June 14th, 2008 | by Tommy | published in Books, Business, Design
Well this sure looks like an interesting book:
There is no single methodology for creating the perfect product—but you can increase your odds. One of the best ways is to understand users’ reasons for doing things. Mental Models gives you the tools to help you grasp, and design for, those reasons. Adaptive Path co-founder Indi […]
June 11th, 2008 | by Tommy | published in Branding, Business
Kind of surprised it took this long. FedEx is renaming the copy store chain to FedEx Office. Sure hope they didn’t pay a lot for that creative naming!
May 6th, 2008 | by Tommy | published in Advertising, Branding, Business
Brand Tags is a neat site that asks people to cite what they think of when presented with a particular brand and then displays the results as tag clouds. For instance see what folks think of VW, Nike, Apple, and Google.
May 3rd, 2008 | by Tommy | published in Business
Since I’ve starting doing the consulting thing I’ve been asked to respond to more than a few request for proposals (RFP). In every instance but one, I have refused. Seth Godin outlines why:
If it gets to the RFP stage, you lost.
Great business to business marketers (and profitable ones) make the sale long before that happens.
The […]
April 28th, 2008 | by Tommy | published in Business, Technology
Marc Andreessen addressees that question today. Fascinating read:
We have seen extensive press coverage of Microsoft’s pursuit of Yahoo over the last few months, including notably excellent coverage from Silicon Alley Insider and the Wall Street Journal. However, I have not seen a detailed analysis of how a full hostile takeover might play out—the kind of […]
April 21st, 2008 | by Tommy | published in Advertising, Business
The New York Times Bits blog has some interesting analysis based on Google’s financial numbers they released last week.
As best as I can tell, Google sells more advertising than any company in the world. This year Morgan Stanley estimates Google’s total advertising revenue will be $21.9 billion. Excluding the payments it makes to companies that […]
April 17th, 2008 | by Tommy | published in Advertising, Business
Federated Media Publishing, founded by John Battelle, is one of the top ad networks for blogs has just received a $50 million investment from Oak Investment Partners. This is pretty interesting news. Rumors had it that the company turning down a $100 million buyout offer and some have estimated it has a value of around […]
April 15th, 2008 | by Tommy | published in Business, Technology
In an interesting development Salesforce.com has announced they have integrated Google Apps (e-mail, instant messaging, calendaring, and spreadsheets) into its hosted customer relationship management system (CRM). Current clients now have access to the service free of charge. Very interesting.
April 15th, 2008 | by Tommy | published in Business, Design, Technology
I’ve been a fan of Evan Williams for a long time. Evan is the founder of Blogger (sold to Google), Odeo (ran into the iTunes juggernut), and now the super hip Twitter. The above sketch neat in an of itself on many different levels, eventually became Twitter, got me thinking about an article I read […]
April 11th, 2008 | by Tommy | published in Business, Getting Things Done
Here are five great tips from Merlin Mann of 43 Folders fame on getting unstuck when you finding yourself procrastinating or you are just having a hard time getting things done:
Hack your way out of writer’s block: “Literally. Put five completely random words on
a piece of paper. Write five more words. Try a sentence. Could […]
March 28th, 2008 | by Tommy | published in Advertising, Business, Research
Newspaper ad revenues have taken their worst hit in almost 60 years—worse even than 2001. Editor & Publisher has the all the ugly details:
According to new data released by the Newspaper Association of America, total print advertising revenue in 2007 plunged 9.4% to $42 billion compared to 2006—the most severe percent decline since the association […]
March 26th, 2008 | by Tommy | published in Business, Technology
As a freelance marketing/technology consultant I often get the opportunity to work on fun and interesting projects. That is the glamorous part of the job. But I also have to manage aspects of my job that other people used to handle. Stuff like client relations, new business development, billing, and administrative stuff. Not so much […]
March 15th, 2008 | by Tommy | published in Business, Technology
Microsoft has announced they plan to acquire Rapt Inc., a privately held online advertising management firm based in San Francisco.
Rapt’s software and consulting services help Web site publishers tweak how they package and price display-ad space. Scott Howe, a general manager in Microsoft’s advertiser and publisher solutions group, said Rapt’s system is similar to the […]
February 7th, 2008 | by Tommy | published in Business, Stuff
How cool is this. As any marketing person knows the best way to grow a niche business is to help to grow the entire industry. It appears Samuel Adams gets that if more and more people move from Miller Lite and Budweiser to microbrews they are going to pick up some of that new […]
February 4th, 2008 | by Tommy | published in Advertising, Business, Technology
Via their Corporate blog, David Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer (gosh that is a long title) outlines Google’s thoughts about Microsoft’s proposed purchase of Yahoo!. As you might expect they’re not fans of the idea.
The openness of the Internet is what made Google — and Yahoo! — possible. A […]
