Last week the 5th Anniversary of the CAN-SPAM Act passed by with little fanfare. To date, there been a handful of notorious spammers brought to court and successfully prosecuted under the act. This year there was an interesting service of justice when Sanford Wallace, the self-dubbed “Spam King” was fined along with a partner for $230 million to MySpace for using malware and promoting gambling and pornography to MySpace users. […]
Last month in “Hatching Success with Microsoft Dynamics CRM,” the Marketing Consigliere blogged about Microsoft Incubation Week and encouraged startup companies to take advantage of the program. This week, the Marketing Consigliere was honored to be a guest of Sanjay Jain, ISV Architect Evangelist, and Dave Drach, Managing Director of the Emerging Business Team for Microsoft. As an observer for part of the day, it […]
In “Two Better Mousetraps,” the Marketing Consigliere blogged about his preference for one professional-to-professional communication technology over another. He thought DubMeNow offered a less cumbersome way to electronically transfer information between networkers than Mingle360. Living in the Washington, DC area, it was interesting to blog about the two companies. Now the Marketing Consigliere would like to exercise his prerogative to correct a misperception he had about Mingle360. You […]
“Marketing Tech Use Lags,” by BtoB Magazine contributing editor Richard Karpinski reports that IDC‘s CMO Advisory Practice is issuing a study that finds inadequate technology planning and investment in marketing departments. IDC Research Vice President Michael Gerard has indicated that for marketers, planning is not a continuous process but an isolated event; however, it should indeed be continuous. With less than 2% of a marketing budget being invested in marketing applications, many marketers with […]
In a blog last month entitled “Social Networking : For the Doubting Thomas,” the Marketing Consigliere advised readers to heed the ubiquity of consumer-focused social networking sites like Facebook. An excellent addition to the discussion is seen in the slides called “Portable Social Graphs – Imagining their Potential” put together recently by Jesse Pickard, May Shi, and Malcolm Ong of Avenue A | Razorfish, and Jesse Stay and Daniel Stern. Take the time to […]
The Marketing Consigliere has had to “whack” decent salespeople for business reasons. He recently led a discussion in LinkedIn regarding valid reasons for terminating salespeople who were actually hitting their numbers. Kevin Dunal, President of Oculus Info Inc. presents a valid ROI argument for optimizing your sales team. “…I have seen this happen which in my mind is justifiable, is the case of redeploying head count to a larger […]
Back in LinkedIn, I asked a question to the “BrandHackers” group: What do you think the trend for Brand conversations is going to be: A. Brands will create their own social networking platform B. Brands will buy a social networking platform to use While I only received a handful of comments, I must say that they were good: Shashank Nigam, a columnist for Interbrand‘s BrandChannel.com and Editor/Blogger at SimpliFlying, said: […]
Francisco Goya, Los fusilamientos del tres de mayo, 1814 Museo del Prado, Madrid The Marketing Consigliere posed that question to the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Network group in LinkedIn. Mark Chmiel, an EVP and the Chief Marketing & Innovation Officer at Denny’s, had this to say: “I think quite the opposite–the CMO is becoming more important and influential. The key is to have a very strong working relationship […]
Recently The Marketing Consigliere asked a question in various LinkedIn discussion groups. The question was, “What are the two most important marketing projects you have that you don’t want to be forced to cut in 2009? The responses were quite interesting but two that succinctly rose above the noise were the following: Diana Engelmeyer of ExactTarget emphasized the following of importance to her: 1. Behaviorally targeted banner advertising 2. […]
The Mortgage Industry. The Finance Industry. The Automotive Industry. What’s next? Before the world focused on these stumbling leviathans, there was talk about another tech “bubble” and how it would pop. Any collateral damage from a tech meltdown pales in comparison to the catastrophe in the “industrial age” sector. Yes, the VCs have tightened up again and many entrepreneurs are stamping their feet because their […]