled by the customer seems daunting for many businesses, who are used to and, in many cases, hell bent on maintaining status quo with respect to how they market their products and communicate with their customers. The pundits are saying this: In order to adapt to […]
PR’s New Winding Road: Can this New Order Help Ease Inevitable Organizational Changes?
If the last few years are an indication of how people are becoming much stronger voices for news events and whose opinion are the impetus for organization and government action, it’s clear that this is not a trend. From JC Penney, to Kitchen Aid, to the NSA, and now Food Network’s Paula Dean, these organizations have quickly […]
The NSA, Privacy and the Blatant Realization: Nothing You Do Online is Private
I’ve been monitoring the events in the past week about PRISM, the NSA and the traitor/hero, Edward Snowden, former CIA, who lifted the veil and revealed to the the world the questionable practices of the US Agency, practices which, in my opinion, shouldn’t surprise any of us. The graphic above from Gaping Void, nicely captured […]
Rethinking Business in the New Digital: Customer MUST be At the Core
I had the pleasure of being asked to be part of a panel at Mesh a few weeks ago called “Beyond Social Monitoring“. I was in good company with Joel Yashinksky, CMO and SVP of Marketing and Consumer Business Insights at McDonald’s Canada, and Scott Lake, CEO of Source Metrics. The panel provided some amazing insights […]
The Story ArC So Far
I still can’t believe we’re well on our way. By the way, the pic above says it all. As excited and as happy as we are about this new venture, it is still wrought with a lot of anxiety, doubt and re-thinking: strategy, positioning, messaging. It’s ALL good and this is the way we grow. […]
Big Banks & Social: To Be or Not to Be?
No less than 8 years ago, I found myself happily making a jaunt away from the banking industry. I decided to flee a dinosaur that was slow to change. It had all the best intentions of tapping into emerging technology – however, riddled with red tape, regulation, and rigid policy, this old and established institution […]
The Art of Managing Change
I remember the day well: It was two days before Christmas in the mid-1990’s. I was a junior account executive at a major worldwide ad agency. I was just a few years out of school. I was pulled aside by my boss, who was clearly preoccupied. He wasn’t stressing about the gifts that he had […]
Social Tech: The Dichotomy of End User Value and Monetization
I was at SXSW this weekend and I was overwhelmed at the number of of cool ideas and technologies swarming about. There was no shortage of “shiny new toys” at this conference. But for many of the cool technologies I saw I struggled to find the customer value in the technology. These days where there […]