Thanks to Virgil Griffith, a Cal Tech grad student, anyone can now see how companies are editing their Wikipedia entries on the site Wikiscanner. This is possible because each edit is tracked by IP address, even those that originate in corporate offices. In the past someone from Walmart has edited Wikipedia to put a positive [...]
The Compromise Effect states that a consumer is more likely to choose the middle option of a selection set rather than the extreme options. For example, a car-shopper who is given three options: the low-priced basic model with no extras, a high-priced fully loaded model with all the extras, and a mid-priced model with some [...]
In Beyond Buzz, Lois Kelly argues that that buzz like the Subservient Chicken doesn’t work. Instead she suggests that firms should develop a strong point of view and something meaningful to talk about, such as Sun Microsystems’ philosophy that “sharing is good” or Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” that aims to build self esteem in [...]
A study by IHL consulting shows that self checkout at grocery stores can help people lose weight. They found that when consumers used self checkout their impulse purchases dropped 32.1% for women and 16.7% for men. IHL suggested that this was due to self-checkout lanes having less junk food displayed and lines were shorter, limiting [...]
In sports the best marketing is winning. Marketing a mediocre or consistently bad team is tough. So when Appalachian State defeated Michigan in the upset of the decade in college football, they had a great opportunity to recruit students to their school. One of the advantages of winning football programs is that it attracts great [...]
I just finished Al Gore’s book Assault on Reason and he has some harsh things to say about marketing. One of his points is that candidates can buy votes by simply purchasing 30 second ads. He recounts a story about when he was running for a senate position and his adviser told him that if [...]
NBC’s move to remove their shows from iTunes is a terrible misjudgment. iTunes is able to get people to pay for a product that is offered for free. It’s like selling water. People are willing to pay for the convenience. JP Morgan Analyst Spencer Wang, estimates that networks make a revenue of 1.44 per downloaded [...]
Here’s a crazy story from dvorak.org/blog. KFC is piloting an “scent-focused” campaign that will deliver food filled mail to corporate mail rooms at the lunch time mail drop. The mail will contain chicken, a side item, and a biscuit aimed to release the aroma of fried chicken throughout the office and trigger the cravings of [...]
