Of all the social media communications channels I invest in, Twitter is the most enigmatic to me.
I use it and find value in posts from both followers and those I follow. At the same time, I encounter quizzical looks from friends who think I am somehow child-like and time-wasting to be spending time writing updates [...]

Speak the word Loyalty and you get a range of predictable reactions. If you’re at any number of marketing conferences, the word association game leads to responses of “points”, “miles”, or “discounts”. If you mention loyalty to your friends on the golf course, the reactions range from conversation about one’s dog to “those crummy punch [...]

In the midst of the 23rd Annual Card Forum last week, I received a tweet that pointedly asked “Everyone is Tweeting, But is Anyone Listening?”
It came from my friend Jill McBride, who is well versed in the loyalty marketing business, and runs a well respected public relations firm based in Cincinnati. We had both noticed [...]

Communication is at the center of human interaction. Marketers are well aware of the importance of communication and it’s no surprise that customer engagement, customer experience, and lifecycle management are  popular keywords today. We have to communicate well to engage our customers and to deepen relationships over time.
Marketers have plenty of collected data residing behind [...]

There are two forms of brilliance in business – one displayed by people who invent things we haven’t thought about before (Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare) and those that find a way to incorporate these new communications channels into mainstream business to generate revenue.
In many aspects of social media, we are waiting for the dots to be [...]

Suppose you’re a local craft brewery, without the marketing resources of a Coors, Miller or Sam Adams. You don’t have money in the budget for national TV commercials—or any TV spots for that matter. So how do you get the word out about your award-winning brews?
If you’re Delaware-based Dogfish Head, you [...]

Banks traditionally build brand on the pillars of strength, reliability, security, and service. Few have developed a “personality” brand and I cannot think of one that has created a brand that evokes a passionate response from its fans as do Starbucks, Apple, and Coca-Cola.
Though banks are uncomfortable with the concept, many are essentially in the [...]

I’ve been in way too many meetings lately where I have been asked the question “Is Social Media just a fad that will soon blow away?”
Fortunately, I’m well schooled in responding to skeptics since, for the past dozen years, I’ve been answering the classic question in my core business, “Does this Loyalty stuff really work?”
I [...]

I’ve gotten into a bad habit with my children. Whenever they ask me about overzealous promises from a product advertisement, I just tell them “It’s probably not true, it’s just marketing stuff“.
The bad part is that I am instilling a degree of cynicism in the little ones, but then [...]

Atlantic City, the famed gambling Mecca about an hour down the coast from me, is on a nasty losing streak. A recent story in the NY Times quoted a top gambling executive as saying “the city is in a death spiral.” Few disagreed.
It seems that after a rough couple of years, 2009 is looking even [...]