It’s really fun to think about your marketing plan on a global scale. It’s big time with a potential to reach billions of people. But like any great marketing plan, its quality, not quanitity to brings paying customers to your door.

I am very interested in the idea of hyper-local marketing that Michael Lefebvre, The Uncommon Agent is doing in Norfolk, MA. Mike is a real estate agent in metrowest Boston that has begun doing feature videos of local town businesses. Take this one for example of Joe’s Barber Shop.

This video is successful in many ways: you get to know a town business and some history of the town, you get to know Mike and his “giving back” to support local businesses, and you are entertained by the story. This is a perfect vehicle for someone like Mike who is in the business of making connections and convincing people about hisknowledge of the area.

But this could work for corporations as well. Imagine a company like Comcast (who tries to be involved in a local level) highlighting local businesses like this. It would do wonders for their brand.

What do you think about hyper-local marketing?

Today I read a blog post by Dave Rosenberg on Facebook and how much money they are making from the sale of virtual goods. Some estimates have come in at $34.5 million of how much Facebook users have sent on virtual goods.

Virtual goods. That’s right, fake goods that you can buy for people and post in their profiles. But this line is what caught my attention:

“The vast majority of Facebook gifts are bought from the first screen of gifts in the directory–almost 80 percent of the total sales come from the group of the first 20 gifts. This points to the self-reinforcing nature of popularity (the crowdiness of crowds rather than the wisdom of crowds) when popularity data is made public.”

This “crowdiness of crowds versus the wisdom of crowds” is a very important concept to think about as it pertains to e-commerce, blogging, and establishing power users in social networks.

People like to follow the crowd. In the Facebook example, the most popular products rise to the front and this prequalifies the selections for those who are not as decisive. The thinking may be, “well others like these products so I should too.” When strategic levers are in place, marketers can leverage this phenomenon to create great results. Read more…

It is an ad that gets your foot tapping along to a re-imagination of a classic tune. It pulls at the memory strings of everything that made sense to you in high school. And you were afraid to blink in fear that you will miss another little nugget of delight. I’m talking about the new Breakfast Club-inspired ad for JC Penny and created by Saatchi & Saatch.

Sounds awesome right? Too bad it is a case of agency self-indulgence that loses sight on the primary goal of every ad: connecting with your target audience.

Although this ad recreates scenes from the great Breakfast Club movie that people my age loves, it won’t mean diddly to teenagers of today. After all, a high school student was born in the early 90’s, at least 5 years after the release of the movie voted best high school movie of all time by Entertainment Weekly. Read more…

Social media enthusiasts can be a fickle bunch. I am no exception. Just last week I talked about how excited I was to be re-energized on Facebook. I was thoroughly enthused to park my car on someone else’s street, or to Pimp Fight my friends. But then Plurk came along. Then I joined Seesmic. Now I am trying out Phreadz. The point is, there is always something else that comes along that will grab the attention of the people always looking for the next thing. The video above sums up my feeling about Facebook now.

Remember when all anyone heard about was MySpace? That wasn’t too long ago. For me, LinkedIn and Twitter are the only networks that I have stayed heavily involved with throughout the last year. How will social networks evolve to stay competitive? What do you think?

All I wanted to do was tell someone about an amazing burger I had. So I posted this video up on Seesmic singing the praises of the Southern Smokehouse Bacon Big Mouth Burger from Chili’s.

I felt pretty good telling other bacon lovers about this burger with the amazing thick-cut bacon. After all, anyone that knows me knows that bacon is a hobby of mine. And I only hope that means an endorsement from me about the quality of the bacon on this burger, might cause others to try this thing too.

But within 2 minutes of posting my video I received this reply. In short, “Bill” asked if I worked for Chili’s. At first I was shocked that he would consider my praise to be a thinly veiled paid endorsement by Chili’s. But after re-watching my post, I realized that I don’t blame him. Read more…