Marketing and IT have traditionally been two completely separate disciplines. – Marketing was outward looking, focused on customers and driving sales. – IT was inward looking, focused on optimizing business operations. Today, the synergy of these two functions can really give companies a competitive advantage. But as I wrote a couple months ago, Marketing and […]

A good friend has been troubled by a situation at work. There are around a dozen people on the team which exists within a very large global corporation. They all work very hard and put in long hours. It is a specialized team and effective members need to be both skilled and experienced. One person […]

“Marketing is the process by which companies create customer interest in products or services.” (Wikipedia, Aug. 2010) A quick look… Marketing 1.0 – One-to-One. Slow and hard. Civilization gives rise to the mercantile class. “Marketing” was a shop owner calling out to passers-by trying to tell them about his wares. Many people would just keeping […]

It’s like…    Oil and Water    Night and Day    Politics and Religion    Marketing and IT Is it possible to align your Marketing and IT departments? Or for that matter, any groups within your organization that just don’t mix? Is it possible to get them working together smoothly for the betterment of the company? Love to hate […]

What do Apple and Trader Joe’s have in common? Quite a bit, surprisingly. I just read a Fortune article about the food retailer Trader Joe’s. I’m familiar with the brand, although I’ve only visited a Trader Joe’s store once — primarily because they don’t have operations in my home state of Hawaii, nor are they […]

Recent GDP figures show that China is now the #2 economy in the world, surpassing Japan which long held that position. The news sent a shockwave through Japan and set off a bunch of media commentary about what Japan can do to return to growth, envigorate its stagnant economy, and recapture the darling #2 position. […]

In this down economy, repeat customers and word of mouth can be key to your survival. What makes customers loyal to brands? In 2008 Forrester Research published a report called, “Balancing The Funnel: Which Consumers Are Loyal?” In it, there is a chart that correlates certain variables with customer loyalty across several industries. In a […]

Everyone who studied marketing knows about the classic AIDMA model of consumer behavior: Attention  Interest Desire Memory Action But in June 2005 the Japanese advertising giant, Dentsu, developed a new model to more accurately describe consumer behavior in today’s highly connected world: Attention  Interest Search Action Share Any company or organization that doesn’t come to […]

I recently had the privilege of being accepted as a Mentee into the first Entrepreneurship Mentor Initiative here in Japan.  The program is sponsored by the U.S. Embassy, American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (ACCJ), Tokyo American Center, Ernst & Young Japan, Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW), and the Japan Market Expansion Competition (JMEC).  An excerpt […]

• Skip directly to e-mail tips » E-mail is such an important part of day to day business for so many people that it’s hard to imagine working without it. It’s vital for communicating with just about everyone: customers, employees, partners, vendors, you name it. Many people prefer communicating via e-mail rather than by phone […]