The following article was previously published on Thinking Aloud.
Through the eyes of a marketer who sees the foundations of success starting with A, B, C…
In a world where social media has freed the reins of expression and hugely democratized it, and technology and mobility has put the power to express with a click in the hands of millions and millions of people, a question topmost in the minds of marketers is how they can ensure the success of their [...]

The following article was originally published on ClickZ.asia.
Most people in Asia (and certainly the subcontinent) will be aware of the Indian Premier League (or IPL), the new format of cricket where a game lasts just three hours, with each side playing 20 overs. More than the cricket, what’s really made the IPL enormously popular is the format it follows—of city-level franchisee owned teams that consist of a mix of Indian and international cricketers (much on the lines of club [...]

Originally published on Euro RSCG Worldwide PR’s Thinking Campaigns blog.
We already know the world has gone hyperlocal—from rooftop gardens to online deals for everything from facials near your home to ceviche dinners close to your office on LivingSocial, Groupon and Dealtificate. The media industry is no exception, and right now I’m watching the Patch.com model as a symbolic nod to where the future of media is most certainly headed.
I saw this firsthand a few weeks ago, as the final results [...]

“That’s how we do it in the black community; we give back to the people who made us who we are. We never forget that.” —Snoop Dogg (American entertainer, rapper, record producer and actor)
A product or service must be compelling in order for people to be inspired to buy or use it –that’s a given. But really, it’s consumers who raise a brand’s profile and create its reputation. And with interactions between people increasing at an incredible pace everyday because of [...]

Walking into the Time Warner Center for Adweek’s Social Media Strategies Conference recently (the conference was held Oct. 13-14) was a lot like entering a professional sporting event. I put my bag through a metal detector, got my ticket and then entered a room with several large projection screens—though instead of jumbotrons displaying fans in the stadium, we were seeing live streams of tweets.
And, really, it was fitting, considering that this was the Olympics of social media, with key [...]

When Facebook was opened to the public, I had read a lot about it. Being the geek that I am, I had read numerous pieces of news and had even tried faking a Harvard e-mail to try and register for it. But when it finally opened to everyone, I resisted for a few months before going in.
I knew it wasn’t anything new. We had tried a similar model at Loquesea.com, one of the many Internet companies from pre–bubble times that [...]

“It is the harmony of the diverse parts, their symmetry, their happy balance; in a word it is all that introduces order, all that gives unity, that permits us to see clearly and to comprehend at once both the ensemble and the details.” –Henri Poincare (French mathematician, theoretical physicist and philosopher of science, 1854-1912)
As announced last week, Facebook has now reached 500 millions users. If it were a country, it would be the third largest, behind China and India. Beyond [...]

Students and enthusiasts attending the World Futurist Convention this year in Boston were at once shocked, overwhelmed and intrigued. Diverse teachers from all over gave lectures on subjects with only one thing in common: the future. Being one of the youngest people attending, I was personally invested in how the older generations predict the globe will unravel for my generation and that of my 14-year-old brother. To my amusement, the world is “supposed” to be extremely well off and advanced in [...]

It’s a truism that hardly bears repeating that technology and the infinite choice it has fostered have turned the old one-to-many communications model on its head. That’s a fact for advertising, where it’s laughable to imagine businesses being able to survive simply by broadcasting their brand messages to captive audiences. It’s a fact for pop culture, as a generation that all grew up watching “Seinfeld” and “Friends” together realizes that their children will have no such shared, universal touchstones.
And it’s [...]

As marketers work around the clock to leverage the newest social media platform, I can’t help but reflect on my first uses of social media. I’m a firm believer that you can’t evolve or grow without knowing your roots and learning from your past—and I realize now that in my past, I was engaged in social media before there was such a thing as “social media.”
It was about 13 years ago when I created my first site—a “Power Rangers” fan [...]