‘business’ Archive
This entry was posted October 20th, 2010 and has no nomments.
In our modern era, it is not only possible, but actually quite simple to be constantly aware of everything that is being said about our companies, our products or services, and our brands. We can listen to, analyze, and dissect every blog post, tweet, or comment coming from every corner of the world. As professionals involved in marketing, we have access to more of this information than ever before.
And this is a great thing. If someone has an issue or is unsatisfied, we have the chance to rectify that and show that we care about and appreciate them as a customer.
The problem, though, comes about when trying to determine which people talking about your brand are customers with an actual gripe and which are just outsiders indulging their inner critic. The most obvious recent example of this was the new not-long-for-this-world Gap logo. As soon as the internet found this gem, every designer, marketer, and Twitterer who hasn’t stepped into a Gap since college jumped on the bandwagon of critiquing it to death. All of this was with good reason. The logo was bad and Gap needed to hear that from this specific community.
But is this the audience they should have looked to for approval to keep the logo?
Continue reading Not Everyone who Talks about your Brand is a Customer; Some of them are just Assholes
Posted in business, marketing
This entry was posted April 22nd, 2010 and has 5 comments.
There is no doubt that the changes announced yesterday at Facebook’s F8 conference will have a major impact on the web, how it looks, and how we use it in the coming months and years. The prospect of an open graph with the ability to transport your personal interests and preferences around the web with you is quite intriguing. This could also end up being the tool marketers have been clamoring for for years. They may now finally have the ability to hyper-target potential customers online at a scale large enough to demand huge advertising budgets.
But you can never gain one thing without losing something else. The web experience at large may benefit significantly from this, but it will be at the peril of the actual Facebook experience.
First, let’s look at who comprises the majority of a typical person’s Facebook friends. Most of our friends lists include not just family and good friends, but also former and current coworkers, some people we went to high school with, and a few random people who snuck through our approved friend requests. Whatever the reason, we are connected to these people because we, at least on some level, know them.
The point here is this - Most people care about the things shared on Facebook not because of the content itself as much as because of who is sharing that content. For example, I don’t necessarily love looking at pictures of babies, but will gladly spend time looking at pictures of my cousins baby because I love her. What I am not interested in, however, is seeing every site my cousin ‘likes’ across the web that features pictures of cute babies.
Continue reading Facebook Will Conquer the Web by Destroying Facebook
Posted in business, food, marketing, technology
This entry was posted May 18th, 2009 and has no nomments.
I was quoted in Friday’s Baltimore Business Journal in an article called “Blog and Pony Show“. The article is essentially about the money, or lack thereof, that people can expect to make from blogging. As a planner and buyer of interactive media, I’m approached regularly by sites with advertising opportunities and have to evaluate whether they are the right places for our clients to be advertising.
I wanted to expand upon the BBJ quote and explain a little more of my thoughts on advertising on blogs and in social media. Here’s the quote:
“It pushes the brand even further and gets people to talk about it amongst themselves,” said Chris Walbert, digital media manager for Media Works Ltd. in Owings Mills. “That’s the powerful thing about blogs and social networks.”
First, to state the obvious, just because you advertise on a blog or social network doesn’t mean people will care or talk about your brand or product. The fact that blogs and networks are innately social environments, though, does give people the opportunity to talk about your brand or product within the site.
Continue reading A Little More About My BBJ Quote
Posted in Baltimore, business
This entry was posted March 2nd, 2009 and has no nomments.
Yesterday as I was getting ready to leave New York and return home to Baltimore, I checked my email to find a disturbing email from Megabus. It simply said,
“Dear Megabus customer,
Please be advised that the trip listed below has been canceled due to winter weather. We apologize for any inconvenience and would like to emphasize that this decision was made with concern to the safety of our passengers and operators. Please contact 1-877-GO2-MEGA to change your reservation or receive a refund.”
Obviously, canceling my bus was a huge inconvenience to me. I immediately called the number, hoping they might be able to help me find an alternative means of getting home. But instead of getting a customer service rep on the phone, Megabus had a generic voicemail message stating that due to the inclement weather they could not answer any phone calls.
Continue reading Megabus and the Worst Customer Service Experience of My Life
Posted in business
This entry was posted May 5th, 2008 and has no nomments.
This weekend, Microsoft withdrew their offer to buy Yahoo for $33 a share. This MicroHoo merger has been talked about in many different forums by many different people for quite a few months. In the past few weeks, talks have heated up and culminated in Microsoft basically issuing an ultimatum to Yahoo.
Though Yahoo’s stock price dropped about 20% this morning, word is that Yahoo’s executive team celebrated the withdrawal of Microsoft’s offer. How others at Yahoo reacted to the news hasn’t surfaced yet, but reactions from shareholders have been mixed at best.
