Our Mobile Planet – Select statistics for International Smartphone Penetration

Have you seen this site, put out by Google for their “Our Mobile Planet” study? It’s an excellent way to present data in a very accessible, very explorable way. I found it inspiring. The call to action is “create your chart now”. A very good, honest, call to action. The technology adoption S-curve can be [...]

Oct

10

What Causes Branding?

What do you think causes branding? I’ve been asking myself that, part of my series on being skeptical of root assumptions and theories, and took the opportunity to work through something in a foreign land. I spent some time in real Mexico, and couldn’t resist a first exposure. I went to a ‘Mega’, without really [...]

Jul

07

INFORMS Marketing Science 2011 – Day 2, 3, and Reflections

For a complete running commentary, see Dr. Dann’s twitter stream, or run a search for mktsci2011. A few points you might care about. The problem with communication flow between academia and industry is not an academic problem. They’re doing just fine, and it certainly appears as though the money is flowing. The problem is on [...]

Jun

11

INFORMS Marketing Science 2011 – Day 1

The INFORMS Marketing Science Conference is like woodstock for us people. I took in the second half of the MSI anniversary track. The MSI, or Marketing Science Institute, is a 50 year old institution. It’s at the nexus between business and marketing science academia. As a result, it has money and databases. Because it has [...]

Jun

09

Relevancy in Facebook Brand Posts

ExactTarget reported in their paper, “Subscribers, Fans, and Followers: The Social Break-Up”, Feb 1, 2011, that a top reason (44% of respondants) for unliking a Facebook Brand was “The Company posted too frequently”. Among other reasons: 43% said “My wall was becoming way too crowded with marketing posts and I needed to get rid of [...]

May

19

Abstraction is the price of brevity

Communities create their own jargon because they need brevity in their conversation. The price of that brevity is abstraction. Jargon unites people in as much as it alienates them from each other. I’ve experienced this first hand – visiting data miners, market researchers, marketing scientists, entrepreneurial developers, and brand managers. It becomes very easy for [...]

Apr

13

Never Say No To Panda

The Panda Cheese commercials are brilliant, and I’d like to believe, a product of scientific advertising. I have no basis for that, but I’m heaping praise on the creative and the analyst who worked on it. You can see the series of commercials here. Specific elements: Divergent use of a violent panda. Repetitious use of [...]

Mar

17

Cutting the Cable in the Three Screen Era

I cut the cable tomorrow. For specific firm, I will go from being worth a stable $170/month subscriber, complete with PVR, to being worth nothing. I’m switching my Internet to a non-UBB restricted wholesaler. I will continue to spend $10/month for Netflix. I will get my live TV with the “free”, Over-The-Air broadcast signal from [...]

Mar

16

Forecasting is not Target Setting

The goal of a forecast is to make an accurate prediction about the future state of a system based on the best available evidence. The goal of target setting is to make a statement about a desired future state – with or without a forecast. Targets are political artifacts. You can read all about such [...]

Feb

28

The definition of insight

An insight is: New information Executable Causes action Profitable Or, more detailed, an insight is: A piece of information that you didn’t know before, which – Can feasibly executed, culturally acceptable and of a scale relevant to the firm, and – Causes a decision to be made that wouldn’t have been made otherwise, and – [...]

Dec

29

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