Have graduate students outgrown the classroom?

 Frank Oppenheimer was right, “The best way to learn is to teach”. In this post I hope to share what three years of teaching master's students has taught me. 

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Coke takes the social out of media

This week Coke Analog Labs have released a new promotional video called Social Media Guard. As wake up calls go, Coke nails it: Funny, poignant and oh-so-true.

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Social Media Mantra

Before you even think about online networking for your brand, I suggest the following exercise. First, take your shoes off. Close the blinds and dim the lights in your office. Sit on the floor cross-legged. Place your hands on your knees palms up if you are alone, join hands in a circle if your colleagues are with you. Close your eyes and recite the social media mantra:

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Stop wasting time with "social media"

You have read how social media wastes a lot of people's time. I couldn't agree more.

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Why you should give up the words "social media" for lent

A nonsectarian yet slightly pedantic post on the importance of names

If you work in marketing you probably use the term "social media" several times a day.

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A Holiday Poem for Marketers

Season Greetings! My Marketing Moxie column in Talent Zoo takes on a different format for the Holidays.  How the CMO Grinch Got Social is a Dr. Suess-inspired look at the plight of today's CMO and their path to redemtion.

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New York Times struggles to understand why social media can't be run by robots

And people wonder why the newspapers are in trouble . . .

Newspapers have some of the most powerful brands in the world. But decades of monopolized media have made them soft in the ways of brand management.

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Join the WeFeedback experiment

We're popping Champagne at the agency today to celebrate the official launch of WeFeedback.org, a website we developed with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) as part of an awareness/fundraising campaign. 

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Study reveals social media's potential for misuse

Google alerts sent me a link today dated December 8, 2010 whose headline read "Study reveals social media brand marketing potential". I clicked through to find an article talking about the power of social media as a traditional advertising media.

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Online charities: When bad tactics happen to good causes

One Mo Bro's plea for more online charities to stop preaching and start participating

‘Tis the season of giving. So what’s the best way to raise money for a good cause? Try this: forget about your cause for a moment and focus on the cause of the poor bloke who is the unwitting recipient of your spammy appeals, guilt-laden messaging and misuse of social media platforms.

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Social media: I don't want to know

Saw this music video from Marketing Reject and thought I'd share. It's one marketing manager's musical lament about trying to cope with the changes in our industry. If you can relate, please call me before you do anything drastic. :)

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Why bother monitoring buzz?

Can you imagine a marketing manager letting brand-related websites, endorsements, editorials, images, or videos be broadcast without review or approval? I can’t. Companies want to control the message because the message shapes the perception of their brand. And the brand is their most valuable asset.

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Getting Real at Lund University School of Economics

 I've been privileged to have the opportunity to lecture at the Lund University School of Economics for the past three years. Each semester, I've delivered a series of lectures on strategic marketing to masters and PhD students. I have supplemented these lectures with live cases for students to work on.

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Job Interview 2.0: A Crash Course for Social Media Skeptics

Social media may seem daunting, especially to seasoned marketers. But social media is not as difficult as you think. In fact, I am of the opinion that it’s more likely that a good marketer can catch up on two to three years of social media developments than a social media expert can compensate for lacking twenty or thirty years of marketing experience.

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Why "Social Media" is neither

I recoil a little every time I say “social media.” I think the term is just plain wrong and fuels misconceptions. I prefer the term “peer-to-peer networks” instead. Here’s why. 

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Our Top 10 Social Media Fails

The spring edition of The Duffy International Tribune is ready for download

The Summer edition of our newsletter, The International Duffy Tribune, is ready for download. This issue has a heavy focus on social media. Inside, we go through the top ten mistakes we have made launching and managing social media campaigns and what we all can learn form them.

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Recruitment, Retention, Training: the core of an HR social media campaign

A few ideas on how an HR Department could use an integrated social media campaign to achieve its objectives . At the heart of any social media endeavor is one singular commercial endeavor: building communities of like-minded individuals who, in some manner, can help your business.

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Social media: Your company's most powerful (and underutilized) human resource tool

Do HR departments actually have the most to gain from Social Media?

A funny thing happened in the middle of a marketing campaign we're
running.We realized that we also created a very efficient HR
campaign pretty much by accident.

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Why Your Brand Doesn't Need a Social Media Expert

Most social media experts are simply people who understand how certain social apps work. Many are skilled at being social on the Internet themselves. Yes, they can amass small armies of followers overnight.

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Social Media ROI vs RODN

Has anyone ever asked you to demonstrate the ROI of a $1M TV spot or $25K brochure? Me neither. But suggest to a marketing executive today that they spend a few thousand on a social media initiative and they won't budge — unless you can prove ROI beforehand. And it's not the recession that's to blame. These are the same marketers who still invest in traditional media without any more ROI data than "that's the way we've always done it."

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