After 2016 and Cambridge Analytica, data has a strange role in politics: necessary, but kinda dirty. Substantial changes to social media platforms’ data policies have occurred and continue to occur. Canada’s Bill C-76 has some of the most stringent disclosure requirements on digital advertising anywhere, including requiring disclosure on organic social posts. Third-Party Data Some […]
Watching two heavyweights in the Canadian startup sector wage war in the media should not go unnoticed, as there are major implications for the sector in general, especially in a newly uncertain and volatile provincial political environment. On one side is a MaRS-led contingent that is startup-focused, largely apolitical, (despite promoting a we’re- not-Trump-based new […]
The following is the text of a speech delivered by Jen Evans, CEO of B2B News Network and SqueezeCMM, at a TechToronto event on Monday, Jan. 15. I’ll start by saying if you’re looking for B2B content marketing performance solutions, talk to me — SqueezeCMM and B2B News Network, my two startups, can help. HPE, […]
It’s much harder to find a nonfiction book in a library than a fiction book. Why? Because the author is the main search element in fiction, books are usually arranged alphabetically by author last name, sometimes by title. This makes finding what you’re looking for relatively simple if you know some basic information. Sometimes, fiction […]
Interbrand launched its18th index of top global brands last week. Global CEO Jez Frampton introduced the latest take with some thinking on how brands evolve in response to societal change, and how the increasing speed of business and ubiquity of connectedness (in a world where 40% of people are never offline) means brand experiences that […]
There are lots of problems with content marketing, like any new (but not that new) discipline that shows results but gains popularity ahead of expertise and wisdom. One of the biggest problems is answering – what. What do I produce? How? What should it be about, how should we package it? What should it look […]
Peter Drucker said everything is either marketing or innovation. With digital, the new saying could be that all marketing is content. And it’s not just marketing. We marketers are actually late to the game. Think about the amount of content being created for training, education and HR (as in best practices, not employees) that goes […]
There’s a concept called Flip My Funnel that the folks at Terminus are using well to promote and explain the concept of account-based marketing. It’s compelling because it turns the idea of lead-generation on its head and says “stop spraying and praying. Rather, map and focus.” The data team at SqueezeCMM is in the process of applying […]
I have helped companies get started for about fifteen years now, and I’ve been fortunate enough during that time to work with some of the biggest and most amazing enterprises in the world. One of the experiences that is nearly universal across organizations and even functions and occurs frequently, sometimes even quarterly, is the Kickoff […]
Everyone knows the cautionary tale of Blockbuster, whose board members talked a good game but famously failed to anticipate the pace of the shift to video on demand. Nobody wants to be the new Blockbuster. But there’s still a strange ambivalence persisting in many organizations when it comes to taking the necessary steps to futureproof business models. […]
More than ever, B2B needs expert opinion and analysis. More than ever, “free” analysis in the form of thought leadership content marketing and corporate communications digitally proliferates. As technology becomes increasingly intricate and integral to business management, and billion dollar software decisions can make or break companies, experts with real experience, whose opinions can be […]
Trello, an app considered indispensable by many software developers, has joined the Atlassian family, announced last week, in a deal worth $425 million. As Wired said in its coverage, Trello was developed basically as a niche to-do list app for a specialized purpose and audience (software developers) that 95% of the population has never heard […]
To say that the brand universe is complicated is a bit of a truism. The brand experience is deeper, fragmented, and very complex and fragile. More than ever, a brand is shaped by experiences and not perceptions. Perhaps delivering one bad experience with a customer service rep after five good digital or product experiences won’t […]
2016 was a year less of personality-driven change, and more a year of big sea changes across industries. It was the year a lot of new B2B tech that has been hyped for years (analytics, B2B FinTech, MarTech) got real, the year big data got a little less big and the Internet of things exploded […]
Imagine a US football team on the field without a quarterback. That’s what it’s like to be marketing and communicating online without a social community. The role that social communities can play in the marketing and communications process is woefully misunderstood. Many corporate community efforts tend to focus on community for one of three reasons: […]
When we talk about marketing content, we talk about expository content: videos, articles, blog posts and other content that tells stories, explains or informs. But recent data shows storytelling isn’t as effective in B2B marketing. Knowing prospects want content and added value not sales pitches, what is the answer? Storytelling matters, especially early in the […]
Are you sitting in the same weekly metrics meeting staring at your data, or are you using it? These five steps can take you from observation to action, and results. The tools that are available to the average multidisciplinary marketer do not make this easy. Dashboards and platforms are data-fragmented and immature. By trying to […]
How did technology get us here? America is the world’s country; in a sense we are all American, consuming its culture, sports, brands constantly. It’s a great nation that can be counted on to do the right thing when all other options have been exhausted (pace Churchill). Except this time. Rarely have I seen so […]
The moment Donald Trump declared his candidacy, followed by an onslaught of Tweets, we knew this campaign was going to be different. And was it ever. Two of the most famous people in the world competing for the same job. From the Clinton email debacle and Trump’s Twitter, to the powerful voter tracking and GOTV […]
1. IBM’s World of Watson event demonstrated how central the AI engine is to the future of the business and where IBM sees the world going. Impressive to watch CEO Rometty charting a risky course that is simultaneously another big leap from their current incarnation, and clearly starting to generate results. Will Watson as a […]
