Black Friday + Cyber Monday + Holidays = Is Your Mobile up to Snuff? Ah, the holiday season. The tension builds for consumers, retailers and marketing departments alike. Yes, this is the make-or-break time of the year for marketers, ensuring their brands stay at the peak of demand, on trend, and of course, ahead of…
Category Archive for: Marketing
Fake News – “Truthiness” Hurts Us All. The term “truthiness” was made wildly popular by late-night TV personality Stephen Colbert. He used it to describe “politicians’ and pundits’ preference for concepts they wish were true over ones that actually are true.” To make matters worse, truthiness has been put into practice – in the run-up…
What money are you leaving lying on the ground? I love a good business back-story. I was listening to CBC’s Under the Influence the other day and heard a great one. Back in 1919, car magnate Henry Ford invited several friends to go on a camping trip – real estate mogul Edward Kingsford, renowned inventor…
Meet George Jetson. In less than a decade, Uber has redefined the shared economy, gutted the taxi industry, and scaled to a $70 billion dollar company along the way. But now they have done it. They have just announced a project called ‘Elevate,’ which promises flying cars. Yes, flying cars. Instantly, I was transported to the vision…
Marketing the next @POTUS. No matter where your political leanings lie, we’re watching the highest-stakes, online marketing battle in the history of the world, playing out before our very eyes. It may be painful to watch (yet we all are), but this election holds an absolute treasure trove of insights for everyone in the marketing…
Print in a Digital World 2017 Trend Report. The way consumers engage with brands has dramatically morphed. They can access products and product information instantaneously, and they can intermingle with a brand in a cacophony of ways. You have to be a storyteller in this connected world and understand how to merge marketing, content, and technology…
The Haptic and Sensory Influence of Print. Touch. Arousal. Sensation. All sound a wee bit salacious, but what they describe is anything but. As humans, we connect with our environment, we connect with other humans, and we crave the physical – as it stimulates receptors in our brains like a firestorm. We are simply wired…
Why Social Platforms are shedding the Social Label. It seems these days that Social Media companies are pivoting on their identities. They are shedding their “social network” handles and rapidly diversifying in parallel. There was a point in our near recent past that everyone was a “social specialist,” with agencies and niche experts manifesting in…
Shomi falls to Netflix. It isn’t long ago that we used to undertake the pilgrimage to the local Blockbuster to pick up our videos. Rushing to get them back on time. Paying late fees when we didn’t quite make it (and if you remember back far enough, paying a fee if you didn’t rewind your…
The Jack Ma Effect. When Chinese Internet billionaire Jack Ma – founder of e-commerce behemoth Alibaba – started out looking for work in life, he was rejected left right and centre by dozens of companies, including KFC, which had just entered China. “I went to KFC when it came to my city. Twenty-four people went…