Well, not all of your customers—just the ones who ask for more than they give, compelling your employees to start checking job boards A wake-up call is speeding your way. If you trust the stats, the recovery is lurching forward. Customers are tentatively opening their wallets. The question is: Does this translate to profits or just revenue offset by costs? Sure, it's hard to earn a buck these days. But when was the last time you looked closely at your book of business? No, I'm not talking about account growth and targets. I'm talking about the three Ps. Is the customer profitable? Are you still proficient at the work? Do both still rank as a priority? Dropping clients is never easy. And right-sizing afterward is even harder. Nevertheless, you can't ignore facts: Some clients' best days have long passed. To position yourself for a recovery, you must align your structure and expenses. So which clients should stay and which should go? Ask yourself if the troublesome customers are affecting your business in the following adverse ways. 1) Cultivating misery: You know who they are—the clients who drive your employees to drink with their tirades, snarky jabs, and threats. They're always complaining that the work isn't good enough, bullying you with minute contract terms at 2 a.m. Your people dread returning their calls or e-mails. The result—employee fatigue, cynicism, and antipathy—inevitably spills into relationships with other customers. Don't let it. Provide ...Read More »

For the past year, mobile and social have been the two areas brands most acknowledge a need to grow in. This should not come as a surprise since both of these areas have been showing continued growth at a rapid rate since 2007 (the year the iPhone launched and social media usage overtook email). For social, developments of the core technologies have slowed down, and growth in the field is now comprised of new services, business models, and an increase of scale. Social media strategy is increasingly about fine-tuning, and seems to be approaching the state SEO and SEM strategies are currently in. This is in sharp contrast to the state of mobile. Meanwhile, the core technologies behind mobile are transforming at a breakneck speed, specifically in the United States. The carrier business model is built around a two-year device refresh, so more than half of U.S. phone owners buy a new device each year. No other consumer electronic segment has even come close to this sort of speed for hardware replacement. The technologies behind mobile are also expanding beyond pocket-sized devices. The success of the iPad has made tablets a necessary consideration for digital marketing in 2011. This summer, Google TV will get an Android app marketplace. Apple already brought an App Store to OS X, and Google created one for Chrome. Motorola was quite savvy with the Atrix phone release in creating "laptop" and TV docks that allow the phone to power those experiences in addition to its core functionality. Mobile ...Read More »

Time Warner Cable Inc. is launching an iPad application that plays live TV, becoming the first cable or satellite company to do so. The app will be free to download on Tuesday morning, but it will only work for people who subscribe to both video and Internet service from the New York-based cable company. Even then, it only works in the home, when the iPad is connected to the company's cable modem via a Wi-Fi router. Rob Marcus, the company's chief operating officer and president, said the app will play 30 basic cable channels in high definition to start, but that number should expand soon. "For all intents and purposes ... this enables you to convert any room in a house into a TV room," Marcus said. Other major cable companies have iPad apps that play video on demand or act like big remotes. Comcast Corp., the largest, has promised that its app will play live TV before the end of the year. Time Warner Cable's app doesn't work as a remote control, nor does it give access to video on demand or shows stored on a digital video recorder in the home. Marcus said these features will be added later. He also said laptops, smart phones and smart TVs could all eventually get apps, too. Companies such as Netflix Inc. and Hulu Inc. already have apps that stream movies and TV shows to the iPad, bypassing, in some respects, cable companies. However, the apps don't show live TV. Some people have started cancelling cable in favor ...Read More »

At this point, any feigned outrage over Facebook's latest privacy setting indiscretion is futile. Most recently, Facebook stuck to plan by using its favorite shock and awe tactic of making the change unannounced. True to script, the media jumped all over it, and they temporarily rolled back the changes to address the public's concerns. However, just as Facebook quietly reintroduced Open Graph after the furor had died down, you can expect the same to happen with these new application permissions. In order to take charge of this privacy issue and to prove Facebook takes its user's privacy seriously, the social-networking site will need to successfully fulfill three missions: act with transparency, educate its users, and emphasize the importance of the user having complete control of their own data. Although applied to Facebook's latest gaffe, the steps in question should be applied to all companies working in the digital sphere. Acting with transparency Much of the shock in regard to Facebook's shift in privacy settings is due to the surreptitious and sudden manner in which the changes were implemented. Public relations teams must advertise and discuss major changes before they happen, instead of trying to put out fires afterwards. Educating users If Facebook believes a new policy will not adversely affect its users, it needs to spell that out clearly in a message to all users. There is massive outrage when Facebook changes ...Read More »