Now, the real question is, Where does Yahoo go from here? In what I think is a somewhat questionable move, Yahoo just concluded a two-week test with Google delivering ads on a small portion of Yahoo searches. The test was intended to show that Yahoo can earn more money by allowing Google to serve search ads for them. Both companies described the test as successful.
Continue reading Where does Yahoo Go From Here?
Posted in Chris Walbert, business, marketing
This entry was posted February 25th, 2008 and has no nomments.
Not only is Dustin Pfeifer a good friend of mine and a champion BSSC quarterback, but he is also an excellent web designer and developer. Dustin and I went to school together and also worked in the marketing department at our last company for about four years. During that time we worked on a lot of projects together, many of which I am still really proud of.
I left that company last April and in October, Dustin decided to work for himself full-time and focus on his company, Dustin Pfeifer Creative. He’s already done some great work that you can see on his brand new site, DustinPfeifer.com.
Continue reading The New and Improved DustinPfeifer.com
Posted in Baltimore, Chris Walbert, advertising, business, marketing, technology
This entry was posted November 7th, 2007 and has no nomments.
If you haven’t seen 365 Shirts yet, well then where have you been for the past 141 days?
My good friend and roommate Mike had the brilliant idea to wear a different shirt every day for one full year. Each day he blogs about the shirt and whatever is going on that day. The goal of the blog is not only to be fun and entertaining, but also to raise money through donations, and awareness for Alzheimer’s research.
So, like I said, if you haven’t been to 365 Shirts yet, get over there and check it out. Then, bookmark it and visit daily.
Also, 365 Shirts is involved in a blog contest hosted by Behance. Behance is a very cool site that showcases great creative work and encourages collaboration and idea sharing among creative professionals. Their tagline is, “Make Ideas Happen.”
Continue reading Vote for 365 Shirts
Posted in advertising, business, marketing, technology
This entry was posted October 24th, 2007 and has 3 comments.
That’s right. The Wall Street Journal announced this afternoon that Microsoft has agreed to buy a 1.6% stake in Facebook for a cool $240 million. This values Facebook at a total of $15 billion. This move has been highly anticipated and talked about for months, but no one was sure whether Microsoft would win out over the likes of Google.
It is absolutely amazing how quickly the value of social networking sites have risen. Just 2 years ago, News Corp bought all of MySpace for $580 million. Even more recently, Mark Zuckerberg, creator of Facebook, turned down a $1 billion offer from Yahoo just last summer. While many thought he was either crazy, or just an egomaniac, that move is looking quite brilliant today.
So, what could make a social networking site like Facebook possibly worth $15 billion? First, as nearly every media outlet has documented, advertising on TV, radio, and in print continue to decline while digital media has been growing tremendously. Most analyst expect this trend to continue as the internet and other digital technologies become more and more a necessary aspect of our lives. This means that large companies will be spending big bucks online.
Continue reading Microsoft buys a Piece of Facebook
Posted in Chris Walbert, advertising, business, marketing, technology
This entry was posted October 12th, 2007 and has no nomments.
If you’ve made it here, you obviously are aware that chriswalbert.com is the new home of my blog. If you are new here, thanks for checking it out. Hopefully you’ll find something that interests you. Leave a comment, and start a discussion.
A huge thanks and shout out goes to my good friend of many, many years Dustin Pfeifer for designing and implementing this site. As you can see, Dustin is a top notch front-end web designer. Additionally, he is a mastermind when it comes to CSS.
Dustin now runs a web development and marketing company. If you or your company need any work done, I highly recommend you talk with Dustin.
I’m very excited to have this new, more personalized blog up and running. Not that there is anything wrong with a Wordpress template, but it’s nice to have something that reflects me a bit more.
It is a beautiful fall day, so go out and enjoy it. Be sure to check back here regularly and update your bookmarks, links, etc. to chriswalbert.com.
Continue reading New Blog Site
Posted in Baltimore, Chris Walbert, advertising, business, marketing, technology
This entry was posted October 10th, 2007 and has 4 comments.
As pretty much everyone knows by now, Radiohead released their new album, In Rainbows, today. The album isn’t available in stores or on iTunes, only directly from Radiohead. The band basically shocked the music industry when they announced on October 1st that they would be releasing this album themselves, without the backing of a label. A much bigger deal was the fact that there would be no set price for this album. Instead, Radiohead believed that people, when given the choice, would pay a fair price for the album.
This is genius, and actually works, for so many reasons. First, they didn’t release any promotional copies to radio stations, stream new songs on MySpace (they don’t even have an official page), or allow the album to leak in any way. They merely announced 9 days ago that they had a new album coming out and told you where you could get it.
Continue reading In Rainbows by Radiohead
Posted in Chris Walbert, advertising, business, marketing, music, technology
