marketing

The ANA’s Masters of Marketing Conference (just concluded Saturday in Orlando, Florida) delivered four days chocked full of advertisers in front of other advertisers advertising their advertising.

Doesn’t that sound like an accident waiting to happen?

Earlier this month, a guest contributor to the blog Racialicious accused Victoria’s Secret of “fetishizing” Asian women because it packaged a mesh teddy with a matching fan, hair chopsticks, and faux geisha obi belt (pictured on an Anglo model). The predictable social coverage swarm ensued, and now the product has disappeared from the company’s site.

I can’t decide if I’m inspired or depressed by the news.

In order to become a more central component of business strategy the vernacular, thinking and application of communication needs to mature – from a content and media tool to a more versatile business instrument.

There are certain marketing tactics that drive me nuts, and one of them is using any excuse to capture attention. So I regularly rail against stunts like Old Spice’s viral videos, which I liken to purposeful car wrecks on the side of the purchase funnel road. Its latest — Muscle Music, which features a guy getting his muscles shocked as if his body were playing a song — has accrued 7 million views on Vimeo and almost a million on Facebook.

The other day, I was trying to explain to my six-year old son what I do at Marketo, and he asked “what is marketing?” I thought for a second, and said “Marketing is what you do in business when you want to help convince people to buy what you have to sell.”

What are some of the latest developments in Facebook marketing? How is Facebook changing the nature of brand-building?