Doug Shirra: Big data, marketing and simplicity (part of the SAP CMO series)

You can tell the first time you talk to Doug Shirra that one of his strengths as an executive is an ability to get something done efficiently in the nicest way possible. And he advocates that management style. Despite an increasingly B2B chaotic marketing technology environment, in the many trends and forecasts for marketers in […]

View from the VC Side: Allen Lau’s Two Small Fishes Ventures launches

The early success of Wattpad is something Allen Lau has attributed to a strong focus on community. So it was not surprising that the announcement of Allen’s new seed fund included not only his desire to contribute to the community that supported him, but an orientation toward companies with a strong network effect. He and […]

Why B2B CMOs need to attend tech conferences – and 4 picks for 2015

If you’re experienced enough to remember B2B tech lead-generation pre-Internet, it was the dark ages of marketing. Tiny budgets. All direct mail, trade shows and conferences. Little influence. It was difficult to make any connection between leads and sales. The marketing function was typically so divorced from strategy and relegated to a pure marketing communications […]

The definitive StumbleUpon primer – B2B marketing edition

Your company might already be active on the big three social networks of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, but don’t overlook StumbleUpon. It’s reminiscent of the Digg-Myspace era, but it hasn’t faded away; in fact, this link-sharing network can prove incredibly valuable to B2B marketers. In case you aren’t familiar with StumbleUpon, it was founded in […]

What every business can learn from David’s Tea

They may not have replaced Starbucks yet, but those teal David’s Tea cups are dotting communities across North America. Call it a true Tea Party, where the main winner is a humble Montreal company that has grown to become a Canadian success story. A story that every firm can learn from, no matter their vertical. David’s Tea […]

12 years later, is the tech from Minority Report real?

The strangest thing about fiction is it can become truth. Especially science fiction. Twelve years ago Stephen Spielberg’s version of a Philip K. Dick future rolled across movie screens, a powerfully detailed vision of a technology-dependent society where murder is eradicated, and the state and corporations are using tech to continually surveill citizens. Minority Report […]

Google’s new Contributor: great for bloggers, bad for advertisers?

There’s a new offering from the Googleplex that appears small but could be seismic, released without a lot of fanfare. It’s a new way for sites to generate revenue called Google Contributor. What we know so far: What is it? It’s a type of distributed subscription model Google is calling crowdfunding (though it is not […]

Rules for Reddit: B2B intro to the world’s most influential discussion forums

Your boss or your client wants to run a new B2B marketing campaign. And try some new things. And they’ve heard Reddit is big. What do you do? Start here. First of all, is it big? Yes. Nothing major happens on the web without Reddit noticing. That may seem like a grandiose statement, but it’s true. […]

Software-defined networking: A primer for non-techies

B2B tech is getting smarter. Back at the dawn of internet time, you had boxes and routers and a network was ‘managed’ by plugging and unplugging things. Each device had its own brain and each component had to be individually managed, and like Christmas lights, an entire network could be dependent on one faulty connection. […]

Why “Dewrito” will never appear in stores: stunt marketing and B2B

Doritos-flavoured Mountain Dew, the food hybrid that launched a thousand headlines and a million winces. Attention sought? Mission accomplished. But don’t believe Pepsi expects to actually sell any; this is an example of the dark marketing art known as stunt marketing. Stunt marketing has a long history, stunt product development a shorter one, mainly in food […]

The race to zero-cost storage: a B2BNN backgrounder

Back in 1983, a MB of memory was almost $2k. Storage was a growth industry. It stayed a growth industry despite dropping prices, when in 2004 Google shook up the industry by offering a gigabyte of personal email storage for free with Gmail, then Google Drive. Dropbox and Box followed suit for business, both experiencing […]

3 Monday B2B stories: a diverse speakers’ bureau, content marketing habits

It’s a polar-vortex-kickoff kind of Monday! Three stories to warm you up this morning: 1. Keynotes and events: There’s no longer a reason why you can only find white guys to speak at your conferences: introducing FRESHSpeakers. Check out this Fast Company profile. 2. Content marketing: Every audience is different, but there are some great guidelines […]