Julie Weed of the NYT looks at the hotel industry and how it has embraced social media for building customer relationships, marketing and direct bookings. It all certainly makes good brand-building and business sense. Inevitably, this translates into more resources being shifted from traditional marketing initiatives to social media…
Month: April 2011
Think series for impact
To support its 100-year anniversary campaign, IBM has created 100 unique visual “marks” to represent “100 Icons of Progress”. Each mark incorporates the number 100 plus illustration and photography to represent a key breakthrough or milestone, such as the First Salaried Workforce, the Punched Card and Space Exploration. They are designed to be shown individually to tell a single story or as a collection to tell multiple stories about the richness of IBM’s history. Admittedly, quite a big undertaking, but such a contemporary, engaging and compelling way of reinforcing the company’s influence over its impressive history…
Celebrity-fueled marketing partnerships
We’ve all heard of Gwyneth’s foray into the world of lifestyle marketing via her blog, GOOP (the traveling through Spain PBS show with Mario, the recent cookbook, etc.). Now enter Shawn Carter (a.k.a Jay-Z) with his new site, Life + Times, covering art, music, technology, design, sports, leisure, and style (nicely designed btw). Interview of Jay-Z today on GOOP… Interview of Gwyneth today on Life + Times. Salute to Mario sprinkled for good culinary karma… Quite the marketing triumvirate! Lesson: Partner with people that can help leverage your own business (and maybe you like hangin’ out with)… And of course, have a good PR/marketing firm to produce all this stuff.
Celebrating a big birthday
New IBM video commissioned for its 100th anniversary, on how IBMers have experienced the evolution of technology in business and society (and of course, IBM’s significant role). Beautifully crafted by renowned director Errol Morris and music by Philip Glass. Another example of big brand strategic thinking and marketing initiatives to match.
Making the data digestible
When the Data Struts Its Stuff… In Sunday’s NYT, Natasha Singer looks at the dramatically growing importance of information visualization. While information graphics design has been around for ages, today’s data-driven world brings it right to the forefront of business/marketing communications.
