Posted in branding, imitation, marketing, marketing innovation on Jul 20th, 2010
Quite often Spur Communications is asked to develop brand standards for our clients. The rest of the time we work with the brand standards that the client provides. Either way it’s great. It’s important to clearly define your brand and make sure everyone involved in the brand expression is on the same page. But every [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
Posted in community, lifecycle, marketing, marketing innovation, social marketing, transformation on Jun 22nd, 2010
I have a routine. Most people do. We tend to make habits of the simple chores that we need to do each day so that we can concentrate on the big exciting stuff. The problem is that several routines become a pattern and a pattern becomes a rut when it’s allowed to grow. Pretty soon [...]
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 [...]
Posted in Uncategorized, banking, branding, community, consumer engagement, consumer generated content, consumer perception, customer interaction, follower, investment, lifecycle, marketing, marketing budget, marketing innovation, network, social branding, social marketing, social media, transformation on Jun 16th, 2010
The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is an unprecedented tragedy. The extent of damage to the ecosystem, economy and lives of countless people is staggering. But it has also been enlightening. Our always on connectivity, social networks and the instantaneous spread of news by citizen journalists has shown this crisis to be [...]
Posted in SPURspectives, banking, branding, community, consumer behavior, consumer engagement, consumer generated content, consumer perception, customer engagement, customer interaction, economic recession, financial services, follower, investment, marketing, marketing budget, marketing innovation, network, social branding, social marketing, social media, spur communications on May 24th, 2010
The previous post on SPURspectives opened a conversation about three ways to repair the current economic downturn proposing greater cooperation, improved social norms and shared values between the financial services sector and their clients. Granted, this is a very high altitude look at a broad idea. But I think it is important to have a [...]
Posted in SPURspectives, marketing, marketing innovation, social network, transformation on Apr 28th, 2010
I’ve written several posts about play and gaming as a central component of the creative process, things that are all innately human. I recently saw this related video embedded below of a TED talk by Dr. Stuart Brown from the National Institute for Play (yes, there is such a place). Dr. Brown is a pioneer [...]
Posted in banking, branding, community, consumer behavior, consumer engagement, customer engagement, customer interaction, economic recession, financial services, follower, investment, marketing, marketing innovation, network, social branding, social marketing, social media, social network, web on Apr 26th, 2010
The implosion of Wall Street has seen a dramatic and steady exodus of investors and their funds over the last two years. While Wall Street pays the price for pushing the envelope too far, independent financial advisors all across the country are beginning to experience a very different result. This is proving to be the [...]
