Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Potable Marketing - My Presentation at MCAD+MIMA

| View | Upload your own This is the presentation with sound, from the MCAD+MIMA event Monday night. I know it's rather long (33:21) and I sound very Italian. Thanks to Tim Brunelle and to the excellent people at MCAD and MIMA for making this happen. It was a sheer joy meeting the students and having some quality time with all who came out to attend the evening event. I had the privilege of meeting other bloggers - Joe Raasch, Greg Krauska, Albert Maruggi, Paul Isakson with whom I have been exchanging comments and having conversations for some time. Cory... Read more →

Conversations on the Future of Advertising

In a series he just kicked off, Gavin Heaton at Servant of Chaos will be talking about the future of your brand. Make sure you bookmark his site or, better, subscribe to his feed. I know you will not want to miss learning and talking about Gavin's ideas. Monday I gave a presentation as part of another series hosted by Tim Brunelle called Conversations on the Future of Advertising. One of the things I talked about is personas. Each of us has more than one as a thin slice. In other words, depending on our function and role, we have... Read more →

Future Growth of Personal Media

Google has taught us to blog and brand for Google. This is a bad thing. There are many other ways to get traffic to your site beyond Google, and most of them have to do with human beings. Robert Scoble wrote about it more than six months ago, it is still valid today. Building social relationships such as the ones being promoted by the W-List is an example. Attracting targeted traffic from the social bookmarking sites is another. And there are also the new-generation crowdsourcing networks like Mahalo and TechMeme. I’m not slagging Google — just our reaction to its... Read more →

Answers and Questions in Companies

Traditionally, especially in the technology, engineering, and science fields, companies have been used to having all the answers. Yet, I am often reminded that we practice medicine, we don't know it, as we practice law, etc. It is quite uncomfortable for many organizations to base their marketing more on questions rather than answers, yet that is where the growth is. Questions are opportunities. Where to start? As Jonas Riddestråle and Kjell Nordström wrote in Karaoke Capitalism, corporations exist for the simple reason of continuously and creatively crushing competition. They can do that by innovating constantly. To achieve competitive advantage, organizations... Read more →

Top Ten Sins of Agencies

Clearly there are two sides (or more) to every story. And tomorrow I will talk about learning opportunities for companies. Agencies need to change how they work with customers, or we will keep changing agencies like underwear as Marc Bresseel stated recently. The biggest question I challenge you with is one -- is the agency model broken? I think it is. I think it's time to reinvent what it means to create a different kind of experience, and it begins in the relationship with the agency itself. Here's a list of behaviors and outcomes I observed from where I sit.... Read more →

Leading Brands Lead

No, I am not talking about the "Leading Brands" that used to be a comedy group, although how could one have resisted the pitch? Leading brands lead because they are far out ahead creating something that has value to the people who need and want "it." The people managing those brands are not afraid to dare a little, to make choices, to limit number of features, for example, to go all the way to the edge. I remember a conversation I had once with the person who was the lead business development for a major agency in New York city.... Read more →