Guest Columnists

Five Tips for Driving Word-of-Mouth -- No Matter What Your Product Is

Five Tips for Driving Word-of-Mouth -- No Matter What Your Product Is

Is there a formula to making a product conversation-worthy? And more importantly, is there a way to keep that conversation going over time?

Full Article
In Black Midnight, You're Watching a New Holiday Tradition Being Born

In Black Midnight, You're Watching a New Holiday Tradition Being Born

While the debate rages over the ethics of retailers bringing forward their Black Friday opening times to midnight on Thanksgiving, it's worth remembering that retailers and shopping have long played an integral role in our holiday traditions, so why should this latest change be seen as any different?

Full Article
Great Ideas Don't Take As Much Time As Many Ad Agencies Claim

Great Ideas Don't Take As Much Time As Many Ad Agencies Claim

CMOs? Ad managers? Perhaps you've suspected this. I can confirm it: Making ideas really doesn't take as long as you're told it does.

Full Article
Why Being A Great Place to Work Helps Your Business

Why Being A Great Place to Work Helps Your Business

If there is one thing that characterizes a great place to work, it's that its employees have swagger. I know this by seeing it firsthand.

Full Article
All Brands Are Publishers, Learn How to Be a Good One

All Brands Are Publishers, Learn How to Be a Good One

Given that brands are all about voice, meaning, values and point of view, having the skills of a conversational publisher is critical to success.

Full Article
Even on the Ground, a Good Elevator Pitch Can Lift a Client's Attention to What Counts

Even on the Ground, a Good Elevator Pitch Can Lift a Client's Attention to What Counts

Clients who budget blindly, without measuring results, will see the light if an agency can instantly focus them on how much they don't know

Full Article
In PR, Measurement Moves From Fuzzy Math and Social-Media Snake Oil to Actual Metrics

In PR, Measurement Moves From Fuzzy Math and Social-Media Snake Oil to Actual Metrics

Though examples of hyperbole are still to be found, the public relations profession is taking serious steps to find ways to measure the true value of its work

Full Article
How Bud Light Can Get Back to Selling Beer

How Bud Light Can Get Back to Selling Beer

There are some fundamental truths about beer advertising that I always thought were obvious, but apparently they're not, because Bud Light has violated all of them in recent years.

Full Article
The Most Important Rule of Sponsorships: Invest Rather Than Buy

The Most Important Rule of Sponsorships: Invest Rather Than Buy

To maximize their return on these significant relationships, marketers must shift from being buyers of sponsorships to investors in partnerships. Here are three questions companies should ask themselves to find out if they're buyers or investors.

Full Article
Targeting Millennials? You Have to Think Outside the Traditional Color Lines

Targeting Millennials? You Have to Think Outside the Traditional Color Lines

In an excerpt from his new book, "The Tanning of America: How Hip-Hop Created a Culture That Rewrote the Rules of the New Economy," Mr. Stoute describes how he explained millennials to marketers as less an age group and more of a mind-set.

Full Article
What Does 'Communiting' Mean???

What Does 'Communiting' Mean???

Musician will.i.am challenges marketers to "make conversations, not ads."

Full Article
Edwin Land and Steve Jobs: Masters of Art and Science

Edwin Land and Steve Jobs: Masters of Art and Science

Edwin Land held that a successful business should be the "intersection of art and science." He explained that everything he did or wanted the company to do needed to reflect and embody this intersection.

Full Article
In Online Advertising, Brands Shouldn't Equate Frequency and Blind Repetition

In Online Advertising, Brands Shouldn't Equate Frequency and Blind Repetition

"Always on" has big implications for how to use online frequency strategically in brand advertising because of how it relates to emotion and storytelling.

Full Article

You Have All the Tools You Need to Build Better Brand Stories

If you're in the media business, marketing business, or agency business, you're in the business of storytelling. In advertising specifically, the art and craft of storytelling is central to building, maintaining and strengthening the bonds between consumers and brands.

Full Article
What Winning a 'Social-Media Makeover' From Facebook Taught My Small Business

What Winning a 'Social-Media Makeover' From Facebook Taught My Small Business

Stephen Fraser, a co-founder of internet-based custom fabric printing company Spoonflower, details what it was like to have been a finalist in Facebook's "Big Break for Small Business" contest.

Full Article
To Do Our Best Work, We Need Time to Play

To Do Our Best Work, We Need Time to Play

In tough economic times, the American work ethic is venerated in ad campaigns and TV shows, but the most creative solutions emerge when the nose takes a break from the grindstone.

Full Article
ICANN's Promises Aren't Simply Speculation, They're Outright Fantasy

ICANN's Promises Aren't Simply Speculation, They're Outright Fantasy

There is no reason to believe the benefits for companies and consumers touted by ICANN and others who would benefit from new TLDs would actually occur.

Full Article
The 'Counterinsurgency' Field Manual Should Be on Your Reading List

The 'Counterinsurgency' Field Manual Should Be on Your Reading List

Marketing executives often look to books written by military strategists when it comes to describing how to win in the marketplace. But military warfare has changed considerably since those works were written, and today, it's all about counterinsurgency.

Full Article
As Sun Sets on Multicultural Space, Execs Must Adapt

As Sun Sets on Multicultural Space, Execs Must Adapt

Multicultural marketing, in the traditional sense of the phrase, is dead. There, we said it. Call it what you like: "Armageddon," a "tipping point," a "paradigm shift." It doesn't matter. But here's how to move forward.

Full Article
One Fix for Walmart's Woes: Spend More on Better TV Advertising

One Fix for Walmart's Woes: Spend More on Better TV Advertising

The fix has nothing to do with better-looking clothes, smaller stores or launching a Facebook page. The fix is all about reinforcing and defending the Walmart brand in the mind.

Full Article