I love fireworks. Always have. Hence the name of our digital marketing agency. Fireworks always inspire. They exhilarate. They can’t be missed. This animation by PES is a creative take on fireworks. I had to post it!

We live in a world where interruption marketing continues to slide into oblivion. Our lives are busier than ever and the clutter around us is deafening. How do we reach our target audience in this changing marketplace without interrupting them? Are Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and social bookmarking just a fad?

I challenge you to watch this video and consider if social media has a place in your marketing budget. Yes, it’s time-consuming, takes a big commitment to stick with it, and it’s hard to track ROI, but the fact is, social media is here to stay and it’s changing the way we market all products and services to consumers and to other businesses.

We’d love to talk with you about your social media marketing challenges. Give us a call if you’d like to discuss the possibilities for your business.

This is a great video to open your mind to this exploding thing called Social Media.  It will affect every area of your lives, especially your marketing and communications!

There is no question that marketing as a whole is going through a major paradigm shift. Many long-held principles and practices that worked even five to ten years ago are now quickly becoming outdated as the world around us changes through technology and morphing behavior patterns of consumers.

But having said that, is it possible that the very foundation of modern marketing principles, The Four P’s are now outdated as well? They are, according to Denise Shiffman in her very enlightening book, The Age of Engage: Reinventing Marketing for Today’s Connected, Collaborative, and Hyperinteractive Culture . The Four P’s; Product, Price, Place, and Promotion have been the basis for all marketing strategy for the past 50 years, ever since E. Jerome McCarthy invented them in his 1960 book, Basic Marketing.

It could be argued that each of the Four P’s are in fact still viable as each one still exists albeit in a more complex selling environment. But I do find Shiffman’s proposal of the Six V’s very intriguing, though slightly contrived to make the acrostic memorable. They are: Venture–the deep integration of product, service and channel of distribution, Value–Creating inherent “marketingness” through unique, defendable, sustainable and engaging value, Voice–The perception created and the followers gained through vision and story, Verification–Developing credibility through proof, truth and transparency, Vicinity–Harnessing the communities and myriad voices of the live web, and Vehicle–Incorporating Marketing 2.0 strategies to attract and delight customers.

I’m convinced enough to introduce these guiding principles into my clients’ marketing strategies and will be interested to see how mainstream her Six V’s become in the marketing community.

In an online world filled with blogs and online articles by self-proclaimed marketing gurus, is there really room for one more? I believe so, since so much of what I see is either marketing industry techno-babble or online marketing-specific information, neither of which does much for the average business owner trying to cost-effectively promote their business in a hurting economy.

My blog will hopefully shed some light on tips, techniques and strategies that really help in a practical, affordable way. I’ll do my best to keep it simple enough for the layman to understand, yet cutting edge enough to keep you coming back for more.

As I see it, there is no shortage of good information out there. It just needs some filtering to bring the gems to the surface. That is what this blog is all about. I hope you enjoy it and find it helpful!

Here’s to your success,

Paul McQuade