Data as a Currency, Rethink Your Marketing

The new digital currency isn’t Bitcoin.  It’s Data.  It’s also more important than ever to really understand that data isn’t something you have a right to own, it’s something that consumers expect to get value in return for.  Every marketer who is “data driven” and focused on using data to refine their campaigns or develop […]

Is Your Marketing Team a Cost Center or Profit Center?

What value do you bring to your organization as a marketer?  If you had 2 minutes to tell the CEO what value you provided in quantifiable means could you do it?  Most marketers would struggle with this.  Ask a sales person this same question and they’ll tell you how revenue in sales they’ve driven, how […]

How Donald Trump Mastered Digital Marketing and SEO

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. -Roger “Verbal” Kint aka Kevin Spacey This is an example of the downfall or the positive side of Google’s shift to real time search results. I guess it all depends on where your political views land. To me though the recent […]

2016 The Year Digital Entered Adulthood

2016 is going to be an important year.  It’s going to be the last year that the last of the mass media channels draws more dollars than digital media.  With TV likely to be surpassed by digital next year.  It’s the last year the CTO will outspend the CMO on digital technology.  It’s the year […]

When Brand Marketing Became a Bottom of Funnel Activity

For a long time, when you talked to a marketer about “Brand Marketing” it was very closely focused on top of the funnel, driving awareness.  It was fueled by mass media.  It was measured by aided and unaided brand awareness.  Marketers would measure brand association to product categories.  The focus on brand was always top […]

Technology’s Place in Marketing

In 2012 Gartner presented a prediction that by 2017 the CMO would outspend the CIO when it came to IT costs. It’s now 2016 we’re a year away from 2017 and this statement appears as if it could be true.  CMOs/Marketers are influencing more digital spending decisions than ever.  Marketing has embraced technology at a rapid pace, […]

5 Things Marketing in the 50s & 60s Can Teach Digital Marketers

Marketing has been around for a long time, as a practice it has evolved very little.  The biggest changes that drove innovation were perhaps the invention of the printing press, radio, TV and internet. Each new channel bringing new capabilities and ways in which brands and companies could connect with an audience.  The 1950s and […]

How We Fail The Connected Customer

Digitally savvy marketers are aware of the second and third screens, they are aware of the always on customer.  They think mobile first when targeting consumers in engagements, but what marketers are still getting wrong is the connected customer.  The biggest mistake I see marketers make that are thinking second and third screens and mobile […]

Enable Your Marketing Team To Be Data Agile

While many would have you believe we live in the age of the connected customer, the reality is that is not as true as we would like it to be.  It’s not that it’s impossible to create a connected ecosystem of data, it’s just that very few have truly done this (Google, Amazon, Facebook are […]

20 Years of the NY Times, What’s Changed?

I’ve been involved in digital marketing, and specifically online marketing for a very long time.  Recently reading that the New York Times went online 20 years ago, made me reflect on what’s happened in those 20 years.  Very succinctly “not much has changed”.  A quote from the article in which they cite the thinking of […]