In a recent headline, Credit Card Debt drops 11% in 2011, it hit me once again that a part of what the economy is being hit hard with the generation train wreck.  The move away from consumerism by Boomers and the gap left with a much smaller Gen X is making it harder to gain any traction in the economy. Now, while I always understood as a marketer that Gen X was smaller, the Baby Boomer years of supporting the …

Throughout time, marketing has been about grabbing someone’s attention and interest to get them to buy a product or service. In today’s digital world, the addition of online channels like email, websites, social media and mobile marketing has madeit even harder to grab attention for more than a few seconds has become harder. Television was the media that attracted the most “eyeballs” until the advent of YouTube. Not only is there an ease of uploading video but anyone could use …

It’s the holidays and in thinking how nice it would be to “unplug” from technology, my marketing side knows it can’t happen! The advertising is in high gear from Facebook specials to retailers sending email offers every day to online ads.  There are even cell phone solicitations and text offers. Our consumer world is deluged with tech-based marketing As Pew Research Center noted in a recent study, 58% of all adults (or 74% of all online adults) say they use …

There are Occupy protests across the world, there’s a Bank Transfer Day, and the social media derision during the Blackberry outage.  Consumers are showing the new low level of tolerance for inequity, poor customer service, and rising fees. How can marketers be prepared, plan for big swings in consumer loyalty, and even protect their brand in light of this new low level of tolerance? The first critical step is to keep the long-term user, the most profitable group in your …

Have you read or listened to a book that haunted your thoughts long after you finished it? Recently, I listened to the audio version of The Age Curve: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Storm  by Kenneth Gronbach, and I can’t get some of the things he said out of my head. From a marketing standpoint, this book clearly states the issues that are underlying the economic slump and encouraging the focus on the future. First Haunting Thought:  “Gen …