Gmail reads my emails. … so they can serve me targeted ads. Amazon analyzes my book buying habits. …to serve me up ads via recommendations. Facebook studies my posting habits and likes. …to sell my profile to advertisers so they can target me with ads. Google collects and analyzes my search habits. …to serve me […]
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Tag Archives: Marketing
Fear of Storytelling & Other Tales of Brand Failure
March 27, 2013 
2 Comments
The Internet is killing Advertising. Or at least what we would consider traditional advertising. Fewer people believe the claims. More people tune it out. Or just avoid it all together (fast forward anyone?). The Internet has ushered in an era of transparency, openness and instant access to information. There’s no place to hide. So claiming […]
Read moreThe Eyes of Lots & Lots of Strangers
March 25, 2013 3 Comments
They are watching you. And if you install Ghosterly on your browser, “they” will finally have names. Names like KissMetrics, Quantcast, Google Analytics, ChartBeat and MediaMind. These are just some of the many companies pilfering your data online. They are watching and recording your every click and then selling it to corporations, governments and private […]
Read moreLess Measurement, More Creativity
February 5, 2013 14 Comments
A few years back I was ensconced in a drab, ill-lit conference room meeting with my client’s brand-new vice president of marketing. He wore his cocksure attitude like a bow-tie and made sure I knew he was a graduate of an Ivy League business school. Looking me dead in the eye, with a completely straight […]
Read moreWhy Brands Should Resist Participating in National Tragedies
December 18, 2012 8 Comments
Every weekday a popular retailer sends out an 11 a.m. daily deal email to subscribers. Yesterday there was no daily deal. Just a branded message to its subscribers, which said: “For the lives lost at Sandy Hook. We grieve. We remember. We honor.” Then the brand listed all of the first names of the children killed […]
Read moreIs Facebook Dead as a Marketing Channel?
November 26, 2012 3 Comments
Of course not. Let’s not get crazy here. But believe it or not there seems to be a mounting number of alarmist obituaries about Facebook’s effectiveness as a marketing platform. If there were any truth to this speculation then we might as well ring the death knell for the Internet as a marketing platform was […]
Read moreThe Joy of Social Media
November 30, 2011 0 Comments
It’s easy to get caught up in the minutia of the industry. Communications and marketing pundits have a tendency to dive into the trivial aspects of social media – how we should define influence, how a new feature on Facebook works, a rant about a brand making a social media snafu, etc. No doubt some […]
Read more Who Owns & Controls a Brand’s Social Media?
March 11, 2011 0 Comments
The dust-up over the f-word being accidentally published on a Chrysler’s Twitter account is one of those “here today, gone tomorrow” non-stories. In reality this is about as significant as a politician saying something off-color with a microphone fastened to his tie or an anchorman at a national TV news show swearing while on camera. […]
Read moreWhy Do We Love Brands?
December 13, 2010 1 Comment
Because they reflect who we think we are and/or who we aspire to be. Brands – every brand – gives customers some kind of emotional reaction. That can be good (think Sesame Street) or it can be bad (think BP). Brands have created this emotional connect through marketing, public relations and advertising. They still do. […]
Read moreDispelling 3 Prevailing Myths about Social Media
October 26, 2010 2 Comments
Social media is not a sacred vocation. There’s an enormous misunderstanding – generally pushed by social media experts – that social media needs to be “authentic” and “genuine.” That this “honesty” and “transparency” means that marketing and communications departments can’t be in charge of social media activities (like blogging or the company Facebook page). These […]
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HighTalk by George F. Snell III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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