The Next Step for Foursquare

March 2, 2011 Apps and Services

But if they really want to turn real-life into a game, Foursquare needs to think less about Super Mario Bros. where everyone is always Mario, battling Koopa troopers, stomping mushrooms and rescuing the princess (shit did i really just write all that? oy vey) AND MORE about a game like Civilization. Why?

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Building a Better Groupon

February 28, 2011 Apps and Services

Because it was “my deal,” one that I created, I would be much more likely to send around to friends and family, write blog posts about, evangelize and generally market the crap out of it, it has that much more of a chance of being successful. And it would be what I wanted, not what business owners and Groupon THINK I want.

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Forget About Building a Brand: Build Your Team

January 7, 2011 Luxury Brands and Digital Strategy

Which is why building a team around your brand, particularly in the digital playground, is so crucial. Competition has changed dramatically. Businesses that used to be near each other physically would imagine their customer and believe that every other business was fighting over that ONE customer. So they tried really hard to get the attention of, and eventually dollars from, that ONE customer.

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Do Social Media Firms Need PR?

December 7, 2010 Building the New

Because the client eventually realized that what we were building, the ideas we generated and then executed, were FAR more important, more lasting and ultimately more satisfying to THEM than any press attention, and corresponding bump in business, ever could be. Every single client I have worked with has hired me to help them build their business. And every single client has ended up not really caring whether or not their business grew as a direct result of our actions.

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What A Velociraptor Can Teach You About Experimentation

November 13, 2010 Building the New

The scene that really stuck out to me was when the South African game warden is explaining to Dr. Grant (Sam Neil), Dr. Satler (Laura Dern) and the “chaotician” Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) just how smart and wily the velociraptors are. They’ve been slowly prodding and poking their enclosure, looking for weaknesses in the security. They never tested the same area twice, which meant they were learning and developing a platform.

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Digital Strategists As Referees

November 8, 2010 Building the New

No matter how many clients I have serviced or worked with there is a moment in every client relationship when things threaten to break down. It might be a failure to communicate or a missed deadline (rare here at ZAC but it happens) or it could be something larger; anger or remorse over payments, the particular tone of an email, or just life.

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Analog Musicians in a Digital World

November 5, 2010 Apps and Services

MySpace has been sucking the creativity out of musical acts’ digital presences for years now. It’s demise is one of the few failures I am actively looking forward to. Not because it will leave thousands of musicians homeless, but because that creativity will find other, more aesthetically appealing and technologically relevant avenues.

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What Life Are You Fashioning For Yourself?

November 2, 2010 Influencers

But no matter how different are working lives are now than they were 5 years ago, can you really say that your personal life has changed as radically? Perhaps you are married now and simply don’t notice, but more likely you’ve run up against the fact that no matter how divergent our professional lives become, the change in our personal lives is far behind.

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Luxury Brands and Digital Strategy

October 26, 2010 Luxury Brands and Digital Strategy

Lately, I’ve engaged in several discussions online concerning the intersection of luxury brands and digital marketing. I’ll save you a lot of bluster and tell you that the major theoretical bottleneck confronting marketers and the brands they represent is this: how does one maintain the exclusivity and one-of-a-kind experience of a luxury brand using tools that are open, transparent, scaled and purposefully not exclusive?

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“ I think you made me want to join four square”

October 22, 2010 Apps and Services

I was disappointed when Foursquare launched this release with such an emphasis on tips, but now I understand what they were doing. They realize that location aware tips from people we know and trust, our followers and friends, is their greatest asset. They are acknowledging, knowingly or not, that as of now their service just doesn’t drive business. It drives people to them.

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