Okay, that’s a bit of a stretch. The economy’s not that bad.
Nonetheless, we’re seeing a lot of bartering examples popping up in unexpected places. While we’re not suggesting that marketers give up cash payments for beaver pelts, we do think there’s a lesson here for how to better incentivize consumers.
Consider the Dust Jacket Project from [...]

A: Um, everything. Duh.
eMarketer (via Cone) recently considered this question across a number of different categories (including many of our clients’ industries), and the results are unanimously un-unanimous. The data suggests that consumers want information and entertainment, and incentives, and a forum for feedback, and even marketing in these “new media” spaces. (Demanding, aren’t they?)
While [...]

Brands, are you really confident about the quality of your products and services? Are you certain that you could send your customers into your competitors’ arms, and they’d still come running back to you?
You’d better be. Welcome to the world of Ubiquitous Connoisseurship.
See, there’s a reason we made this trend #1 in our 10 Trends [...]

If you haven’t already heard, our 10 Trends for 2010 are making their way around the interwebs at a blistering pace. (You can catch our press release here.) Click here to request a copy of your own by email, and be sure to share it with your clients, coworkers, friends, and pets. What? Maybe Mr. [...]

Sure,  this romp through the 2000s is entertaining in its own right (even if many of the referenced events were decidedly not entertaining), but Phillip Niemeyer’s NY Times pictograph does an excellent summing up a decade in simple images and phrases.
(In order to really appreciate the piece, click here or on the image to the [...]

As we get ready to wind down 2009 and look forward to a fresh new decade, we know you’ve got a lot on your mind. In particular, you have a nagging suspicion that no one will ever buy anything ever again thanks to trends like the new austerity, the new frugality, and the new unemployedity. [...]

Continuing our recap of the GasPedal Word of Mouth Supergenius conference, we’d like to share a selection of our favorite one liners from the day. Of course, these are just tidbits – if you’d like more in-depth information about any of the presenters, please contact us and we’ll happily share our notes.
Now, onto the smart [...]

I spent yesterday at GasPedal’s Word of Mouth Supergenius conference, and admittedly, I went in with my guard up. These types of conferences have the potential to slide into self-promoting, cliche-laden babbling, but fortunately, GasPedal put together a truly impressive collection of speakers who shared applicable insights.
The most eye-opening presentation of the day was Spike [...]

‘Round these parts, we’re always big fans of Google’s Zeitgeist, since it provides an intriguing view of the world through the lens of web searches.
Some of the top results for 2009 are to be expected. Michael Jackson dominated Google the same way he dominated other forms of media this year, while other top searches can [...]

With both Google and Twitter tracking the hottest web trends, we’d expect that a comparison of the two sites’ findings would provide a comprehensive picture of all that’s transfixing the web. Unfortunately, Google Trends and Twitter Trends rarely have overlapping results.
Techcrunch tried to make sense of this dilemma, suggesting that “people tend to search for [...]