‘marketing’ Archive
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
This entry was posted October 3rd, 2007 and has 3 comments.
I’m sure just about everyone saw last year’s highly praised Dove campaign entitled “Evolution”. The short film depicts a seemingly average looking woman being transformed by makeup, lighting, and Photoshop, into a beautiful supermodel. For those of you who did not see it, or need a refresher, here’s the video:
Today, Dove launched their follow-up to Evolution with a short film called, “Onslaught”. Here it is:
As you can see, Onslaught shows the insane barrage of “beauty” messages that young girls receive on a daily basis. This campaign directly supports the Dove Self-Esteem Fund, with the goal of reaching 5 million girls by 2010.
Continue reading Dove’s Onslaught
Posted in Chris Walbert, advertising, business, life, marketing, technology, television
This entry was posted September 26th, 2007 and has 3 comments.
Let me run an idea by you. This is one of the things that I really enjoy about blogging. Sometimes you just need to get an idea down, and see if it’s worth pursuing.
As anyone who knows me in real life knows, each winter for the past 5 years, whatever house I’ve lived in has hosted a large, semi-formal Christmas Party. Each year seems to get bigger and even more fun. Last year was an absolute blast. Throughout the night we probably had 150 people in our Hampden duplex, each of whom was well-dressed, somewhat well-behaved, and definitely enjoying themselves.
An idea came to me this morning, as we have already begun planning this year’s party.
Continue reading Christmas Party Sponsorship
Posted in Baltimore, Chris Walbert, advertising, business, food, life, marketing, music, technology
This entry was posted September 18th, 2007 and has 1 comment.
Today marks the beginning of DC’s Advertising Week. While it’s not as large or as flashy as New York’s, DC Ad Week still seems worth a visit.
Tomorrow, I’ll be heading down to DC, well Northern VA really, to catch day 2 of the event. The topics being discussed tomorrow include, “Digital and Online Marketing’s Latest Trends & Tools”, “The ROI of Going Green”, “That’s So Two Hours Ago: Successful Strategic Planning in an Era of Massive Media Change”, and others. The full schedule can be seen here.
Continue reading DC Advertising Week
Posted in Chris Walbert, advertising, marketing, technology
This entry was posted September 12th, 2007 and has 1 comment.
The beginning of a new season always seems to bring with it the desire for something new. I’ve experienced this feeling nearly every time the seasons change for the past few years. It’s a feeling that is hard to describe, but it’s as if my body, understanding the change that is happening in the atmosphere, is craving an equal change for itself.
Over the past 6 months I’ve experienced some major changes. I moved, started a new job, joined two different community-based volunteer programs, and ran my first triathlon. Despite these new experiences, or maybe partially because of them, I can’t help but feel the strong need for a significant change.
I usually think of the desire for change as being birthed from a negative experience. People look for new jobs because they don’t like the one they have. Or, people move because they don’t like where they live. But I really like where I work and the people I work with, and I live with one of my best friends, and I’ve also really enjoyed the new things I’ve become involved with.
Continue reading The Need for Change
Posted in Baltimore, Chris Walbert, life, marketing
This entry was posted August 16th, 2007 and has 3 comments.
In the past few months, there seems to have been an explosion in the world of social networks. An arena that was once, and by most reports still is, dominated by MySpace and now Facebook, has spawn countless new social networks. My main question is not whether there is value in each of these sites, but whether any of them have what it takes to survive and grow.
If you’re in the marketing/advertising field, or participate in social networks, you’ve probably noticed somewhat of a decline in your friends’ participation on MySpace. A year or 2 ago, it seems like everyone on MySpace participated daily and spent a lot of time on the site. Lots of people even “collected” friends and bragged about who had the most. Now, the only friend requests I get are from girls who want me to visit their web cams or bands that I’ve never heard of. This isn’t to say that MySpace is finished, they’re still growing at an amazing rate and are adding new features all the time. There’s just been a large contingent of people migrating to Facebook.
I’m one of the people that falls into this category. Just a week or two ago I decided to actually create a Facebook account. It’s not that I had anything against Facebook before, I just didn’t feel like managing another social network account. But, I got bored of never seeing anything new on MySpace, so I took the plunge. There’s also been so much buzz surrounding Facebook in the marketing community this summer. You can’t read any industry site without seeing at least one article claiming that Facebook is the greatest company ever and is taking over the world. Ok, maybe that’s a bit much, but marketing people sure do love talking about the next big thing.
Continue reading So Many Social Networks, So Little Time
Posted in Chris Walbert, marketing, technology
This entry was posted July 26th, 2007 and has 2 comments.
That’s right folks. The day many have been awaiting for years is finally here. The Simpsons Movie releases this weekend, but I’ve managed to score a few premiere tickets for tonight at The Senator Theatre.
With all of the hype and well-executed marketing surrounding this movie, I’m sure everyone’s expectations are very high. Speaking of fantastic marketing, the collective genius at Crispin Porter Bogusky have outdone themselves on this campaign. Between converting several 7-11s into Kwik-E-Marts, SimpsonizeMe, and some great TV spots that promote the movie and Burger King, the marketing surrounding this movie has been well thought out and executed.
Continue reading Simpsons Movie Premiere
Posted in Baltimore, Chris Walbert, Uncategorized, marketing, technology
