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As a blogger for now nearly five years, I get my fair share of pitches from PR people and companies. So when I was updating my website and adding a top navigation bar and new pages with information about speaking, media and other things … I knew I would want to address the topic of … Read more

I am a marketer and I have a few confessions to make. I click on all sorts of things I shouldn’t online. I request catalogs I might only read once. I subscribe to emails just to see who’s buying ads in them. And I sign up to beta test sites that I may only ever … Read more

As I write this, there is a protest going on outside of our office. People are playing drums, attracting attention and marching around in circles singing the same refrain over and over. They're not protesting us – or at least, I think they aren't, but aside from a sign that says something about wages and … Read more

Most marketing blogs the day after the Super Bowl are sharing the same disappointment at the ads and how universally average they were. Meanwhile, some of the best campaigns of the Super Bowl season were efforts launched online or that had a significant online component, but the fact remains that many Super Bowl ads simply … Read more

Warning: this post is not about marketing.  Well, it is sort of about branding.  We welcomed Jaiden Kumar Bhargava, our second baby, into the world yesterday at 2:18pm.  Labor and delivery went very quickly, everyone’s good and we’ll all be heading home from the hospital tomorrow.  Thanks to everyone for their emails and wall posts … Read more

by Ann Handley The Top 10 US Social Network and Blog Site Rankings were just issued for October, and there were a couple of interesting bits. First, the highlights, via MarketingCharts: MySpace again wins the Smackdown of top US social networking sites, with more than 58.8 million unique visitors in October, according to custom lists … Read more

By Geeta Saini & Jinal Shah Imagine walking through Times Square and instead of seeing larger than life Gucci, Prada, or Nokia ads, you see only the frame of the billboard, or traces of an outline of a poster. Or driving down the freeway and not knowing where the next gas station or rest stop is.  … Read more

Living in DC, one of the things that you become very used to is the qualifying statement.  A huge number of people in this town are either lawyers, politicians or aspiring politicians.  For any of these professions, it doesn’t pay to get caught in absolutes.  No matter what you believe, every statement must be qualified … Read more

In the mail yesterday I came across a direct mail piece for www.basements.com with the warning "more hurricanes predicted" – aiming to convince me to waterproof my home.  I can only hope that this piece was created before recent tragedies and not a deliberate attempt to cash in on the misfortune of others.  But it … Read more

Photoshop had some great PR this weekend, from very unexpected sources.  On Sunday evening, during the premieres for two of the most popular shows on televison: Desperate Housewives and The West Wing – characters in both shows were dealing with documents and mentioned having the ability to use Photoshop to change them.  In Desperate Housewives, … Read more