Marketing, PR & Communications - Industry News

The Future Of Ethics In Branding

Last year, I received an email I will never forget: One of the world’s tobacco giants wanted me to consult for them. It’s not that I’m a stranger to requests from the tobacco industry. In fact, ever since I published Buyology in 2008, my email address appears to be on every tobacco executive’s Rolodex. You see, among other things, the book addressed the issue of how the use of subliminal advertising in the industry was successfully getting smokers to smoke more. The fallout was spectacular, culminating in Philip Morris being forced to withdraw their $100 million sponsorship of Formula 1. After this, you would imagine the tobacco industry would not want anything to do with me. Surprisingly, they actually wanted to know more. That was the nature of the email in question. [Read More…]

What’s The Role Of Branding In Social Media?

During the Silicon Valley Brand Forum Rod Swanson shared a story that affected him on a personal level, but also gave him insight to understanding the human side of the branding process. I’ll let him tell you his story. [Read More…]

Brand Strategy – 8 Questions on Launching Campaign-Specific Marketing

First an admission: Coming from a business-to-business market where we never invested ENOUGH to cover all the brand strategy bases we needed, I have never been a big fan of limited time only, standalone marketing campaign or sponsorship messages with too few ties to the overall brand. Or maybe I should say I at least wasn’t as big a fan of them as our advertising agencies seemed to be. [Read More…]