Why does heart disease – which kills more women every year that the next six causes of death, including all cancers – lag so far behind breast cancer in awareness and fundraising for research?  Reasons include the fact that breast cancer often strikes at a younger age, it affects an area about which society is…

If you need to reach a specific audience, particularly a younger market (college students, for example), one of the least expensive and most effective ways to do it is to create a video specifically as a viral marketing tool.  It’s less expensive because, while you incur production costs for the video itself, there are little…

A number of e-zines, internet based electronic publications, are now launching paper versions.  While plenty of traditional magazines have online versions, popular websites like BabyCenter.com, AlwaysOn and WebMD are introducing printed publications, in spite of the fact that similar ventures by internet companies like Yahoo! and Expedia were unable to succeed.

If recent events are any indication, the next marketing trend may be rethinking the space in which you offer your product or service.  McDonald’s is completing the process of streamlining the look and content of its in-store promotional graphics, reducing the number of messages and ensuring uniformity from one location to the next.  Meanwhile, Wal-Mart…

Everyone knows by now that Post-It Notes were a happy accident, the result of a failed adhesive being developed by the 3M Company.  Lesser known is the fact that Viagra has a similar history.  Originally developed by Pfizer as a treatment for hypertension and angina, it was considered a failure until the researchers who were…

According to a recent article in the Journal of Marketing, not every retailer should be creating a stimulating environment.  The study suggests that exciting surroundings motivate recreational shoppers (those in a sporting goods store or a clothing store, for example), while a tamer atmosphere motivates purchases from task-oriented consumers, such as grocery shoppers or those…

Jim Koch, founder of Boston Beer Co. (which brews Samuel Adams) once agreed to sit in on a local radio show for a “Sex for Sam” stunt concocted by a local DJ.  Listeners were urged to call in and disclose the wildest place they had ever engaged in sex while drinking Samuel Adams beer.  (It…

A great way to grasp the importance of branding is to think about singers.  There are those who sound like no one else (Ray Charles, Willie Nelson, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Elvis, Johnny Cash, Lou Rawls), and no one has trouble identifying them.  In fact, when you read those names, you could probably…

The late rock critic Lester Bangs once advised film director Cameron Crowe, “Figure out the thing that makes you different.  It may not always be the shiniest object out there, but it will be the thing that was you.”  He could just as easily have been talking about brands.  So what makes your company different?

While pay-per-click advertising has been popular on the web, a recent article raises the alarm about two kinds of “click fraud.”  In the first, a competitor clicks repeatedly on your ad, costing you money each time and using up all your clicks until your ad is removed.  In the second, sites which are paid by…