And so this summer adventure comes to an end. Today is the final day of my internship here at Babcock & Jenkins. It has been a real pleasure. In anything, it is the people that define the experience, and we have great people here. I want to take this opportunity to thank them publicly.
Shout-Outs
Nate Tannenbaum, […]

Docksiders and a periwinkle polo. A thick-leather Harley jacket despite 90-degree heat. A Rolex. A Rolls. Nike sportswear. An American flag belt buckle. A big-as-a-blimp FUBU shirt. A plain white tee. Each item evokes a person and a whole network of associations. The obvious lesson: clothes and brands […]

The profiling series continues (read post 1 and post 2)! Stephanie Tilton challenged me to apply my thinking on “imaginative active profiling” more directly to B2B. I’m going to take her up on it. First we need to do a little terminology housekeeping so we are all on the same page.

Passive Profiling […]

Yesterday I wrote about the promise of Passive Profiling—how it can give us better information about a prospect’s position in the sale’s cycle than expecting reliable answers from them with survey questions. After rethinking the issue, I regret presenting the choice between Active and Passive Profiling as a binary, and giving up hope of […]

Name: MC Hammer
Company: Aslsal;fkjds Inc.
Title: Cryptozoologist / Whiskey Ambassador
Address: Splash Mountain, Disney Land
Budget: $25 billion
How Would You Rate Your Interest: Lavender
Are You Lying: Yes
According to MarketingSherpa, 71 percent of people who fill out a form give false answers. I am one of them—if you give me an online survey I will lie on principle. […]

I talked the other day about why attempting to intimidate, discredit, bribe, and sue online critics can often backfire into the dreaded Streisand Effect. Today I want to look at a more subtle way in which companies are attempting to drown out the groundswell with paid content arising from organic sources with dollarized white […]

Yesterday, I discussed the role of the web in the Iran Election, exploring how authoritarian governments are attempting to control the web, how citizens are fighting back, and why it might not matter as much as we think. Today I want to look at how businesses are attempting to control the conversation taking place […]

Is it possible to control free speech?
The question is as relevant as ever, especially in light of the internet and the #iranelection. After all, the tradition of control is old, but it has evolved. When the soapbox speech was invented, so was a club to the head. With the printing press came […]

How many times have you heard or read about the need to “find your brand’s voice”? If you read this blog, it was Monday. In the ensuring four days, I have personally counted another 14 times. It is always painful when a great idea becomes a cliché—just look at the “green” movement—but […]

Take a look at this picture. What does it mean to you?

 A few colorful bricks in the middle of a street, big deal. Yes, but there is more to it. After a week here at B&J, I am seeing branding everywhere, and the city of Portland is no exception. So why when […]

After reading a great deal of social marketing advice, it is obvious that a lot of it is originating from marketers themselves unfamiliar with social media. As a college student who has used social media for years and watched it evolve, I believe I can provide good, sensible advice that will dramatically increase your results […]

Yesterday, we talked about the modern anxiety with ROI and the move towards “value-added” pricing models, and I promised B&J’s solution.
The Creative team explained it to me like this: our focus, they said, is not on general brand management.  Instead we work within brand guidelines to market an individual product or service.  Most importantly, we […]

The Economist wrote an interesting article about a week ago, “Clock-watchers no more: A movement to pay advertising agencies for value, not hours, takes off.”  Ad agencies have always labored to demonstrate the value they create for a brand, but clients frequently wonder how much that color scheme really worth.  Should I have really paid […]

For the next three months, I have the privilege of being your tour-guide at Babcock & Jenkins and it’s going to be wild—more wild than that shark scene in Planet Earth.  Over the next three months, we will direct mail with a vengeance. We will design and articulate gorgeous websites—drop-down menus, variable API elements, action colors, iconography […]