By Gordon Plutsky

A few weeks ago my wife and I made a trip to Walden Pond to see where Henry David Thoreau wrote Walden. Published in 1854, it details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years in a cabin he built near Concord, Mass.  One of his famous quotes should be a mantra for every marketer – Simplify.   

(Me at Walden Pond)

Consumers are overloaded with marketing/brand messages on every platform, it is estimated we are hit with nearly 3000 messages a day.   As a result attention spans have become shorter and more...

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By Gordon Plutsky

While many marketers are apt to lump all Boomers into one bucket, there is a large enough age variance in the demographic so that Boomers fall into two distinct groups. There’s the older Boomer, who is marching into retirement, and there’s the Boomer at the younger end of the generation, who’s now hitting his or her peak buying power. Younger Boomers (roughly ages 48-58) really don’t have as much in common with the older portion of the cohort as commonly believed. While their older brothers and sisters...

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By Gordon Plutsky

Post by King Fish Senior Account Manager, Michele Campbell

I recently experienced two epic customer service fails. Like many things in life, we can all learn a lot when things go awry—that is, if we pay attention.

Epic Fail #1:

After a three-hour drive to a New England timeshare property, we were greeted awkwardly by a woman behind the check-in desk. She tried to engage us in conversation: “What do you do for work, Mr. Campbell?,” she asked my husband. “I work for PBS.” She immediately went on a...

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By Gordon Plutsky

Of late, marketers have mastered using white papers, eBooks, webinars and other free content to pull prospects into lead management funnels and keep sales teams busy for months. This is in contrast to a time not too long ago, when marketers' toughest challenge was generating qualified leads.

But the increase in prospects brought the challenge of lead conversion. And in some cases the marketing department—and not the sales staff—is better suited to meet this challenge.

Salespeople have discovered...

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By Gordon Plutsky

Last week I enjoyed hearing from Erik Drake, EVP of Stoneyfield Farm Yogurt who was a guest speaker at the Ad Club’s CMO Breakfast series.  Stoneyfield is the leader in organic yogurt in addition to being a leader in the new model for consumer packaged goods customer engagement.  They have chosen to move beyond the traditional model of one-way ads based on features and benefits to a true content-based customer outreach model. 

For their business it makes perfect sense for several reasons.  Being...

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By Gordon Plutsky

Recently I came across some data that illustrates a trend for marketers – the convergence of technology and marketing.  Gartner found that 72% of companies have the equivalent of a Chief Marketing Technologist and 87% will within the next two years.  Granted, this is among tech companies who are more inclined to invest in tech, but the trend is clear.   You may recall that Gartner predicted that by 2017 CMOs would spend more on IT than CIO’s

Read more about it here on the Chief Marketing Tech...

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By Gordon Plutsky

We have just released a new King Fish eBook now available for free download in our resource center.   Storytelling is one of the most critical aspects to content marketing and is often the reason why it works so well engaging customers. 

Customers have always been in control of their information sources.  Now, however, they have a seemingly infinite number of choices at their fingertips, thanks to a rapidly evolving digital ecosystem that makes it easy to create, store, find and share information...

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By Gordon Plutsky

By Kimberly Jackson, Editorial Strategist, King Fish Media

As summer comes to a close I can't help but wonder if some marketers should go back to marketing class.  My kids still have a lot to learn and based upon my recent shopping endeavors, many marketers do too.  Customers are looking for decision simplicity, good customer service and deals.  

The National Retail Federation projects that parents of children in grades K-12 will spend nearly $689 on their children's back-to-school needs, almost $85 more...

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By Gordon Plutsky

After a few days of action we are getting a glimpse into the future of broadcast TV with NBC’s somewhat brave “experiment” in real time.  NBC’s challenge was strike a balance between the way people consume information in 2012 with the need to make back their more than $1billion investment in the games.  The network has to satisfy all the audience segments and stakeholders at the same time.  The audience ranges from super savvy social media savants to grandma and everything in between  - the very definition of a mass...

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By Gordon Plutsky

As content marketers we spend a lot of time thinking about storytelling techniques to enhance sales results for clients.  Stories are critical to making content-based programs work by engaging customers at a primal and sensory level.   We are wired to learn from stories – it is how we learn as children and how we process information.  When reading and watching fiction we put ourselves in the role of the protagonist and imagine about how we would resolve conflict.  Think of it as game planning for real...

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