Insight archive
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3 keys to conversational marketing
Gone are the days when marketers could produce slick creative campaigns, then sit back and control a brand message through one-way mediums such as TV, radio, and print. The advent of new communication platforms and applications has created the opportunity for conversation between consumers and the brands and products they purchase.
This conversation is… Continue reading
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What’s the Buzz? Stop telling me what’s a-happening!
The birth of Google Buzz into the grand cacophony of social updates that is the modern-day Web is nothing special—not unless you want it to be. And you should want it to be. There’s a special place in Internet Hell reserved for those who connect their social networks together in one almighty amalgam of real-time updates… 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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3 things you should know about your audience
You’re regularly (read: frequently) monitoring blogs, social networks, and websites for coverage of your industry and mentions of your company’s brand. And you’ve even created a database of influencers for your industry based on this regular trolling. But how well do you know your audience? Probably not well enough.
When I’m not creating content… 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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A tablet PC could change your relationships
Does technology serve as the means for new relationships, or do new relationships generate the need for more technology?
It’s a fundamental question of both marketing and geek, and it’s not getting any easier to answer. If anything, we’re on a technological overload right now. You and I can connect on a multitude of levels: We… Continue reading
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Relevance is *still* the key to relationships
Out with the old? Not so fast. This blog entry from February 2006 is a shining example of the adage that the more things change, the more they really do stay the same. Karla Spormann’s five key points about staying relevant ring as true today as they did back then, though the Minority Report reference is certainly past its shelf life… Continue reading
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Tendo’s top 10 posts of 2009
As always, end-of-the-year “best of” lists were everywhere as 2009 drew to a close—some expected (Rolling Stone’s Top 100 Songs of the Decade; Roger Ebert’s Top 10 Movies of 2009) and others decidedly less so (Top 10 Bad Messages from Good Movies).
As we move ahead in 2010, we’ll be thinking about why some of our posts sparked more interest than others and we’ll use that analysis to refine our own best practices for successful Web content (and share the results with you). But for now, we bring you the 10 most popular Tendo blog posts of 2009. Continue reading
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Social media and the considered purchase
When was the last time you made a considered purchase? Or even tested the process? I just bought a used car and was amazed at how much the process has changed since my last used car purchase in 1999. That’s eons ago in Internet time. This time, for every phase in the process, I had… 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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An inside look at FICO’s rebrand
In March 2009 Fair Isaac Corp. announced that the company would now be known as FICO, a name already familiar to most of its customers. Why the change? Tendo recently talked to FICO’s David Feder, vice president of corporate marketing, about the key drivers behind the transition, the company’s goals, and the lessons learned from the rebrand. Continue reading
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5 quick ways to make your podcasts shine!
For those new to the world of audio recording, there can be little more terrifying than the thought of having to speak, freestyle, into a microphone for an extended period of time. Welcome to the world of the podcast—the latest and greatest fad for espousing one’s message in an interactive, downloadable format. And recording a podcast… Continue reading
