Valeria, I really question the value of proposals in today's "give the headlines in 140 characters" world. Most turn into writing assignments reminiscent of 5th grade theme papers. And at the very least, are huge time-sinks. Why not boil it down to a simple one-pager, highlighting all the main points?

Really good stuff in your report. Shed new light on importance of social media buttons...thanks for that. Question: did you happen to look at published books as a content type? Not eBooks...the real ink-on-paper kind.

Bravo, Ardath. Terrific analysis. The only thing that's worked for me is to get marketers out of the office and in front of prospects and customers. Tradeshows have been an ideal -- and less threatening -- opportunity for doing this. I've found that reading an e-mail about what's working and what's not (or hearing it on a conference call) just doesn't seem to have the same impact. When the marketing staff is forced to participate with live, breathing human customers, they seem to finally get religion. John Fox http://www.marketing-playbook.com/blog/