Facebook launched a social couponing platform, Facebook Deals, in several US cities this week [Los Angeles Times]

Mercedes credits a great March to its new in-dealer iPad app [Marketing Daily]

How Vlasic pickles are using shopper marketing: reminders in complimentary product areas [NYT]

Cool stats from a Google smartphone study: 50% of those exposed to mobile ads took action [Search Engine Land]

Thinking about a next-gen approach to integrated marcomm [AdAge]

Coca-Cola: instant consumer gratification, SMS style [Mobile Marketer]

Facebook is reaching out to ad agencies [NYT]

In data privacy news: Sony admits a massive breach of its PlayStation Network [WSJ]

This week in cool jobs: marketing anthropologist [AdAge]

Visa will invest in Square, a mobile payment platform for iPhone and Android [TechCrunch]

“Stupid tweet” insurance? How will they accurately determine damages? [ReadWriteWeb]

Social media traffic is finicky, unsticky [eMarketer]

A suggestion to marketers: stop focusing on making shopping fun, and start focusing on making it easy [Social Commerce Today]

I recently had to subject myself to snack shopping for a bunch of seven-year-olds and their dads for a weekend camping trip. (Why I would subject myself to a weekend camping with a bunch of seven-year-olds and their dads is another matter altogether)  What should have been a five-minute blast through the snack aisle turned into 20 minutes of anxiety and frustration.  Why?  Because something as simple as grabbing a box of fruit snacks turned into a shelf-scanning, label-reading nightmare. Read More »

By Ana Lapter

The notions of social networking and online communities used to be ones that B2B marketers left to their B2C counterparts. But recent research has shown that for certain categories of B2B purchases, the purchase model can be significantly influenced by peers in the social web. Given the parallel decline of commercial messages in terms of credibility, and the jump in substantial research prior to interaction with sales reps, it’s understandable that marketers like Cisco, Caterpillar and Pitney Bowes have developed active online communities designed to serve their customer base. Read More »

We recently conducted a survey of over 6,000 US and UK consumers, exploring why people purchase and what purchase path they follow.

As Karen’s post explains, only a third of consumers follow the traditional ‘funnel’ path (i.e., start with many options in mind and winnow down to one), while another third follow a ‘spindle’ approach (i.e., continuously add options to their consideration set before choosing one).  The final third follow a ‘tunnel’ purchase path. That is, they never consider more than one brand – and simply buy the first brand they consider.

‘Tunnel’ purchasers have stronger brand intent, are less likely to switch, and are more likely to repurchase and recommend.  As such, we’ve been looking into what makes people ‘tunnel’ and how brands can drive more ‘tunnels’. The findings have surprised us.  It turned out that all our assumptions were wrong. Read More »

(the following is a guest post from Robert Mulrennan at Iconoculture, MLC’s sister program that tracks consumer trends)

China is the world’s most populous country and the fastest-growing economy.  With 1.3 billion people, it’s a giant piece of future market potential for global brands.  As marketers try to tap into the growth offered by the Chinese market, many are watching Chinese brands beat them to the punch, making rapid inroads into established, western markets.   Haier is a noteworthy example: an established home appliance brand in China, this brand has carved out a prominent space in the highly competitive US appliance market.  Watching Haier we can learn a few lessons that might inform our own strategies for entering growth markets outside of our current footprint:

• Finding White Space: Haier Group made initial inroads in the U.S. market by focusing on novel product categories such as refrigerated wine cellars; Haier has since captured 50% of the market for these devices, gaining a foothold that they can use to migrate from niche to big ticket purchases.
• Leveraging The Halo Effect: After establishing itself in compact refrigerators and wine coolers, the company has entered other categories—it now sells 2% of all full-size refrigerators in the U.S., 16% of window air conditioners, and recently introduced a line of flat-screen TVs and DVD players.
• Playing to Local Perceptions: The name Haier was adapted from German to deliberately obscure the company’s Chinese origins and play to North American perceptions of German quality and reliability.

So what about western brands entering the Chinese market?  Join Iconoculture’s lead Consumer Strategist covering East Asia, Jeff Yang on May 3^rd, for an overview of recent trends, developments, and shifts in consumer behavior in China. We’ll unpack the unique “cultural DNA” of this incredible market and take a closer look at brands that have successfully captured the mindshare of Chinese consumers. Council members can register here.

For a quick look into what consumers are doing in China, Council members can also check out a few of Iconoculture’s latest global consumer observations.

In a previous post, I talked about the endless waiting game that has become the B2B purchasing process. Customers we surveyed at MLC this year told us that they’re generally 57% through the purchase process before they even contacted a supplier for serious conversation.

Of course, you want them to pick up the phone sooner so you can direct them to buy from you. This leads us to the question: if customers are calling suppliers later than they used to, what have they been doing and what can you do to facilitate earlier contact? Read More »

Consider all the screens you interact with on a daily basis: smart phone, tablet, desktop, laptop, in-store video, big-screen TV, screens at sports events, screens in automobiles/ airplanes, and many others.  Total adult daily viewing devoted to watching all of these screens: 8.5 hours (for those age 45-54, its 9.5 hours). That’s a lot of time spent peering at a screen and a great place for marketers to reach consumers. But what about all the marketing communication we receive on these screens every day? Do we absorb them all the same way? Do they stick with us equally, regardless of the format? Read More »

Last week, a company used to making news for good reasons – Apple – instead made news for something a little disturbing: apparently, if you have an iPhone, its been keeping a running log of your location for the last year or so – without your consent. An insanely-detailed running log, in fact, complete with timestamps and location pinpoints based on triangulation from cell towers. If you have a Mac that you sync your phone to, you can map your location history by downloading this program. As an example, here are my collected travels since June 2010: Read More »

Security researchers revealed a file in all iPhones that tracks user movement – a new data source for marketers in the making? [O'Reilly]

The online coupon craze: coming to a grocery store near you [NYT]

Ad agencies are branching off into venture capital and client stakeholder models [NYT]

In case you missed it, Facebook streamed a presidential town hall live yesterday [WSJ]

Yet another potential wrinkle in the purchase decision: location-based Q&A platforms [TechCrunch]

Visa is piloting an SMS-based in-store marketing platform with several retailers [AdAge]

AdAge on how CMOs should approach the loyalty question [AdAge]

MLC on how CMOs shold approach the loyalty question [MLC]

Tips for the telecommuter [ReadWriteWeb]

The Council research team is pleased to introduce you to our shiny new Mobile Marketing Resource Center.  We’re especially pleased with the launch, because we’ve had our research teams in India, Europe and North America focused on scouring the planet for the best mobile marketing executions and resources.

Consider this your virtual tour.  If you’re an MLC member, we invite you to click through to the various sections of the resource center, and download to your heart’s content.

You’ll find four sections in the resource center (for now—more to come in the coming months as we continue our research). Read More »