Mobile: “Unlike Anything … Ever Seen”
April 11, 2011 by Charles Wasilewski · 2 Comments
At Google Inc.’s Think Mobile event in New York, industry guru Mary Meeker said that the pace and force of mobile growth is unlike anything she has ever seen.” — Mobile Marketer, February 11, 2011
Mary Meeker, the leading trumpeter of the Internet in its early days and now a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, is now saying mobile is growing faster than the Web did.
She’s got her evidence … Read more
Sell This
March 28, 2011 by Charles Wasilewski · 2 Comments
I have a high level of respect for people making a living (many indeed making a very good one) in sales. From my friend Pete in direct-mail sales to Terence in stock broking, I admire people who can work with other people and organizations, communicate about a product or service, sell it, and earn an income that way.
Call for Action
March 15, 2011 by Charles Wasilewski · 1 Comment
“Call for action! GReenwood 7-5-3-1-2!”
I still remember the radio ad jingle. Growing up in central New Jersey and raised on AM radio, I repeatedly heard this commercial for a Philadelphia newspaper, which featured a consumer hotline dubbed “Call For Action!” (Using a word like “GReenwood” in the phone number followed by the numbers was a trick for making telephone numbers memorable.)
In those days of the 1960s and 1970s, lemon laws were not yet on the books, malls were just being invented, and the “vigilante consumer” (more on that term later) was a slumbering giant. So the local newspaper had a consumer action helpline where people could call if they had a problem with a consumer product or service. The Star-Ledger, a newspaper in New Jersey, recently reintroduced a similar column. Read more
What Are You Fighting For?
February 28, 2011 by Charles Wasilewski · Leave a Comment
Back in high school I was a big fan of Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, a rock band from Gainesville, Florida that hit it big on the rock charts with the album “Damn the Torpedoes,” released in 1979. Their music covered themes perfect for adolescence (and beyond): The dreams and conflicts of relationships, rebellion against authority, and the search for something better.
Petty (who, coincidentally, was introduced to new generations by his performance at the Super Bowl halftime show in 2008) earned acclaim not just for his music but for two other things:
- First was the outreach he made to his fans in interviews, unusual at a time of rock star excesses (as tragically glorified by Pink Floyd’s album “The Wall,” which kept his breakthrough album from reaching #1 on the Billboard album charts; “Damn the Torpedoes” was behind it at #2 for seven weeks in 1979). In interviews, Petty made a point of thanking fans for listening to his band’s music and paying for their concerts. He was rumored to have used car stereo speakers to listen to the production mixes of his albums, because that was how most people would listen to it. This was in the days of vinyl albums and 8-track tapes and before the dawn of the Sony Walkman. Read more
E-Mail “Grew A Facebook”
February 15, 2011 by Charles Wasilewski · Leave a Comment
Facebook passed 500 million users in 2010.
E-mail added 500 million users in 2010.
An article in Econsultancy.com’s blog reported:
“According to Royal Pingdom, 107 trillion email messages were sent in total last year. That works out to 294bn per day. There were nearly 2bn email users and 3bn email accounts, and the ranks of the emailing grew by nearly 500m. In other words, last year, email grew a Facebook last year.”
Royal Pingdom, a monitoring company, recently posted numbers about e-mail, social media, Web sites, etc. Read more
Man Loves His Work
January 18, 2011 by Charles Wasilewski · Leave a Comment
In the village of Liberty Corner, N.J. stands a car repair shop on the downtown corner. As I left my office on a recent cold winter evening, I drove past the shop and saw a car up on the lift and the mechanic (one of the owners, either Robert or Michael) underneath. Through the glass garage doors and under the bright florescent lights of the garage it was clear to see the man’s body language: Determined, intent, obviously wanting to solve whatever problem the car’s owner had brought to his attention.
The scene made me grateful for my own work, which usually involves sitting at a desk in front of a computer, writing about insurance in articles, news releases, ads, social networking posts, and the like.
Two days later I got an update e-mail from LinkedIn, the business networking site. It said: “Charles, 65 of your connections changed jobs in 2010.” The e-mail had thumbnail photos of all of them and an occasional question (“Where’s Scott now?). Read more
Vintage Brand Names Bring Nostalgia (Plus or Minus)
January 4, 2011 by Charles Wasilewski · Leave a Comment
Vintage brand names went on the auction block earlier this month, according to a New York Times article announcing the event and another diagnosing the “disappointing” results (subscription may be required to read the articles).
A few of the defunct brand names up for action were: Bowery Savings Bank, General Cinema, Handi-Wrap, Infoseek (which is not really that old but was relied on like Google at one point), Meister Brau, Shearson and Snow Crop.
Notes The Times: “According to a new study from the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, nostalgic choices have power because they help consumers fulfill a need to belong.” It quoted a researcher: “Nostalgia has a very social component.”
Putting aside whether the auction was successful or not, nostalgia can be a useful element of a brand.
What sense of nostalgia does your brand bring to mind? What other attributes do consumers and business partners think of when they think of your brand?
For a brand you know or use that has nostalgic value, what would you change about it?
Did the Social Web Sit Out this Election?
December 7, 2010 by Charles Wasilewski · 1 Comment
Then-candidate Barack Obama’s 5 million Twitter followers were widely credited with pushing the Democrat over the finish line and into the White House in the 2008 U.S. Presidential election.
Then, in the just-finished 2010 midterm elections, a funny thing happened: TV advertising was king. As usual.
According to Advertising Age:
In 2010, TV is back and it’s bigger than ever.
It’s the Economy, Stupid
The economy pushed ad expenditures down across the board in 2010. Except political ad expenditures. The last election cycle set a political ad-spending record of $2.8 billion and 2010 is expected to shatter that mark with more than $4 billion in ad expenditures.
Two-thirds of that money went to TV.
Online spending for the 2010 elections did grow at a triple -digit rate, doubling to about $45 million (which was “less than the cost to run one major U.S. Senate race,” according to Advertising Age). Read more
What’s Your Marble Floor?
November 9, 2010 by Charles Wasilewski · Leave a Comment
The Driskill Hotel's marble floor features its 'D' logo
Walking in to The Driskill Hotel in Austin for Brand Camp 2010 in October, I admired the high ceilings, the 1880s southwestern architecture and the quick attention from the staff.
And the marble floors.
Like many distinctive hotels, The Driskill spends a lot of money on its floors. They’re marble, distinctly colored, and clean as can be. Placed in the middle of the floor in the center of the hotel’s meeting space is the hotel’s logo (see photo to the right).
The floors and the logo were easy to notice as I was walking from meeting room to lunch and back.
Behave Yourself
May 10, 2011 by Charles Wasilewski · 1 Comment
But this resilient sector of the insurance industry continues to sprout new buds, even fully blooming new meadows of information:
This whole reinvigoration of the insurance trade press has roots in editors such as Sam Friedman (now-former editor of National Underwriter Property & Casualty) reinventing the traditional editors’ column as a blog.
Read more
Filed under Branding, Insurance Industry · Tagged with Benefits Selling Magazine, BenefitsPro.com, Best's Review, Charles Wasilewski, comments, Denis Storey, Insurance Journal, insurance trade media, National Underwriter, Rough Notes, Sam Friedman