A Local Push, Timed to Holidays, to Loosen Wallets
Through the decades, marketers have veered between "Think global, act local" and "Think local, act global." At one point, someone even coined a portmanteau word, "glocal," which sounded like a variety of the Glo-Coat brand of floor wax sold by S.C. Johnson.
Now, the pendulum seems to be veering toward marketing that is focused locally. It is particularly true as new technologies like local search make it easier to concentrate on the grass roots in a hyperlocal way. An example of the trend is a campaign being introduced for the Christmas shopping season by NYC & Company, the city's tourism organization.
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Talking Back to the TV
Get ready for interactive television ads, as companies try to compete with the Web-and get consumers a lot more engaged.
A host of nifty technical tricks has brought much-needed razzle-dazzle to Web ads. Now, the once stagnant television commercial is having its star turn.
This month,Burger King Holdings Inc. will roll out an interactive TV ad campaign that is part of the fast-food company's elaborate movie tie-in with "The Twilight Saga: New Moon," the second film in the popular vampire-werewolf series. Viewers of the ads, which will appear on the satellite DirecTV service, will be able to use their remote controls to take a quiz testing their knowledge of the film.
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Women's Hidden Holiday-Shopping Secrets Revealed
In past years, predicting post-Thanksgiving holiday-shopping results seemed like a game of rock, paper, scissors. Retailers are desperate for a profitable Black Friday. Of course, they remain at the mercy of those whose wallets matter most: women, the power shoppers who always make or break the holiday. To detect women's hidden holiday-shopping secrets, marketing consultancy Just Ask a Woman fielded a survey of 2,000 women to expose some half truths of Christmas 2009. Here's what we found.
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Firebox makes Secret Santa world record attempt
Gadget and gift website Firebox.com is to attempt to set a world record by organising a global secret santa in the run up to Christmas.
The retailer wants to get a record number of people involved in secret santa - the practice of buying gifts but giving them anonymously.
Global secret santa invites users to spend £9 on a choice of one of 18 gifts to be given to a mystery person, and then receive one in return.
The range of products on offer, from a set of Classic Airfix Toy Solders to a packet of chocolate-covered ants, and they could be sent anywhere in the world. Participants are able to write a personalised message in the present before it is despatched.
Christian Robinson, managing director of Firebox.com, said: "Global Secret Santa is all about surprising and connecting people. To think that there will be people this Christmas getting gifts from strangers they've never met, from the other side of the world is just amazing. The buzz has been brilliant so far and we are thrilled about the prospect of setting a new world record."
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PR News: Salesforce.com Unveils Salesforce Chatter - Enterprise Collaboration Meets the Real-Time Social Computing Model Loved by Millions on Facebook and Twitter
Salesforce.com Dreamforce Conference, the enterprise cloud computing company, today unveiled Salesforce Chatter (http://www.salesforce.com/chatter/), a new secure enterprise collaboration application and social development platform. Salesforce Chatter will revolutionize the workplace by leveraging the social networking models made popular by the consumer Web, allowing any company to collaborate in real time with a secure, private social network for their business. Content, applications and people will now have profiles, feeds and groups, enabling them to be deeply connected. In addition, developers will now be able to use the Salesforce Chatter platform to build social enterprise applications, and all 135,000 native Force.com applications will instantly become social. Salesforce.com is the only company uniquely positioned to deliver a social, enterprise-scale application and platform like Chatter because of its world-class security, trusted sharing model and the critical business information stored in salesforce.com's cloud apps. Salesforce Chatter will be salesforce.com's first enterprise-wide app, bringing the power of cloud computing to every employee.
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The BRIEF Bonus
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.
-- Alfred Lord Tennyson
Photographs from around the world
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