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Hard Knox Life: A Brand Manager Blog

Brand Management and Marketing Innovation Insights from Dave Knox. Dave is a Brand Manager at Procter & Gamble.

Business Inspiration for the New YearJanuary 5

As I was catching up on my RSS reading, two posts by Seth Godin and Fred Wilson really caught my attention as inspiration for the New Year.

In the first, Seth Godin posed the question, “Do ads work?” In particular, Seth is asking about digital ads where he feels the mindset of marketers should be “We have an unlimited budget for ads that work.“  In his own words:

Digital ads are different (or they should be). You should know cost per click and revenue per click and be able to make a smart guess about lifetime value of a click. And if that’s positive, buy, buy, buy.  And if you don’t know those things, why are you buying digital ads?

Seth goes on to give the example of Amazon during the Dot Com boom of the late ’90’s.  He says that during this time, the mantra at Amazon was $33. “They would buy unlimited ads, of any kind, as long as they generated new customers for $33 or less each.” Was $33 too high of a number to be sustainable?  Possibly.  But their internal ROI showed that $33 was the magic number and there was unlimited money to buy ads under that figure.

In other words, don’t use the excuse that you don’t have the budget.

Any idea that you have proven will build your sales and sh

Will Yahoo and Intel finally deliver on the promise of Internet-enabled TV in our Living Room?December 29 2008

Yahoo's Widget Channel software for TVs shows a link to Yahoo's Flickr photo-sharing site, stock prices, and an advertisement. (Credit: Yahoo)

At CES 2009, Intel and Yahoo will reveal the latest in their Connected TV initiative, a program they hope will “mark the beginning of their Internet-fueled expansion to the world of TV.”  According to CNET, the companies have different goals with the Connected TV

eBay’s Holiday Contest SNAFU a lesson for all eMarketersDecember 22 2008

Guest Post:  This post was contributed by Kelly Kilpatrick, who writes on the subject of MBA admissions. She invites your feedback at kellykilpatrick24 at gmail dot com.

In the TechCrunch article (12/4) “eBay Holiday Contest Overrun By Automated Scripts, Honest Users Disgruntled,” it would seem the Internet behemoth messed up on its latest promotional effort, a holiday contest that was supposed to allow users of eBay to find valuable items in various listings for merely $1.

“E-commerce juggernaut eBay is under fire because of a holiday giveaway contest gone awry. On Tuesday 25 November, eBay announced its $1 Holiday Doorbusters deals promotion, giving away 100 gifts ranging from jewelry, clothing, digital cameras, GPS devices to a brand-new Chevrolet Corvette for a $1 fixed price on a daily basis. The only catch is that there’s no announcement on when these items are released or in which category they will be in.

But cheaters came up with a clever way of winning deals on an automated basis by running scripts to continuously bid on items for $1. That way, they’re gaming the system and winning hundreds of auctions before the items are even available to the public.”

Not the desired outcome for eBay and a serious black e

Lessons in Charitable Giving and Cause Marketing for Digital MillennialsDecember 19 2008

Great presentation from the folks at Resource Interactive on how Millenials approach the concept of helping others.  As Brand Managers think about cause marketing programs, they should consider these facts:

• 87% of Millennials (defined as 16-29) agree that  my priority is to look after my family, charity begins at home.
• 50% of Millennials agree that regularly donating your time to help others in need is a sign of success and accomplishment.*
• There are four types of Millenials when it comes to their views on “giving”: 1.) Consistent Givers, 2.) Uber Givers, 3.) Not There Yet, & 4.) Spirit Givers

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Mashable says brands don’t belong on TwitterDecember 15 2008

Mashable sparked an interesting debate on Friday when Dr Mark Drapeau made the bold statement that Twitter should ban brands from the site.  In the post “Do Brands Belong on Twitter”, Drapeau stated that:

Thinking about what might be best for people, in my opinion Twitter should not only not charge brands for membership, but also ban them altogether. Not unlike Facebook and other sites, every account would represent a person using a real name, location, and picture.

Drapeau explains his stance by arguing that a brand must have a person behind it:

Twitter is about people sharing information with other people. So how do one-dimensional organizational brands fit into this mix? When you really think about it, they don’t. As an analogy, when you call customer service, a human answers the phone (eventually) and tells you their name - and you’re not talking to “Sprint” or “