markets

Cigarette companies began creatively lying to consumers about the health dangers of smoking over a half century ago, according to a 2006 court ruling against Big Tobacco.

Starting yesterday, TV commercials and full-page newspaper ads in the US began running with various versions of that admission, though just falling short of declaring that the American public had been purposefully deceived.

The media (and hence politicians) in Europe and the US have been obsessed with income inequality and getting everybody to pay their 'fair share' of taxes and all of that stuff. By the time these stories hit the headlines it is old new to half decent marketers.

Not only are they not moral, they're not inherently efficient, let alone just or fair. Markets possess no magic capacity for resolving differences that human beings can't (or won't), and they don't know more or less than we do. They're not bad, but they're not good either. Markets are agnostic to morality.

Sit back, point your browser to this link and watch the webinar from Nielsen about what 2011 and beyond holds in store for us marketers.

Very, very interesting.

I have been crowing on about a future trend that I have called ultra-fragmentation of markets.

Segmenting markets by income/expenditure is covered in marketing 101 textbooks. That doesn’t mean that it is something that marketers necessarily do, but it is basic stuff.

I don’t know what to call it, but I think we need to refine our thinking about income segmentation to reflect the reality of the chasm that is growing between the haves and the have nothings.

by: Chris Lawer

IT IS IMPORTANT TO IDENTIFY THAT CO-CREATION IS NOT JUST ABOUT FIRMS INPROVING THEIR SOCIAL MARKETING, OPEN INNOVATION, COMMUNITY-BUILDING AND LEARNING EFFORTS TO GENERATE NEW PROPRIETARY AND VALUABLE KNOWLEDGE WITH/FROM THEIR CUSTOMERS.

by: Sigurd Rinde

by: Scott Goodson

This is a great article from today's NY Times and a fun read if you have a moment. I knew testosterone was powerful, but I never thought that the presence of cortisol could change the world so dramatically. Yikes! Perhaps it can.

by: Yann Gourvennec

All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players … (1)

by: Dick Stroud

This week I gave a conference speech with Jo Rigby from OMD. The event was staged by the Ingenious Group, the UK’s leading social marketing company.