Author Archives 
David Vespremi recently joined Tendo as director of client services to put the parking abilities of his Smart car to the ultimate test. Since then, David’s commitment to helping Tendo clients get the most out of great content is only matched by his ability to shave seconds off his commute time with an increasing list of performance modifications to his tiny car. With a background handling marketing and communications at fast-moving start-ups like Tesla Motors and DriverSide.com, it’s a good thing David is so focused on being mobile and moving quickly.
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Who owns your sandbox?
I have blogged about Smart in the past, noting the scrappy little brand’s forward-thinking site and its innovative approach to relationship marketing. My conclusion at the time was that there was a big gap between how established car companies like Nissan were handling relationship marketing with early adopters and how the new little kid on… Continue reading
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How do sites attract and engage their audiences?
It looks like spring is finally hitting Northern California. Grass is growing, flowers are blooming, birds are singing, and my son is now 14 months old—all around us, things are changing after a long, wet winter (and early April!).
At Tendo, we’re gearing up for some changes of our own: We’re starting the process… Continue reading
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Return to the hive
If social media channels like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and others are can’t-miss parties for marketers, then what to make of the dishes piling up in the kitchen sink and the thick coating of dust on the counters back home? Venturing off to schmooze and mingle is all well and good, marketers, but not if it… Continue reading
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Buy, try, choose: Are these calls to action still relevant?
Call it content marketing, conversational marketing, or permission marketing—the premise is the same. If the goal of traditional interruption marketing was for marketers to act like shepherd dogs herding prospects like cattle through a sales funnel for cowboy salesmen to lasso and corral, then under the new rubric we are now farmers tending to our… Continue reading
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Bigger isn’t always better
Several weeks ago I needed to buy a replacement electrical relay to address a problem with the power steering on my track car. While there was a 90% probability that the relay was the source of the problems, I was reluctant to spend a couple hundred dollars for a factory relay if this wasn’t the culprit.
A fellow MR2 enthusiast sent a link to an equivalent part that I could order online for $5 from a company called Digi-Key Corporation. A few days later, the nondescript electrical connector arrived in a padded manila envelope, and while it worked, it proved that the relay hadn’t been the culprit after all. And then things got weird… Continue reading
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Smart car, smart relationship marketing
Relationship marketing done well should build brand affinity. The goal is to facilitate both word-of-mouth evangelism and a propensity for repurchase. But like Maui’s scenic Road to Hana, the journey is often more interesting than the destination. Take the Smart car, for example.
Just minutes after the U.S. launch of the Smart car was announced on automotive… Continue reading
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2009’s 10 most embarrassing marketing & PR blunders
2009 was a rough year for marketers. Budgets were cut, heads rolled, and projects came under tighter scrutiny than ever before. The following awkward, bizarre, and embarrassing blunders show that even with the odds stacked against them, marketers will still dare to dream the impossible dream (and pay the price in the end). Continue reading
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9 video highlights from the O’Melveny & Myers social media panel
Stop me if you’ve heard this: A social scientist, an engineer, a marketer, and a consultant meet at a law firm… and over a few glasses of wine, the conversation turns to social media. We present to you video snippets of the recent social media forum held at O’Melveny & Myers, featuring Tendo’s own Karla Spormann, as well as Martin Eberhard, Patrick Ewers, and Dr. Marc A. Smith. Continue reading
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Apple’s subtle brand marketing triumph
In this humble marketer’s opinion, overshadowing the “there’s an app for that” TV commercials, the white-corded iPod billboards, the “I’m a Mac” print ads, and even the seminal 1984 George Orwell-inspired Superbowl launch commercial is Apple’s biggest marketing triumph, which cost $0.00 to produce and consists of just four words… Continue reading
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Tendo tip: Tagging walls gets you cred
One of the questions we frequently get asked at Tendo is how to put social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to work. By “work,” I mean build maximum buzz with minimum effort. I’ll skip all the usual (and 100% true) caveats about how it takes time, insight, a credible voice, and consistency… Continue reading
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Shock marketing: rolling out the red asphalt carpet
What’s the point of these campaigns? If it’s to start a Facebook conversation on a topic, and your topic involves sex, drugs, or automotive gore, then the path to success arguably begins and ends with capitalizing on that innate human fascination with all things morbid and taboo. Rubbernecking by ad proxy, as it were. Continue reading
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Trevor Traina on Twitter
Trevor Traina previously contributed his thoughts on the importance of online communities to Tendo in an exclusive interview here.
Now, in a contributed article for Forbes, he expands on how forward-thinking companies are putting Twitter to work as a platform for one-to-one communications with their core constituents, cititng Dell and Best Buy as examples… Continue reading
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Anatomy of a subversive viral campaign
If marketers had a template for creating the next Internet sensation—the next Susan Boyle YouTube video or the latest celebrity scandal—we’d have some serious job security. Sadly, there is no template to follow, but any marketer looking for a viral road map could take a lesson from Jared Holstein, editor for TopGear.com America.… Continue reading