So, the prevailing winds are blowing against Facebook. Here’s just one of the current streams – “A poll by the Associated Press and CNBC reveals that 83% of Facebook users report never or hardly ever clicking on ads or sponsored content, despite frequently visiting and spending lots of time on... Continue reading

May 9th, 2012 by Scott Doniger in Integrated Digital Marketing A funny thing happened on the path to purchase last year – it disappeared. The emergence of the SoLoMo consumer – socially enabled, location-aware, and mobile-device-connected – has turned the path to purchase into a minefield. The marketing funnel is... Continue reading

By Scott Doniger, Executive Director, Strategy and Planning, [wire] stone Retailers are reeling. Prolonged recession, a shrinking middle class, global competition, Groupon, LivingSocial, Amazon Prime, “every-when” enabled consumers, smart phones and smarter devices, sensing technologies, cloud-based gaming, virtual clothes-changing programs, 3D showrooms, social commerce and gaming, Level-Up, Foursquare, Etsy, Gilt,... Continue reading

No foot-covering, magic-inducing sneaker has ever looked as good as the Air Jordan 11, Concord blue edition. I can remember watching Jordan rise in ’96 wearing a variety of colorways of this insanely crafted and designed flying apparatus. So when the Jordan Brand chiefs decided to drop the Concord retro... Continue reading

I recently attended two events in NY – the 4A’s Strategy Festival and Pivotcon: The Rise of the Social Consumer. Big brands, big agencies, big egos presenting big ideas, and there really was lot to take away for [wire] stone as a midsize agency to help us get better at... Continue reading

I just spent half a day immersed in Raider Nation -- a fun Sunday afternoon in Oakland in Row 7 near the Raider Club section. The game was actually great, some really well-played, competitive football. This was only my second Raider game -- the first many years ago, when the... Continue reading

Eat The World. The Planner’s Canvas -- Part II Account Planners and Strategists thrive in chaos and fluidity. The great ones, however, typically don't come up with innovative thinking out of thin air. They internalize and process the world around them in ways most people can't, and add their own... Continue reading

It's been more than 40 years since Stanley Pollitt from the UK agency BMP birthed the account planning role to design a process of advertising development that would rely more on rigorous, research-based work than on gut feel. The account planner's role would be to develop a deep understanding of... Continue reading

Keller's artfully thought-out post The Twitter Trap has the twitter-verse all a-twitter (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/magazine/the-twitter-trap.html). We know there is something missing in the belly of the social media beast gobbling up our time and attention, but can't really put our finger on what it is. Social media is not yet even in... Continue reading

One of the hottest topics in today's fluid media and marketing morass is personalization -- creating experiences defined by a person's behavior, or desired outcomes, or stated preferences. Yet, so many of us still use the term "user" far too often. It's wrong -- and dangerous for brands and agencies.... Continue reading

This post is two years late. Most of us pimped the size of their follow lists long ago whether Twitter delivered real value or not. Twitter became, as @armano eloquently opined today about Facebook, like high school, more of a status heirarchy than value driver. Putting celebrities and their followers... Continue reading

In my recent post, 2011: Year of the Wave, I proposed that digital applications, experience layers, game play, and social commerce are massive, rising waves, elevating brands who understand them out to new heights, potentially crushing others that don't. Today, my co-worker, and [wire] stone's analytics guru Wendy Ertter found... Continue reading

While we can't see most of them, waves of all different shapes, sizes, sounds, dimensions, and dynamics crest and crash around us all the time. I’ve been thinking a lot about waves lately -- 2011 is shaping up to be the "Year Of The Wave". From the most astounding we... Continue reading

A Great Data Debate: Keep it Fluid and Future-focused by co-[wire] stone thinkers Zach Melchiori, Neil Michel, Kevin Gamache. And a little help from me. The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce took a hard stance in the online privacy debate last week, stating that self-regulating marketers are... Continue reading

A great piece from Jason Michaels, personalized for fluid marketing professionals: Just for You How Personalized Experiences and Products Change How We Shop Personalized Experiences Defined: We humans are eager to personalize our experiences. We wrap our phones in pretty cases. We organize our desktops with personal photographs. We categorize... Continue reading

Search Becomes Fluid With Bing-Facebook Media outlets are reporting today that Facebook may have hit another major milestone, on paper, net worth is believed to have surpassed eBay's to become the third most valuable Web business in the United States. Why? Valuation experts are projecting that the platform’s evolution into... Continue reading

Mobile gamers have become obsessed with small, pudgy and vehemently Angry Birds — mostly playing a game that sends them flying into walls and watching the sparks fly. So much so that Electronic Arts has decided to acquire the game’s publisher, U.K.-based Chillingo, for a reported $20 million. via venturebeat.com... Continue reading

Beyond “Buy Now” – The online retail evolution A note to ecommerce and marketing directors: your SEO-optimized, direct marketing-tuned product catalog isn’t going to attract or retain your best customers in 2011. The future of ecommerce is comprised of a series of personalized customer interactions and experiences – and they... Continue reading

Of all the cool things about the iPhone 4 -- synchronicity between applications; multi-tasking; screen resolution; aggregated Inbox in OS4 -- it hadn't changed my life. Until... ...Angry Birds. The iPhone turned me into a gamer. For those of you who haven't tried Angry Birds, don't. You will become addicted.... Continue reading

Do you have experience developing customer insights and using them to create groundbreaking marketing solutions? How about, for example, influencer marketing – can you help b2b leaders identify who influences purchasing decisions among various customer segments? via www.linkedin.com These opportunities don't come around often. Looking for ridiculously talented, smart, fun,... Continue reading

A lot of marketers have a crystal ball. Mine lets me look exactly one day into the future. Beyond a day it's pretty cloudy, so I typically refrain from prognostication. Every so often, though, a client asks us to help them peek around the corner to see what’s coming in... Continue reading

Like the whack-a-mole player frustrated by not bashing the elusive critter in the head, brand marketers seem to be on a treadmill running to catch up. Consumer attention is more difficult than ever to capture, competitors old and new set higher and higher bars, and emerging technologies are simultaneously enticing... Continue reading