Sans Paper
The coupon trend just got hotter—and more high-tech

The popularity of extreme couponing is a sign of the times—i.e., we’re trying to be more frugal in this rough economic environment, but we still have to buy stuff, right? Well, there’s good news for would-be couponers who just don’t have the time to clip, sort and store those old-school newspaper inserts (for those who even get a paper version of the newspaper anymore). It’s the rise of the paperless coupon. [...]

There’s a certain set of consumers who don’t just passively consume goods and services; they proactively seek them out, help to produce them and help to propagate them. Alvin Toffler coined the term Prosumers in his 1980 book The Third Wave to label people similar to the leading-edge consumers we were studying at Euro RSCG Worldwide, the parent company of the PR agency I head up. When we started using the term later, it [...]

It has been a while since we’ve heard people talk about “the death of advertising.” A few years back, the birth of social media and interactive marketing had ad watchers sounding the death knell, but we now know that although advertising (and media in general) has changed, the ad biz has certainly not disappeared—and is not going to.
But what is emerging and shaking things up is a new creative class of people who might not necessarily work within our industry [...]

When I was a kid (“back in the day”), if you wanted something special from Santa for the holidays, you worked for it. Sure, you could write him a letter. But to be certain you were getting exactly what you wanted, you had to convince your parents to take you to a mall or department store so that you could personally deliver the message. You had to wait in an endless line only to discover that, up close and personal, [...]

“I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained.” —Walt Disney (1901-1966)
With advertising, people learn what a person, a brand, a service or a product is and has to offer. I don’t think there is any better way to teach, raise awareness and sales than entertaining. Beyond direct marketing, print and online ads, commercials or product placements, one of the best ways to reach your audience and engage it on the [...]

As the dust settles over the debate about whether social media is indeed worth all the hype, the medical fraternity has been slowly pointing the needle (pun intended) towards a yes.
The lure of social media notwithstanding, the medical community has been apprehensive about using it. Lack of clear knowledge of usage and value, skeptical response and industry regulations have combined to turn social media into a Pandora’s Box in the minds of many who have taken the Hippocratic Oath.
Times have [...]

Hello again from Hamburg! Much has happened during the week—Facebook is again one of the social networks that has released new features. From now on it’ll be easier for admins to filter spam from their Facebook pages. This should be a really helpful tool to provide high quality content.
This week you could hear rumors about another new feature on Facebook: “Social check-in deals.” The Next Web released a blog post that contains an e-mail [...]

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 [...]

“What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.” —David Ogilvy (1911–1999)

It’s a fact that brands can’t be manipulative or overpromising anymore, at the risk of losing credibility and spending a huge amount of money to get back on their feet. It’s a good thing, as they now have to challenge and re-create themselves, finding new ways to leverage based on authenticity, trust and listening, to engage people and raise [...]

“Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth.” – Denis Diderot (French philosopher, 1713-1784)
Among all social media platforms, Facebook is clearly the one that currently leads the game. Despite privacy concerns, the popularity of Mark Zuckerberg’s creation is constantly growing, with a movie about him and the beginnings of Facebook coming up next October. Let’s first take [...]