by Jim Signorelli       There’s a growing amount of buzz around the topic of storytelling and its application to branding these days.  This happens to be a favorite topic of mine, and one I’ve been asked to blog about for MENG in the coming months. First things first Stories are one of the most powerful tools in our communications arsenal.  If that comes as a surprise, think back on important values …Read More

by Christopher S. Rollyson     On October 29, 2007, Sarah Caldicott had me on the edge of my chair when she spoke about Edison’s view of the world as a limitless collection of patterns.  A big part of innovation, she explained, is how you look for the patterns and how you put them together.  Extensive potential lies in patterns that do not seem to fit but end up fitting later when …Read More

by Richard Sellers     I love and hate the word why. I was a journalism major in college and helped put myself through school working as a reporter, so I learned to use those classic journalism questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?            o Note:  I’ve added one more since I’ve been in business: How much? I think that we can agree that it’s cute when a young child keeps …Read More

by Peter Helmer     ”It’s not net-sit or net-eat. It’s net-WORK.” – Ivan Misner, Founder of BNI Yes, networking is work.  It requires systematically connecting with the right people in the right places with the right message and the right touch. Here are seven networking ”rules” that I consider essential. 1.       Be Distinctive – There is a reason why this is Rule #1.  Your

by Pat Allen     Not everyone appreciates Marketing.  Over the years, marketers have become accustomed to hearing Marketing derided for being ”pushy.”  Lately, I’ve been wondering whether ”creepy” is about to overtake ”pushy” as the most favored pejorative adjective. For help in validating my impression, I performed the simplest analysis.  I used Google to search for ”creepy marketing” as an expression using two custom date ranges:  the one-year period between January …Read More

  by Richard Guha     LinkedIn and other online networks provide the technology to network.  However, they rely ultimately on people to make them effective.  The number of people in a network is not as important as the quality of the network.  The Dunbar number is 150, i.e. the quality of your personal network ceases to grow beyond that number. Yet, many LinkedIn or Facebook members have many times that number.  …Read More

by Maura Mitchell     Amid all the excitement about social media, it’s easy for marketers to forget a critical fact:  most consumers are not interested in engaging with brands or businesses on social sites. In fact, connecting with brands is #10 on the public’s list of reasons why they use social media, according to recent research from IBM.   Less than a quarter of users go to sites to interact with brands.  …Read More

by Sarah Miller Caldicott     What’s the difference between using social media tools and collaborating?  If I’m using social media to the maximum extent, am I suddenly also being collaborative? Lately, it appears ”using social media” is equivalent to ”collaboration.”  I hear this erroneous collapsing of genres particularly inthe realm of open innovation and crowdsourcing (check out this great article from Business Week for more.).  Have you noticed the subtle media …Read More

by Drew McLellan     With over forty million individual members, Google+ has now expanded to include business entities by adding the ability for organizations to create their own page. A Google+ page is quite a bit like a Facebook page but with the added clout of Google’s search engine domination.  It’s hard to imagine that businesses with a Google+ presence won’t enjoy a little bump in their search engine results down …Read More

by Carol Phillips     These are good times for the market research industry.  In 2010, North American companies spent over $10 billion on market research (ESOMAR Global Market Research Report, 2011), which, for perspective, is about 20% more than 2010 total Internet ad spending by all US advertisers.  Globally, the spending figure is $31.4 billion, which represents a 5.2% increase over 2009.  Yet amid the healthy growth and enormous size lies …Read More