Depression, angst, and great sea change in media. Sound familiar? We are certainly experiencing all of these and more today. I want to go back to where I left off before the holidays -- with Mad Men. Mostly, I want to focus on a history lesson regarding the birth of the Consumer. I begin here because it's the crux of where we begin any marketing conversation -- for good reason. I have always been an advocate for beginning with the Consumer. A brand would be nothing without a Consumer, after all. In 1910, novelist Virginia Woolf wrote, after observing US... Continue reading

When did it happen? Somewhere over the last five years, a significant shift happened in the relationship between customers and brands and the subsequent affect it has on marketing. In reality, the change has been somewhat gradual, like grains of sand shifting piece by piece over time to build a changing landscape quite unrecognizable from the world we once new. For most of us living in the marketing and advertising industry though, it feels as though we were transported from Kansas to Oz over night given the enormity of the transformation and the speed of change happening in technology and... Continue reading