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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The 12th annual Top 500 Superbrands survey, identifying the UK’s strongest consumer brands by polling the British public, has launched and reaffirms the success of the fast food chains and multiple supermarkets in the economic downturn.
Some of the brands showing the strongest year-on-year improvement in the survey include McDonald’s, which rises 227 places, Burger King, [...]

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 Experian’s consumer classification system – Mosaic UK – has been updated to reflect demographic and social changes in British society since 2003.
Additional data sources have been added to encompass a more detailed understanding of the ageing population, changes in household composition, the growth in ethnic diversity and the impact of the Internet.
Mosaic UK 2009 draws [...]

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Young Australian consumers are increasingly switching off the Internet and reining in their spending in favour of more traditional pastimes, a study from Lifelounge shows.
The annual Urban Market Research report, which analyses the lifestyle choices of 18 to 30-year-olds in Australia, has revealed that the age group’s overall consumer spending dropped AU$5 billion year-on-year to [...]

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The UK Call Centre & Customer Management Expo is being held September 22-23, at Birmingham’s NEC. Here’s a preview:
Issues of offshoring and outsourcing are once again making headlines, with industry commentators suggesting that more companies are looking to outsource their marketing fulfilment and customer services in order to provide a more flexible, scalable solution.
The benefits [...]

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After advising the UK Information Commissioner’s Office on how marketers will engage with the new Privacy Notices Code of Practice, Nick Martin airs his views on the future of privacy in DM and online.
There aren’t many people who’d admit that their approach to data privacy isn’t quite best practice. But nonetheless, with reasonably generous legislation [...]

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Editor’s Leader column, July 2009
Can anyone tell me if this is a first – a television commercial to promote advertising on the telly? The ad currently running on UK screens shows a man on a psychiatrist’s couch breaking out of a trance-like regressive state to sing snippets of old TV ad jingles: ‘Nuts, whole hazlenuts, Cadbury’s [...]

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Liane Dietrich, UK managing director of affiliate network, LinkShare, assesses the rise in international online shopping and the marketing strategies brands need to employ to increase their revenue.
With the recession in full swing and high street sales continuing to tumble across much of the western world, the last 12 months have seen consumers turn to [...]

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Ninety-five per cent of businesses are building an online focus into their marketing strategies to help beat the recession.
That’s the verdict of organisers of the Online Marketing Show, which is being held at London’s Olympia Grand Hall this week (www.onlinemarketingshow.co.uk). Their survey indicates that while expenditure on traditional forms of media, such as TV and [...]

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The brand loyalty of American consumers has been seriously tested by the economic crisis – and more than half of those described as ‘highly loyal’ to specific brands in the FMCG sector have shifted their allegiance to cut costs.
The CMO Council (for chief marketing officers) and the Pointer Media Network have studied the purchase behaviour of [...]

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