I don’t get it. Why do marketers assume that people will want to interact with TV commercials on their smartphone? I know some people do, but then I know some people take off their clothes and run naked through football stadiums, I don’t get that either. Just because a few people do, it does not mean everyone will.

In the past, Shazam has been a great app that allowed you to identify music heard on the go. Now, Shazam plans to extend that principle to TV shows, live events and TV commercials. As Shazam’s vice president of marketing, David Jones ...

Kate Crawford, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research and a visiting professor at the MIT Center for Civic Media, has written a provocative post on the HBR Blog titled, “The Hidden Biases in Big Data.” She quotes former Wired Editor-In-Chief, Chris Anderson, as saying, “with enough data, the numbers speak for themselves." Crawford then asks, can numbers actually speak for themselves?

Crawford’s answer is a simple no. She states:

Data and data sets are not objective; they are creations of human design. We give numbers their voice, draw inferences from them and define their meaning through our interpretations. ...

OK, this could be a SCLM (severe career limiting move), but I think there are some questions that market research is just not well-suited to answer. Horror! Has Nigel gone over to the dark side of market research bashing? No, but that does not mean I think market research can do everything that people might demand of it.

I have been mulling this idea over for a while, but the post “Return and Ridicule” by Fred Wilson (via Dan Calladine’s highly useful newsletter), catalyzed what I have been thinking about. In the post, Wilson states:

I have found ...

In an effort to leverage its strong brand among upmarket granola eaters, natural grocer Whole Foods is planning to open a lifestyle resort education center in its home town of Austin, Texas. Much as I applaud Whole Foods for the way it has brought natural and organic foods to a wider audience, I can’t help wondering if this is too big a stretch.

As I said, I think Whole Foods is a great brand. When I used to live in Connecticut, Whole Foods was the grocery store that I shopped at the most. Yes, count me in as one ...

The first banner ad appeared on HotWired 18 years ago. That banner asked, “Have you ever clicked your mouse right HERE?” An arrow pointed to the words “YOU WILL.” When people did click they were whisked off to the AT&T Solutions Web site. In spite of the apparent lack of creativity, novelty ensured that people did click. Unfortunately it did not take long for the novelty to wear off.

So where are we today? As Brian Morrissey notes in the article “Banner Ad’s Creators Dismayed By Its Current State,” online advertising is now big business but one that ...

So I finally caught up with some of those “famous” viral videos that “everyone” has been talking about thanks to AdAge’s fourth annual Viral Video Awards.

In spite of my interest in viral advertising, several of the featured videos were new to me. I guess I am just not that into viral videos after all. Or maybe an alternative explanation is that even the best viral videos still fail to reach an extended audience, unless interest is seeded by mass media or personal recommendation. 

One of the videos I had not seen was the one for Angry Birds Space. ...

Which insensitive (expletive deleted) thought it was a good idea to promote Hyundai’s iX35’s "100 percent water-emissions" by portraying a man trying to commit suicide? How could they be so fixated on their own desire to achieve viral success that they completely ignored common sense and empathy for their fellow human beings?

Last week I wrote a post questioning whether advertising was ethical or not. The consensus seemed to be that it depends on whether or not the ad is duplicitous. Well I guess we missed another case in which advertising is immoral: when it deliberately portrays events that could ...

The other day I was with a group of friends when the subject of advertising came up. Given that my profession is inextricably linked to the practice of advertising and brand building, I felt compelled to defend the practice to a group that included a pastor, a rabbi and a couple of academics.

My attempt to explain that advertising could add intangible value to a product experience was met with blank incomprehension at best. Creating intangible value seemed to be equated with duplicity. Advertisers cheated people by creating erroneous beliefs about the quality, efficacy or value of a product. It ...

At dinner last night, I was struck by how eloquently my friend justified her decision to buy a specific model of road bike. When asked why she chose Trek rather than another brand, she answered without hesitation. In light of her answers, the decision sounded so rational, but if you had seen the smile on her face beforehand when I asked to see the new bike, you would realize that emotion played a huge role in her decision.

I have no idea what role traditional advertising played in my friend’s decision to buy Trek – I know that word of ...

Samsung will open its own retail outlets inside hundreds of Best Buy stores in the USA. The Samsung Experience boutiques will be about 460 square feet in Best Buy’s main stores and will be staffed by Samsung’s own employees and have their own check out. The move has obvious benefits for both companies. 

When it comes to creating a retail experience, Apple may have been the first mover but with the tie up with Best Buy, Samsung looks set to extend its reach far beyond glitzy stores in big cities. Apple Insider reports that as of September 2012, there were ...