Businesses, Agencies in the Country Check in, World Turns to Twitter for News, Google Pitches in to Help Locate People The world became witness to the largest earthquake in Japan's recorded history Friday, as an 8.9-magnitude quake pushed a massive wall of water through its northeastern coast, flushing away entire tracts of farmland and whole cities as cars and boats appeared to tumble through the water like toys. Though there isn't yet an accurate account of the death toll, the Associated Press reported late Friday that more than 450 people were found dead, with 547 missing and 798 injured. The tragedy was made more striking by how quickly and how vividly the news spread. Unlike the earthquake in Haiti, a raft of firsthand videos showing falling debris and collapsing buildings sprang up on YouTube within hours of the event; Twitter lit up with multiple sources pointing to news reports and information; and Google, which has 35% of the search market in Japan, responded much like a traditional news organization, taking advantage of its software by publishing tools and information on its Google Crisis Response page (which it also did in the wake of Haiti). And while the Red Cross said it would no longer be able to accept inquiries to locate family or friends in Japan, Google set up its People Finder Page, where anyone can type in the name of the person they're looking for; interestingly, this database is also being ...Read More »

Political Situation Has Repercussions Far Beyond Oil Prices When Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah returned to his homeland Feb. 23 after three months of medical treatment in New York, the 87-year-old was greeted by newspaper and outdoor ads welcoming him home. McDonald's, Isuzu, Boeing and the Saudi British Bank joined hospitals, universities and construction companies in using advertising to celebrate the monarch's return, giving an unexpected boost to the media market. The health of the Saudi king and the political stability of his kingdom is of global political importance -- not only does Saudi Arabia sit on more than a fifth of the world's oil reserves, the region is a big deal for the media and marketing community. "If something happens in Saudi Arabia, all bets are off," said Alastair Aird, chairman of MEC in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. For now, though, the Middle East remains fairly stable in terms of advertising and marketing. The 10.7% growth Group M had predicted for the Middle East and Africa this year (and 16.4% for Pan Arab and the Gulf) is not going to materialize, but single-digit growth is still looking probable. Mr. Aird, whose clients include Ford, Sony Ericsson and Colgate Palmolive, said media owners are not overly anxious. "It's more that everyone is frustrated because they thought things were picking up after three tough years," he said. "It's a blow, but then again there are almost ...Read More »

Email conversion rates in the fourth quarter of 2010 were the highest they've been in over two years, according to the North America Email Trends and Benchmarks Results, a quarterly report from the Email Experience Council and Epsilon. The average conversion rate in last year's fourth quarter (2.9 percent) increased 16.1 percent versus the fourth quarter of 2009. The report analyzed 7.4 billion emails sent by Epsilon, including nearly 150 participants leveraging Epsilon's DREAM and DREAMmail platforms from October through December of last year. "Although volumes hit record highs for the season, response rates remained quite stable, again proving that email marketing is an effective tool to reach people while they're in the market for a particular product or service," said Kevin Mabley, senior vice president of strategic and analytic consulting at Epsilon, in a joint press release. The report also revealed the following: a 5 percent increase in open rates over the two-year period; the average click through rate for the fourth quarter ...Read More »

iPads have changed the way people communicate and go about their daily lives. Compared to the relatively slow adoption of Windows-based tablet computers, the iPad was a runaway success right out of the gate. Within two months of its launch in the spring of 2010, there were 2 million iPads in circulation. Many of those first iPads found their way into the briefcases of marketing and sales professionals. I believe the iPad is a game-changing trend, and sales and marketing is one sector where the device will take off. What makes the iPad 2 better than the original? Apple unveiled the iPad 2 this month and there's much to like about it: faster web surfing; more applications; a beautiful display screen; a functional keyboard; and a battery life of 10 hours or more. According to Adam Soroca of JumptapRead More »

Most attempts at brainstorming are doomed. To generate better ideas—and boost the odds that your organization will act on them—start by asking better questions. Companies run on good ideas. From R&D groups seeking pipelines of innovative new products to ops teams probing for time-saving process improvements to CEOs searching for that next growth opportunity—all senior managers want to generate better and more creative ideas consistently in the teams they form, participate in, and manage. Yet all senior managers, at some point, experience the pain of pursuing new ideas by way of traditional brainstorming sessions—still the most common method of using groups to generate ideas at companies around the world. The scene is familiar: a group of people, often chosen largely for political reasons, begins by listening passively as a moderator (often an outsider who knows little about your business) urges you to “Get creative!” and “Think outside the box!” and cheerfully reminds you that “There are no bad ideas!” The result? Some attendees remain stone-faced throughout the day, others contribute sporadically, and a few loudly dominate the session with their pet ideas. Ideas pop up randomly—some intriguing, many preposterous—but because the session has no structure, little momentum builds around any of them. At session’s end, the ...Read More »

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology, proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation.[2] Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity. His theories parallel many other theories of human developmental psychology, all of which focus on describing the stages of growth in humans. Maslow studied what he called exemplary people such as Albert Einstein, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Frederick Douglass rather than mentally ill or neurotic people, writing that "the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy."[3] Maslow studied the healthiest 1% of the college student population.[4] Maslow's theory was fully expressed in his 1954 book Motivation and Personality.[5] Hierarchy Maslow's hierarchy of needs is often portrayed in the shape of a pyramid, with the largest and most fundamental levels of needs at the bottom, and the need for self-actualization at the top.[1][6] The most fundamental and basic four layers of the pyramid contain what Maslow called "deficiency needs" or "d-needs": esteem , friendship and love, security, and physical needs. With ...Read More »