The first term I learned when I moved from the traditional side of marketing and media to digital was “Internet time.” Everything I had learned about how long things took and the best processes to get to the desired results went right out the window. Digital experts were and are required to get to action plans much ...
Author: Jim Nichols
Jim Nichols is Senior Partner - Strategy at Catalyst S+F, a marketing services company based in San Francisco. Surrounded by so many youthful Internet marketers every day, he fancies himself at 47 the "Oldest Living Digital Marketer." He keeps a daily blog profiling start-ups for ad:tech, is a is a frequent contributor to iMediaConnection, and has also contributed to ReadWriteWeb, Venturebeat, Brand Channel, MediaBizBloggers, and Daisy Whitney’s New Media Minute. You can also find him on Twitter @CatalystaJim
About Jim Nichols
Jim Nichols is Senior Partner - Strategy at Catalyst S+F, a marketing services company based in San Francisco. Surrounded by so many youthful Internet marketers every day, he fancies himself at 47 the "Oldest Living Digital Marketer." He keeps a daily blog profiling start-ups for ad:tech, is a is a frequent contributor to iMediaConnection, and has also contributed to ReadWriteWeb, Venturebeat, Brand Channel, MediaBizBloggers, and Daisy Whitney’s New Media Minute. You can also find him on Twitter @CatalystaJim
Brand Social Grows Up
on 12.14.11
Lately there have been a lot of articles pointing to growing brand interest in social media measurement. Like all marketing activity, social is now being more thoroughly scrutinized to determine if it is making a significant business impact. What is perhaps getting short shrift in that coverage is the massive shift ...
Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm Ads Have Changed. For the Better.
on 11.28.11
When I started in the ad biz in 1987, the largest account at our agency was State Farm. For like…forever, State Farm had worked with what is now DDB Chicago to leverage its agents as a point of difference. “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.” (Fun fact: Barry Manilow wrote the jingle!) I didn’t work on ...
You Can’t Win the Ground War When You “Cover Off” on Social
on 11.23.11
There are few brands that fail to recognize the power of social media on their businesses. But it appears that many brand teams choose to outsource social media to minimally empowered internal or external teams instead of making a genuine commitment to listen, participate, and respond to social discussions online. I’m ...
Would You Choose a Digital or Integrated Agency for 2012?
on 11.8.11
About five days ago, a dear friend of mine asked my opinion on whether she should entrust digital to her brands’ existing agencies or hire digital specialist agencies. Currently they do both, but are somewhat dissatisfied with the results. I asked which were her existing agencies, and surprisingly she asked me to ...
When Intrusion Is Welcome
on 11.2.11
On Monday a really splashy Mustang ad transformed the home page of Yahoo in a way that I found pretty delightful. And yet it broke so many of the rules that we believe are sacrosanct in an era of consumer control: I definitely didn’t ask for it. Didn’t want to hear from Mustang It was intrusive, moving page ...
The Problem with Brand Social is That Brands are Doing the Talking
on 10.18.11
Digital has profoundly changed our ability to share and spread the word on things we care about. The democratization of influence is such an important cultural force that its ultimate impact is nigh on unpredictable. We know it will be huge, but as to how huge and how it will alter the human order, we haven’t the foggiest ...
Meeting an Effing Need
on 10.11.11
I’ve been enjoying a recent issue of Monocle, an unusual magazine that has a lengthy feature on companies around the world that are proving that some of the truths we hold as givens aren’t really true at all. The article highlights newspapers that are growing in circ because of great local investigative journalism, ...
How Amazon’s Kindle Fire is Saving Civilization
on 10.3.11
Oh what a seemingly overblown headline. And yet, if you think about it, it’s not that far from the truth. Because with its broad potential reach, and its likely ability to get people to pay for valuable content, the Fire seems poised to provide a counterbalance for a “free” web, while also giving people the freedom to ...
Selling Inside and Six F-Words
on 9.28.11
I had the good fortune this week to co-lead a discussion at the new Digital World Expo in Las Vegas with Lynn Ingham and John Durham. I was grateful for the opportunity because selling things up the ladder internally is something I really used to suck at, but thanks in part to lessons I learned from my co-presenters over ...
Recent Comments