The girls of 3iYing - a market and design strategy firm that specializes in marketing to girls ages 15 to 25, have some news for marketers who blindly follow the sex sells rule. In their "The Girl Improved" column in Business Week, they specifically take on American Apparel and Abercrombie & Fitch. Although the maxim "sex sells" may have ruled for years, from a girl's perspective the erotica in marketing is …
This Roc-A-Fella Is A Master Juggler
Shawn Corey Carter, a.k.a. Jay-Z, 36, is president and CEO of Def Jam Records. For most mortals that would be an all-engrossing position and a magnificent accomplishment. But Jay-Z is on another level. He's also one of the owners and founders of the Roc-A-Fella empire, which includes Roc-A-Fella Records, Roc-La-Familia, Roc-A-Fella Films and Rocawear. And he owns part of the New Jersey Nets and the 40/40 Club, an …
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How Greatness Gets Going
I don't know what legendary media critic, A.J. Liebling thought of advertising. Whatever he thought of it, he knew how to use advertising to his advantage. Here's a small piece of his Wikipedia entry: He returned to Providence in autumn 1927 to write for the Journal. He then moved to New York, where he proceeded to campaign for a job on Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, which carried the work of James M. Cain and …
The New Rock Stars Are Kinda Indie
Yelp.com founders, Russel Simmons and Jeremy Stoppelman Business Week is running a feature on the new NoCal rock stars. You know, the young turks that lurk just south of San Francisco. Digg founder, Kevin Rose and his fellow wealth punks have little in common with the sharp-talking MBAs in crisp khakis and blue button-downs who rushed the Valley as the NASDAQ climbed. In the late 1990s, entrepreneurs were the …
“Free Agent Nation” Not So Far Fetched After All
CNN/Money reports on a Census Bureau survey which indicates 19.5 million U.S. businesses have no employees on the payroll, up 4.7 percent from the previous year. Businesses without a payroll now make up more than 70 percent of the nation's more than 27 million companies, with annual sales of about $887 billion. Building contractors, Internet service providers, nail salons, e-shopping and mail-order houses, lessors of …
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“Sticky Eyeballs” Is So Not The Point
New York Times is reporting on a consortium of newspapers working with an online news aggregator, Inform.com, to scan hundreds of news and blog sites and deliver content related to articles appearing on their Web sites, regardless of who published those articles. In other words, they will begin linking to the competition. “Five years ago, everybody said you have to keep readers on your site, with no links out to …
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The Genesis Of Ideas
Hugh MacLeod is far from excited by the work coming out of the ad industry. That much we know. But what does excite Mr. MacLeod? The Cluetrain wasn't written by a Leo Burnett employee. Movable Type wasn't invented by McCann. RSS wasn't invented by JWT. Robert Scoble doesn't work for Fallon. Techmeme wasn't invented by Saatchi. Advertising people are supposed to be in "the idea business". But none of the ideas that …
Gizmo-to-Gizmo (G2G) Calling Free Forever
Computer-to-computer calling is now free, thanks to Gizmo Project. Pardom me, it's forever free. Engadget says, "if this is any sign of things to come, we'd say the free voice revolution may finally have a proper flagbearer." And there's a Mac and Linux client right out of the box. How do you like that? …
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