This is one of the Cluetrain Manifestos and with consumers spending less it’s more relevant than ever. So why are so many marketers and companies still applying mass marketing to segments of one?

Earlier this year a friend of mine was called into a room and told that he no longer had a job after 8 long years with the same company in a marketing role. As he later told me “it was a really bad day and the first thing that went through my mind is who the hell is going to do this job?”. After being out of work for a month he finally took a lower paying job at another company and I was surprised to hear him say that he really liked his new job. “People listen to me and I am making a difference everyday, he told me, my boss is wonderful she listens and actually asks me for my opinion on different things”. What really made his day however was that his former boss called him up and almost begged him to come back because they were having problems implementing some marketing programs. You can guess what his response was...

The index of leading indicators, which signals turning points in the economy, is rising at a rate that has accurately indicated the end of every recession since the index began to be compiled in 1959. With all this good news however marketers would be foolish to think the “good old days” of consumer spending are going to return. The fact is that consumerism as we know it has changed forever.

The so called social media experts will tell you to engage your audience and talk with them but let’s face it every conversation has to have reason to “engage”. Can businesses really afford to have endless conversations with prospects who may never become customers?

The fundamental nature of medical risk in the United States has changed over the past 20 to 30 years—shifting away from random, infrequent, and catastrophic events driven by accidents, genetic predisposition, or contagious disease and toward behavior- and lifestyle-induced chronic conditions. Treating them, and the serious medical events they commonly induce, now costs more than treating the more random, catastrophic events that health insurance was originally designed to cove. What’s more, the number of people afflicted by chronic conditions continues to grow at an alarming rate

Mention the drug industry and you’re sure to get a response from consumers and/or patients. Some people hate the drug industry but does the industry deserve to be the center of patients and consumer ire? Let’s look at a list of some of the most common complaints against the industry with the realities

Coming up with promotional ideas is easy, the hard part is ensuring that the execution of these ideas is done with simplicity and flawlessly. You would think that AT&T and Infiniti would know this but apparently they do not as I found out today when I tried to redeem an AT&T Reward and validate an Infiniti Visa gift card.

Zappos is known for stellar customer service, but when it comes to dealing with adland, the marketer is portrayed in a blog post by a creative at ad shop Ignited as the poster child for a flawed agency review process

Consider getting rid of some customers and some product lines to reduce complexity, increase efficiency, and conserve cash. Can this be true? The answer to that is yes

Facebook and Twitter have a lot in common but the one thing that they probably would not like to share is that they have not yet figured out how to monetize their social media sites to provide an ROI. The key lesson here is that ROI measurement and tools have to be integrated into the strategy BEFORE you launch an online program