What's faster than RIGHT NOW?

I attended a presentation by David Meerman Scott, Marketing, Leadership Speaker and author of Real-Time Marketing & PR. He spoke with us about the importance and reality of Real-Time Marketing & PR. Marketers are traditionally thought of as planners and in every information session that I have been to for Marketing companies, someone asks "What is your plan for social media?" Plan + social media; it just doesn't add up. Most companies live on Twitter and Facebook because it's free and why not? If you've claimed your domain name, thrown up an image, then you're on the bandwagon with everyone else, right? Not exactly-- social media operates in Real-Time (ie. NOW) and if you stand static on a busy, moving sidewalk, you are going to get jostled around.

The concept of Real-Time took some time to sink in but during the Super Bowl, it was made clear; this is how you use Real-Time. If you happened to pull up Twitter during the game, it was running rampant. People were tweeting and blogging their opinions of the commercials before the commercial break was even over. As a company, that's a lot more powerful than your 8-10 opinions in a focus group.

Here is where the opportunity presents itself: as an organization, do you retweet? Static organizations wait for the Monday morning meeting to debrief draw up a press release, blah blah. It's been 24 hours and it's too late. You missed the ball. Real-Time companies are on their game, reacting and responding to people immediately.

So what is faster than RIGHT NOW?

How about launching ads on YouTube before the game? The New York Times asked the professionals, can you pick out the Real-Time, agile companies vs. the static players? I am putting my money on the teams that can move...

Lean-Green Cookie Machine

It's winter and we're all reaching for the a warm, gooey cookie to fight off the winter blues. But sometimes hibernating adds a little more to our waistlines than we would like-- so can it be true, healthy cookies?


Not so fast!! Sorry but as cookie-loving, health conscious, hungry consumers we will believe almost anything that makes it easy to not feel guilty about "snack" food. Take a look at the text, "Chocolate Chunks in their natural habitat"-- which is a mound of cookie dough. It's not exactly wheat grass, agave sweetened, multi grain dough. But the advertisement has so many clues that these cookies are going to be delicious AND healthy, right? We've been so caught up in the Green Movement that we're starting to directly associate green (the color) with "healthy, natural, safe". Food companies have been slapping on green labels, green packaging, green awards...etc to get our "healthy" hands to try their products. Who can blame them? In reality, you really need to flip over the box and check out the ingredients to know if it's natural. Hint: if you can't pronounce it, it's not natural. Calories and fat are also more important than how many leaves are pictured on the front of the box.

But hey--if you've found a "healthy snack food" that you love-- keep buying it, no matter the color on the package!