Warren Douglas website

social media

I’ve Been Facebook Murdered!

While this is the story of what happened to my boss, he’s in Florida escaping the bitter Arctic cold front while at a sales conference for one of our esteemed premium brand clients—so, I don’t feel bad stealing it away for a blog entry.
The other day, Mr. Bossy Boss told me a tale about this [...]

Advertising

Pepsi: Showing Brands How Not to Behave One Misstep At a Time

Pepsi has gone and done it again. If their AMP iPhone App catastrophe wasn’t bad enough–where they completely alienated their entire female consumer population–they’ve gone and offended the public in yet another colossal blunder.
Last Saturday, Pepsi sponsored a concert in Uganda featuring controversial murder performer Beenie Man. An account of just some of the contention [...]

Advertising

Premium Brand Communication 101

Premium brands distinguish themselves from the competition not only in their products, but also in the way they communicate with their customers. One good example of this is in e-mail marketing. Although e-mail is growing and consumers are likely to opt-out if they feel the messages to be irrelevant or impersonal. There are more than 200 billion email messages sent each day, and of the 91% of consumers who opt out or unsubscribe to emails, 46% are driven to brand defection because the messages are simply not relevant.

Public Relations

Does Macy’s Really Bring the Magic?

Until recently I had never shopped at Macy’s, but I always knew it was a place I wanted to be—kind of like Disney World. I credit the beloved holiday film Miracle on 34th Street for creating in me a loyalty to a place and brand I had never actually experienced—they did have the real Santa [...]

General

Facebook Promotions Go Premium

Last Thursday, the Facebook Marketing page announced new guidelines on running promotions through Fan Pages. Why more marketers aren’t in a frenzy, I don’t know because in one short posting, they basically annihilate 90% of the reason any brand actually has a Fan Page—having something of value to communicate to their customers on the cheap.

Advertising

Google and Bing: Social Media Search Won’t Kill Your Brand Just Yet

Marketers, advertisers and brand managers are all buzzing with the news of Google and Bing announcing their new social search features, which will include content from Twitter and Facebook when users search on either engine, and what this now means for a brand’s overall success or failure. These tools have been promoted as the official [...]

Advertising

I Wanna Be Just Like Apple

If you’ve watched any live TV in the last few weeks, you’ve undoubtedly seen the Motorola Droid commercial mocking the iPhone. Well, at least copying the font, music style and format of a campaign a few cycles ago. If you’ve been holed up in a cave somewhere and haven’t seen it, you can experience it [...]

General

Must everyone tweet?

In our industry, everyone is always looking for the next trend, the newest, greatest tool to drive awareness and, ultimately, the all-important sales for our clients. Current case in point: the social media stampede. A Twitter account is the new “Tickle Me Elmo” of the marketing/PR world — everyone’s gotta have one. [...]

Public Relations

How Public Relations Can Help Premium Brands Grow

In today’s economy in which coupon-clipping is enjoying resurgence almost to the level of sport and grocery stores are increasingly pushing their own private label products, premium brands are feeling the heat. Not only are premium brands generally more expensive and less likely to significantly discount than their private label counterparts, a recent Nielsen [...]