Loyalty programs offer companies a flexible and powerful way to cultivate customer intimacy--unfortunately, surprisingly few companies are doing a good job at it.
Facebook and ComScore have teamed up for a new service, Social Essentials. It offers unprecedented insights into the influence of brands on social media, complete with detailed credit card behavior, and findings suggest it's not really your brand's fans you need to worry about--it's their friends.
Shifting the consumer paradigm to sustainable products, processes, and experiences has to begin with a fundamental shift in the way we think, the way we do business, and the way we all live our lives.
When shopping, men tend to go linear and deep, researching a product in detail and then going in for the kill. Women go wide, gathering information that goes beyond herself and her personal needs.
There are a number of interesting two way communications situations happening in media today. It represents the integration of the social media such as Facebook and Twitter into the "mainstream" web edit sites. This is facilitated by these and other social networks having open APIs combined with critical mass from a consumer standpoint. Facebook is now the largest social network and Twitter, while much smaller, has a reported 11% penetration of internet users in the U.S. and is growing at 700% a year.
