Posted in banking, branding, community, consumer engagement, consumer perception, customer engagement, customer interaction, donor engagement, follower, fundraising, leader, marketing, network, social marketing, social network, spur communications on Jul 29th, 2010
I used to skydive. If you haven’t tried it, I recommend it. It’s fun. So when my son told me he and his friends were going skydiving I was O.K. with it. I checked out the airport and club behind his back just to make sure it was fine. After all I am his dad. [...]
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Posted in banking, community, consumer engagement, consumer perception, customer engagement, customer interaction, donor engagement, financial services, follower, fundraising, individualized marketing, investment, lifecycle, marketing, network, non profit, personalized marketing, social marketing, social media, social network, twitter on Jul 27th, 2010
Frontline associates are often the most frequent point of human contact provided by an organization. I’m talking about folks like the teller at your bank and the undergrad working the alumni association telethon. They’re the tip of the spear, yet they are also among the least empowered in the organization. Their roles are viewed as [...]
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Posted in branding, community, consumer engagement, consumer generated content, consumer perception, customer engagement, customer interaction, follower, marketing, network, social branding, social marketing, social media, social network, twitter, web on Jul 19th, 2010
I spend a lot of time negotiating between two camps of clients — those who want to embrace social media and those who don’t. A lot has been written about the pros and cons for every business sector. The bottom line is it has been around longer than you think and isn’t going away any [...]
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Posted in branding, community, consumer behavior, consumer engagement, consumer perception, customer engagement, customer interaction, customer relationship management, marketing, marketing innovation, network, seth godin, social branding, social marketing, social media, social network, transformation on Jul 14th, 2010
This is a simple, straightforward question. Is your first touch selfish? Is the first contact that you have with your prospects about you or about them? It’s surprising how many businesses only realize this is important when they are asked. Even then, some folks never get it.
In 1999, Seth Godin published Permission Marketing: turning strangers [...]
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Posted in SPURspectives, banking, branding, community, consumer behavior, consumer engagement, consumer perception, customer engagement, customer interaction, financial services, follower, leader, lifecycle, marketing, marketing budget, marketing innovation, social branding, social marketing, social network, spur communications, transformation on Jul 13th, 2010
Regular readers of SPURspectives know that Spur Communications provides marketing services for financial services and community benefit organizations. We are routinely asked to help with brand development. So, we spend a lot of time asking why — Why do you exist? Why do you matter? Why should someone care? As you can imagine, our nonprofit [...]
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The South African World Cup has come and gone. Spain is the World Cup champion for the next four years and Paul the Octopus has proven to be the most reliable gambler’s aid on earth, albeit below the waves. This is one final post on my observations of the World Cup and what it can [...]
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Posted in branding, community, consumer behavior, consumer engagement, consumer perception, customer engagement, customer interaction, donor engagement, marketing, transformation on Jun 29th, 2010
There is a major intersection that a friend of mine cannot drive through. It isn’t blocked or under construction. There’s nothing technically wrong with the intersection. It is simply that 3 out of 4 of the corners have businesses with horrible logos on their signs. He’s not a design snob. The 3 bad logos are [...]
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To the drone of vuvuzelas the US National Team’s World Cup drama came to an end this last weekend with Ghana winning 2-1 in overtime. It’s bittersweet. I’m sad that it’s over for the US, but happy that we did so well. The question that remains is, will the vuvuzela infiltrate US soccer the way [...]
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Posted in branding, community, consumer behavior, consumer generated content, customer interaction, imitation, marketing, marketing innovation, network, transformation on Jun 23rd, 2010
We love them. We hate them. They’re suddenly everywhere. The vuvuzela has emerged as the defining element of South Africa’s World Cup. The constant, relentless, droning, B flat buzz of the plastic horns has everyone buzzing about them. They’re all over the news. The microphones for World Cup matches have been changed to accommodate them. [...]
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Posted in community, consumer behavior, consumer engagement, customer engagement, customer interaction, donor engagement, follower, leader, marketing, marketing innovation, social marketing on Jun 20th, 2010
There are three big questions that drive a lot of human behavior — what, how and why. Finding answers to them is key to most of your personal and business life. Since much of the world outside of the U.S. understands soccer to be a metaphor for life, I thought I would look at these [...]
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