Talk about turning up the volume on stamp collecting. I used to collect stamps as a kid, but as the cynical marketeer I view it more as a con job – pre-pay for a service you will never use, but I have to admit that Vader envelope looks pretty cool. Popularity: 1% [?]

I’ve been running around like crazy with back-to-back events after work. Yesterday was a meetup for author Michael Raynor, author of The Strategy Paradox, a successor to the Innovator’s Dilemma. It was a great event over at Vintage on Broad Street, a place worth checking out. I had a laugh, I used to have to wear a suit every day and have recently taken it for granted until I saw...

Will Herman sent in a comment on my post bemoaning the end of the pay per click advertising (PPC) gold rush and asked if Pay per Action will replace Pay per Click. There’s been a lot of hype in the past couple of weeks and Google recently moved in that direction by allowing PPC in their content network as opposed to pay per thousand impressions (CPM). My thoughts here are still...

There are many hackneyed sayings about the cynics being the only true romantics. Most of them revolving around some variation of “the reason many people are cranky is because their optimism is constantly challenged by the seven deadly sins of those around them”. I’ve also been doing some reading about the cyclical nature of human attention and interest and there are many...

I reached a tipping point with a number of paid search campaigns over the past month. More than one client has thrown in the towel at click prices that have increased 100x in the past year. This made me think more about relevancy – the old model was to cover as many keywords as possible. The new price points make that no longer feasible. At 5 cents a click you can deal with a 1%...

It’s sunday, so that means The M Show will be rolling out later today. Some other interesting stuff: I just finished reading a paper talking about applying the Long Tail to branding, rather interesting. Any blog that considers the Second Law of Thermodynamics relevant to Marketing is worth my time. Project code name “Coffee” is scheduled to launch on Thursday if the current...

I woke up this morning and found Black Lab at #99 on the charts. Bum Rush the Charts pushed an indie artist into the top 100 on iTunes – incredible! I’m also getting to the final prep of my latest new project, Marketing Over Coffee – keep your ears open! It’s been a crazy week and I’m going to catch up on some sleep. Popularity: 1% [?]

It’s strange how things all come together sometimes. For the past couple of days I have been listening to the audio presentations from the TED Conference (Mitch Joel – I will not stop until I have a beer with you at TED, and I don’t give a damn if it’s in 2037). Tony Robbins was speaking about what gives meaning to life and he broke it into 6 needs (a new Maslow, if...

Tomorrow (Thursday) is Bum Rush the Charts. Here’s the story: A bunch of us who blog, podcast and vidcast want to show that focused, relevant content is the new king. We want to see how much impact we can have on iTunes and raise some money for a good cause at the same time. The track to buy is called “Mine Again” by Black Lab. As all Marketeers love stats – here are...

R2D2 mailbox Originally uploaded by wsh1266. Sorry but I have to geek out on this… The website cracks me up. Popularity: 1%...