In an effort to make Upstate South Carolina (the site of BMW's only North American manufacturing plant) even more influential in the automotive industry, BMW has joined forces with Clemson University and the State of South Carolina to develop the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research. This New York Times story sheds light on the cozy relationship between Clemson—a state institution—and …
Dogster Does Its Own Barking
Financial Times looks at Dogster's move from Google's AdSense to a proprietary ad inventory managed by the brand. “When I started I was hoping to make $500 a month from the small advertisers who were going to pay $50 a month for an ad,” says Ted Rheingold, Dogster’s founder. Today, he says, the site boasts an inventory of 10m paid ads a month. When Dogster was getting its start, Mr Rheingold relied on Google’s …
Bubbles Preceed The Bath
USA Today's tech guru, Kevin Maney, is soft on Web 2.0. The tech industry is frothing. It is spewing companies and Web doohickeys and blog amalgamizers and Internet contraptions like video social-networking wiki cooking sites. Money is flying into ventures that most people east of Palo Alto, Calif., would find incomprehensible. Web 2.0 is a broad term for a new generation of websites that are more interactive and …
Microsoft No Longer A Technology-Driven Firm
Louisiana: Come Home And Sweat
Watching the news this past week, I've been struck by a commercial for Louisiana's The Road Home program, which is encouraging displaced citizens to return. The spot features a fellow who's involved in rebuilding a house; he starts off seated on the home's front steps. Then, as he gets up and walks, one can't help but notice the sweat stains all over his shirt. It's a distracting sight, but actually, I'm glad the …
Price Will Always Play
In today's paper, New York Times takes a look at the lowly coupon and its place in the world. An estimated 99 percent of the roughly 300 billion coupons distributed annually in the United States — mainly in Sunday newspapers — end up in the trash, unused and unredeemed. “The paper coupon is the single most inefficient marketing tool you could imagine,” said Peter Sealey, a former chief marketing officer at Coca-Cola …
Sometimes Cheap Is Pure Gold
Is this the perfect ad for an airline that offers a Myrtle Vegas to Atlantic City nonstop, or what? [via Make The Logo Bigger] …
Trouble
According to Information Week , a highly influential money man says don't put your money in marketing. Venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson doesn't see any reason for startups to budget funds for marketing anymore. Indeed, Jurvetson, a partner with the legendary Silicon Valley venture firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, has one question for companies that do. Why? Instead, Jurvetson tells businesses to go for "zero cost" …
A New Flavor Of Advertising
Over at BusinessWeek, Jon Fine examines the impact of FlavorPill. Flavorpill was once a list of cultural events that co-founders Sascha Lewis and Mark Mangan sent out to a few pals in New York. It's now an e-mail that goes out to a few hundred thousand subscribers in four U.S. cities and London. It owns five other Web properties, including music site Earplug and art site Artkrush. What DailyCandy is to fashion, …
Wal-Mart Running For Office
According to the New York Times, Bentonville, Arkansas-based retail behemoth, Wal-Mart, is taking its "we're good for America" spin to the airwaves. Wal-Mart, under attack now from unions and prominent Democrats, yesterday introduced a marketing campaign that closely resembles the television advertisements used by political candidates. In a local experiment (spots are running in Omaha and Tucson) that is eventually …