I was reading an article on the success of streaming music sites, such as Pandora and Spotify. One of these companies’ main concerns is the need to grow their ad revenue at the same rate as their popularity.  From an advertiser’s standpoint, as we begin exploring these new placement options, it needs to be decided from which of our current budgets (assuming they can’t be increased) will we pull money from to incorporate this new investment? Should the medium be viewed as digital media, or should it be viewed as a replacement for traditional radio.

(more…)

Rosalind Elliott | Post a Comment

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I was reading an article on AdWeek, The Jay-Z Brand Decoder, and I couldn’t help but think of the idea of individualism and how it much of a role it plays in a brand.  For instance, Shawn Carter (a.k.a. Jay-Z) began building his brand out of distrust for record companies – inability to trust their management of his image (as well as his earnings, I’m sure). 

This idea of managing someone’s image is important. We all have a feeling of ownership with regards to how we are represented in the public light. As businesses, we also have a major concern with whom and how we are being represented.  What Carter did back in 1995 when he began Roc-A-Fella Records was took control of his identity. This step was the first of many through which he was allowed to not only decide what he as an artist, as a public figure, was going to support and value, but also how he would do so. (more…)

Rosalind Elliott | Post a Comment

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Things don’t stay the same for long, and that’s certainly the case in marketing strategies. We’ve seen this time and again, from the traditional newspaper and magazine buys, to the early days of radio and television, to online ads, to search marketing and social media – marketing strategies are constantly in a state of flux, always shifting and adapting with the times.   (more…)

Rosalind Elliott | Post a Comment

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My answer to this is no. AdWeek Magazine published an in-depth article this week deciphering the issue of whether or not luxury brands are becoming watered down, so-to-say, by their ever-growing digital presence. (more…)

Rosalind Elliott | Post a Comment

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Every year, we round up our friends for the event and head to the festival grounds, completely disregarding the previous year’s experience of maintaining a group that size throughout an entire evening amongst a crowd of thousands. If you haven’t had the opportunity to experience this, let me tell you – it is stressful. Cell phones have made it a bit more bearable, but then you have the added stress of getting lost in the crowd and the phone battery dying, or better yet, the signal becoming so weak due to the overcrowded airways. (And yes, if you tried sending a text message between the hours of 8 p.m. and midnight last Saturday night in downtown Milwaukee, it wasn’t going through.)

I’m learning slowly but surely, that the way to conquer the beast of Summerfest is not in groups of eight or more, but is in pairs of two or maybe four.

Rosalind Elliott | Post a Comment

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As some of you might have noticed, Facebook has undergone many recent changes to both personal profile and business pages.  The look and feel of both entities have enabled users to more quickly and easily find shared interests, photos, and other items, making the Facebook platform even more opportunistic for businesses. (more…)

Rosalind Elliott | Post a Comment

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Media has been finding more and more ways to creep into any aspect of our lives we will allow. I just read an article in Advertising Age how OnStar is testing voice-activated text messaging, and Facebook updating, for all of us who can’t resist the urge to complete these important tasks while driving. Although it seems as if the airways (broadband, etc.) are at the point of saturation, it appears to be hardly the case; and the more media around us, the more opportunities created for advertisers to find ways to get in front of us.

Whether or not this is a good or bad thing is up to you to decide. But what is obvious is that in the past we as the consumers have been in the position of receiving messages from companies through various media channels.  Now, with the eruption of social media and the growth in advertising outlets quickly following, the pathways for consumer messaging are widening and society is noticing.  For what once was a one-way street, has become a two-lane highway and consumers can react fast and publicly to the messages coming toward them. (more…)

Rosalind Elliott | Post a Comment

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Everyone wants to know how you do social/online marketing, right?  I’ve now attended the Online Marketing Summit in Milwaukee, several webinars and have read many topic-related articles, and my conclusion is that there really isn’t a “right” way or algorithm that leads to guaranteed success.

That being said, I can suggest that there are basic, strategic principles and best practices that should be followed in order to steer social marketing campaigns in the right direction.  The overall theme I’ve found is that even in the social and online realms, traditional marketing strategies and business goals should be the driving force behind your efforts.  As Joe Pulizzi, Content Marketing Evangelist, puts it, “You don’t need to have a ‘social media’ plan…Your marketing plan needs to be ‘social’.” (more…)

Rosalind Elliott | Post a Comment

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I recently had the pleasure of going to a birthday party — my grandparents’ dog’s 8th birthday party to be specific.  Fellow partygoers included my mom, grandparents, great aunt and uncle and their puppy as well.  What an experience it was.  What I was hoping to be a relaxing family visit actually turned out to be a bit more chaotic than desired after the previous night full of old friends and a wedding celebration. (more…)

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A couple of weeks ago, I watched the movie Coco Before Chanel.  If not apparent from the title, this is a film about the life of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel leading up to her infamous legacy as the couture fashion designer and founder of Chanel.

As much as I would love to indulge you in my admiration for fashion, this designer, etc, I found this movie to spark another line of thought and sort-of inspiration. (more…)

Rosalind Elliott | Post a Comment

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