Ben Popken, editor of The Consumerist has a new boss and a new (and improved) salary to go along with it. According to The New York Times, Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine is buying the site from Gawker Media. Consumers Union is seeking to attract younger readers, with the hope of eventually selling them online or print subscriptions to Consumer Reports. It is also something of a …
Build Trust And Prosper
There's drive-to-web and there's drive-to-retail. For a handful of smart retailers, a good blog can do both. Chris Anderson of Wired examines the trend: We've been through lots of experiments in giving companies a human voice, few of them successful. Paid pitchmen and celebrity endorsements. Awkward commercials featuring the aw-shucks CEO. Quirky corporate styles and creation myths. In the end they all feel as …
Social Media’s Social Order
BusinessWeek's Blogspotting blog endeavored to discover "voices of innovation" in social media. But "discover" may be too strong a word, since the list they provided features all the usual suspects. Seth Godin, for one, doesn't like it. Trolling for traffic like this is beneath BW. This was a state of the art traffic trick about six years ago, but now, most of your readers will just roll their eyes that you're …
We Are But Babes In The Web’s Woods
Susan Murphy of Jester Creative reflects on the invention of the World Wide Web and concludes that we haven't figured it out yet. Though we originally took the Web to be a simply a means of presenting information, Berners-Lee actually invented the Web as a means of communication and collaboration. 12 years after its rise in popularity, we are finally figuring that part out. Nearly 20 years passed from the time Bell …
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Alex’s School of Rock
If CP+B Shred School and the holiday gift of 900 guitars to its staffers is any indication, Boulder is really starting to get to the Crispinis. Put another way, the Crispinis are settling in and starting to get their Rocky Mountain grooves on. [via The Denver Egotist] …
FDR – A Change Agent’s Change Agent
Roberto Ramos, president and CEO of The Vox Collective, thinks brand managers ought to look to FDR for inspiration in these troubled times. With Adweek as his stump, Ramos suggests, a four step approach. Here's how he addresses "structural reengineering": A salient aspect of the New Deal was the creation of new programs to address specific challenges and the population's concerns. The imperative for branding …
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Dove’s Chinese Soap Opera
China has it's own "Ugly Betty," but her name is Wudi, not Betty. According to The Wall Street Journal, WPP Group PLC's Mindshare, brokered a deal to bring the format to Chinese TV, giving Unilever the right to exclusive ads and product placements during the show, as well as a script built around the company's Chinese reformulation of the campaign for real beauty. "Ugly Wudi," protagonist Lin Wudi, who works at an …
A Sliver of Social Media, An Entire Helping of TV
Alan Wolk sees a new dawn for branded communications when he speaks of "The Great Unleveling". ...for the past fifty years, brands have been able to rely on marketing to "create a splash" for low-interest products and services. So that a clever TV spot with a catchy tag line really could have significant impact on brand awareness for the general public. That's because that TV spot was competing for your attention …
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