DISQUS

Ben, you are the man! I have received the ebook and will take a look at it.

I've heard some good things about this ebook, however you should not require a registration to get it. For that reason I, and many others, will not download the ebook. Please reconsider.

Congratulations, Kristen on getting a great internship gig. Internships are a great way to shape your career before graduation. It's good to know that GCG provided you with the opportunity to get practical, real-world experience. Have a great summer!

Spot on, Jim. Marketing creates a preconception about your business. The customer's experience has to match up with that experience or the marketing investment is wasted.

Great advice on spending time being reflective about your problems to fill in the "dragon gap." Answers to these wicked problems seem to come more easily if you have a sound, long-term strategy.

I like it, Jeremy. It's not about being the star, it's about being a leader.

Chris,
Advertising is not the answer to everything, but neither is social media. Those who say advertising doesn't work any more most, don't have any experience with it or they simply don't know how to do it correctly.

No one tool is right for everything. Advertising is right in certain situations, social media in others. While advertising is a declining art form, and certainly less effective than it used to be, it can still be used as a more effective tool than social media.

You look at the world through a social media lens and therefore you are jaded in favor of social media. But social media is a tool, not a religion. You don't use your favorite tool in your workshop on every project, you use it when it's appropriate. The same should be said for social media.

Scott, You make a fine argument. It's clear Ford hired the right man.

A question: If Ford is not desperate for cash, why did Mulally go to Washington to seek it?

Second, you ask: What is America doing for the auto industry today? Do you, or your boss, believe that America should be doing something for the auto industry?

Tinu, just read your chapter: How to Enter Existing Conversation Streams for Increased Profits. Great list of how to engage in social media. Congratulations.

To network with other marketers and bloggers. To keep my finger on the pulse. To engage in conversations that just don't happen locally.

Chris, it's unfair for me to totally judge this book based just on what you say here, but it seems to me that this book launches from a false premise. If Baskin's branding protagonists are the Geico Caveman and the Starbucks logo, then it's no wonder he arrived at the conclusion he did. But in my book, a logo and a spokesman are not branding. They are merely delivery vehicles of the brand promise.

As I read the book's description at the link you provided above, more bad branding examples are given. Really they are not even examples of branding, but instead examples of poor advertising campaigns.

Then you say the book suggests "that money spent on marketing should be money spent on shifting a buyer’s behavior closer towards buying." That's sales. That's not a new form of marketing, that's the old way.

It may be cool for an author to say "branding is dead," as Baskin does, but if he does he should use pertinent examples. It seems as if Baskin focuses on the superficial Madison Avenue marketing campaigns rather on the legitimate branding. Just as those campaigns will unfortunately not die, neither will branding.

Apple is most recently using "The Funnest iPod Yet." Ugh.

The logo is of secondary importance to the brand promise. Before anything else, a business should develop a brand promise telling people what they promise to deliver beyond the product or service they happen to sell. After that, a business should then design a customer experience around a centralized theme. Then, design a logo. But design the logo as a bridge between the brand promise and the customer experience.

<abbr>Jay Ehrets last blog post..10 Questions To Ask Before You Advertise</abbr>

Eric, You are living proof that it can be done. Keep blowing things up!

Chris, I have to wonder about how much more effective audio and video can be compared to the written word. The applications to organizations and the web are comparatively new so they are still novel.

As audio and video become more accepted and widely used, it will become necessary for businesses to become more polished in using these tools. In some cases it may be better for an organization to stick to writing or risk credibility by dabbling in something they don't do well.

Of course, the easiest way to save time with Twitter is to not Twitter at all. I find that saves me oodles of time. :-)

They're doomed, doomed! Why couldn't Technorati see it coming? A top 100 list? Brilliant! Jim, you need to hope...no pray, that one of your competitors doesn't publish a list that puts a nail in your coffin.

Seriously, I just made my first visit to Techmeme because of your blog (yep, today's the first I've heard of it) and I fail to see the face of Technorati's grim reaper. Yea, they have a top 100 list, but so what?

The site doesn't look any more usefull than a hundred other sites. Maybe they've got some cool code, but again, so what? That means nothing except to the techies.

Maybe someday Technorati will commit suicide, but Techmeme will have nothing to do with it.

Another takeaway from BlogRush is that marketing evidently means blogging, monetizing your blog, SEO for your blog, and making a million dollars with your blog by next week. All these years I had it wrong.

As a test I installed BlogRush on one of my two blogs to compare traffic. I have not seen a "flood of traffic," however, I have seen a slight increase above the norm in traffic and subscriptions. For now, that's worth it for me.

It does strike me that BlogRush's life will be short and the service will eventually implode when it becomes populated only by desperate bloggers trying to monetize each other.

So what's the address to send the Smirnoff Ice? I'm ready for Heroes too!

Sigh, if only Dell would make the commitment to small businesses when they sell them a computer.

John, you might suggest to Dell that they not force a small business to get Vista or unwanted, and unadvertised, built-in tools that can't be deleted when a computer is ordered.