If you’re at all connected to social media marketing, undoubtedly you’ve confronted (or been confronted by) the question, “Does all this stuff pay out?” Unfortunately, if you are looking for a simple yes-or-no answer, you won’t find it in this newsletter. What you will find, however, is a summary of various points of view on the subject and a framework for assessing the ROI of your ...

In the conversation management trenches, we spend our time being exquisitely social: pampering customers and prospects and enticing them to converse with us on the platform of their choice. This truly social behavior is highly rewarding for the brands that do it well; yet inevitably, brands, especially larger ones, will want more. That’s where the “media” part of social media comes in, and here are 5 reasons why brands ...

Not too many CMOs become CEOs, but one who did also went on to become a knight. So for all you ambitious marketers out there, here are a few words of advice from Sir Terry Leahy, the man who grew Tesco into a global powerhouse and whose new book, Management in Ten Words, is well-worth reading. (If you’d rather watch Drew’s interview with Sir Terry at the ...

Once there was a woodchopper who was too busy trying to cut down trees to stop and sharpen his saw. Clearly, this guy wasn’t among the 40 CMOs we heard recently at The CMO Club Summit, who were united in their desire to sharpen their collective skill set by sharing insights like the ones below.

There’s a lot of hate going around. Cases in point: A tournament to determine “the most hated college basketball player of the last 30 years,” or a new app called Hater that allows users to flag what annoys them. We say, enough with all this hate, and instead, offer five timely ideas any marketer could love. Think of them, if you will, as your preparation for March Gladness.

Cutting through has never been easy. The old-school triumvirate of surprise, emotion and relevance used to deliver reliably effective ads. But after tracking some recent success stories, we’d recommend adding a new troika of socialize, searchify and extend. While the most successful of Super Bowl ads covered most of these bases, here’s how a few stood out on the individual components.

November 24 marks the 3rd annual Small Business Saturday, a day in which the nation is encouraged to “shop small” and, in fact, does just that. Nestled between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, SBS is a powerful example of “Marketing as Service” from American Express, a company that has been taking this approach successfully for the past 25 years.

But look carefully at Small Business Saturday, and you will ...

Sometimes you just have to get high to achieve clarity. Or at least that’s what Drew told himself as he ascended precisely 6,224 feet to attend and speak at MediaPost’s Social Media Insider Summit on Lake Tahoe. And, true to form, this elevated event not only met his lofty expectations, but it also revealed five somewhat surprising truths about social media.

Marketing an NFL team according to Tim McDermott, CMO of the Philadelphia Eagles, is not all that different than marketing your brand except for one thing—the product performance can vary from week to weak! A closer look at how McDermott and his team tackle marketing regardless of on-field performance, reveals a 7-part playbook that should inspire marketers in just about any field.