Tom Lindmeier’s Blog @ MarketPlanB

I have always marveled at the world-wide penchant to buy logotype merchandise and pay a premium price for it. This type of marketing is perhaps the best direct measure of the value of a brand. If you have to give away your logo merchandise, you have not achieved a truly powerful brand.

There was an interesting discussion on Ron Shevlin’s blog on the Anti-Web. 2.0 Movement. It’s a ludicrous concept to rally against an unfortunate buzzword, but they do bring up some interesting arguments by identifying the irrational exuberance and engage in a sobering discussion of the potential impact of Web 2.0.

We do need to step back and evaluate where this is headed and analyze if the attempts of marketers to monetize it will ever succeed. A recurring theme I do see is the businesses that deliver the technology are making a bundle of money and the businesses that are attempting to use it to market their customer base are for the most part, experiencing moderate or no success. However, I believe marketers will eventually learn from their mistakes and do it right.

While my wife claims I’m guileless and gentle, I prefer to think of myself as a brutally honest curmudgeon with an advanced bullshit meter. In this information overload environment where everything seems over-hyped and the most critical success factor is boldness of your approach, I believe that the most valuable skill is the ability to eliminate the clutter and get to the core concepts.

The great marketing gurus have this secret in common. They repackage age-old ideas and make them relevant today by citing current examples of success and failure. So most of what you read about here and in most blogs is really just a discussion of concepts you already understand but may have forgotten or just plain ignored. Keeping this in mind, I’ve developed a personal preference to operate as an analyst with historical perspective.

Here’s my list of the three most significant common factors of the great social phenomenons of recent years.
1) The originators never saw it coming
2) Very few have anything to do with marketing a business
3) They peak quickly and are then forgotten
With this in mind, the prospect of achieving success is seems daunting. If we do [...]

All moderately sophisticated Ecommerce businesses to know how users navigate their site, how they entered, how they were referred and the domains they prefer. They compile profiles that users volunteer and engage in user testing and constantly tune their web sites to run at peak efficiency. All the data is gathered and cleverly analyzed so [...]