This year’s presidential elections are starting to heat up. As Romney and Obama fight to gain the attention, loyalty, money and ultimately the votes of the American people, their campaigns offer the marketing world a different perspective on age-old marketing techniques. This election season the small donor is impacting the techniques of campaigns, encouraging campaign managers to revisit traditional marketing strategies such as sweepstakes to create buzz, sustain interest and to pass along information by word-of-mouth to other voters. Continue reading →

Here are a few numbers to chew on; by 2015 mobile marketing expenditures are projected to be around $20 billion dollars, In the U.S., more than 96% of consumers own a cell phone, 300 million subscribe to a mobile plan and 72.5 million are using smartphones.  Continue reading →

I’m a bit of National Public Radio junkie. This morning as I listened to my morning program while running (Yes, I am that lame. I do not have a workout music mix; I have a workout NPR station. It’s true). That aside, an interesting segment on the use of words caught my attention. Radio host Alix Spiegel interviewed psychologist James Pennebaker, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin in a piece titled, “To Predict Dating Success, The Secret’s in the Pronouns.”  The piece itself centers on the role the words one choses reflects their status in their relationships, both romantic and professional. Continue reading →

A new era of mobile ownership has dawned in my home. It is called, “My Children Steal My Phone to Play Apps Every Chance They Get.”

The one that has most recently captured their attention is the new Lego interactive mobile movie app. Here my children can use Lego blocks and minifigures (that is the real kicker with my ten year old) to make their own stop animation movies. Needless to say Lego has jumped on board with Angry Birds, Minecraft and DragonVale to conspire against me ever actually using my phone again. Continue reading →

Yesterday Apple CEO Tim Cook announced strong second quarter earning reports, knocking their predicted earnings out of the park. Apple had hoped to pull in around $10/share instead they earned $12.30/share. The total $11.6 billion net income for Apple is attributed to the new iPad, selling almost 12 million units in this quarter, along with 35 million iPhones sales. Continue reading →

To wrap up this four-part look at the mobile industry, we must address the issue of cost in mobile advertising.  Advertising costs can quickly eat up a budget, so it is especially important to understand how much a mobile advertising ad costs and to then compare it to other forms of advertising out in the market today. Continue reading →

The Indian Census 2011 released initial results from 300 million households recently to show that India is on course to surpass China as the most populous county in the world by 2030. The Indian population grew by 181 million people in the last ten years, equivalent to the entire population of the country of Brazil, as noted by NPR weekend edition in their piece this past Sunday. Continue reading →

A quick glimpse at the average Facebook, or other social networking page can give a pretty clear picture of a person. One can learn relationship status, employment status, as well as that person’s status at that exact moment. Wrapped up in this online identity is a picture about consumer status as well. Increasingly the consumer is asked to ‘like’ their favorite companies on their social networking site of choice to unlock incentives or simply to prove loyalty and encourage their friends and family to try their favorite goods and services. In so doing, we are, in a sense, entering into ‘committed’ relationships with a select group of companies. Continue reading →

My oldest son has entered the stage in life in which he finds me older than dirt and dumber than a box of rocks.  Despite my great age, he has determined that I have not acquired any knowledge whatsoever during my long, long time on planet earth. Most of our conversations these days include some kind of history or technology quiz. Last night as he lay in my bed fiddling with my smartphone, he mused, “Did you know Mom that the technology in your phone is greater than that of the spaceship that went to the moon?”  Continue reading →