What people love, they will pay for. The businesses that most successfully engage with their customers via social media are those that understand what their customers love.

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Un-social media!
The world is Twittering and connecting, but what does it all mean for marketers?
Well, Rupert Murdoch isn’t sold. At this years annual Allen & Co schmooze-fest he warned against investing in Twitter and the general view is it’s impossible to monetise.
In a recent research note by Morgan Stanley, a 15-year-old analyst – Matthew Robson [...]

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South Korea’s lifting economy could be the precursor for recovery in the region, reports from the Bank of Korea, in the Financial Times and from the World Advertising Research Center (WARC) agree.
The South Korean economy is reported to have grown by 2.3 per cent between April and June – which would mark the fastest quarterly [...]

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Hundreds of US-based direct marketers, agencies and service providers are offering glimmers of hope for direct marketing jobseekers, according to the latest Bernhart Associates employment update.
“It appears the direct marketing job market is scraping the bottom,”  reports Jerry Bernhart, principal of Bernhart Associates Executive Search, a direct marketing recruiting firm which has been issuing quarterly [...]

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Global advertising expenditure across television, newspapers, magazines and radio has recorded a drop of 7.2 per cent for the first quarter of 2009 compared to the first quarter of 2008, according to a global advertising trends report released today by research company Nielsen.
The report, Global AdView Pulse, reveals that the global economic crisis is taking [...]

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Britain’s retail experts are shifting promotional priorities in-store this summer as classic footfall drivers like advertising, sponsorship and celebrity endorsements fail to halt declining customer numbers on the high street: So says a new retail study released by Norway-headquartered software solutions provider Mohive.
The study, which collates the experiences and opinions of more than 100 retail [...]

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Media and marketing trade associations from across America – including the USA Direct Marketing Association (DMA) – have joined forces to release self-regulatory principles which protect consumer privacy in ad-supported interactive media; requiring advertisers and [...]

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Let’s have a little more conversation and a little less communication, says Ian Hughes.
Apparently I am being followed. Somewhere, out there in the ether, someone is following my Twitter feed.
You can follow me, too: @ianchughes. You can also ‘Facebook’ me: I am Ian Hughes (no surprise there). Oh, and I am on LinkedIn. I used [...]

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 Keith Wiser has written a book, bringing his global perspective on the past, present and future of direct marketing.
‘The trouble with the world today is that no-one respects their parents and everyone wants to write a book.’
Cicero wrote those words more than 2,000 years ago.
Today, I have considerably less trouble with the former than [...]

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HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS explores the perceived wisdom of the use of negatives in copy.
In my callow youth, I taught English literature at a minor US university. There, I solidified my impious opinion that Wordsworth should have been considered a minor poet. But Wordsworth had a line in his ode, ‘Intimations of Immortality’:
‘The sunshine is a glorious birth.’
So [...]

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