Blog

Marketing shouldn’t be a verb.  I firmly believe that marketing isn’t something you do to someone, it should be a conversation. I’m not the only one who’s convinced marketing needs to be better, and that’s why you hear so many experts today talking about Conversation Marketing.

The market today is basically a bazaar.  Everyone’s mingling and everyone’s stuff is on display - view any global village market and it’s pretty easy to see the similarity between the internet and a busy street in Dhaka.

The problem with the ‘bazaar’ state of the market is that everybody is yelling. You’ll soon discover what the caliber of the conversation is when you see a business trying to join the market.   Businesses are yelling at potential customers “buy ours, buy ours, no, don’t buy theirs, buy ours!!” and yelling at other businesses, “mine’s better! No my product is better! We have a testimonial!” Blah blah blah.

(0) Read More...

The latest and greatest online buzz marketing tool seems to be Twitter.  It's all the rage. Business guys like me are wondering though, will it stick?  Obviously, no one really know - so a better question is this: Does it matter to your business?

In today's economy - especially in sectors like Real Estate, Mortgage Banking, or Health Care - transition, uncertainty and economic challenges facing the future of said sectors make business models look more like a Rorschach Test than a Harvard MBA based case study.

(2) Read More...

I'm walking in Montreal - looking at the buildings around me - all of which are at once historic and modern. The City is vibrant and alive with activity - no signs of a recession here.

There are bikes sponsored by the city that anyone with a credit card can use for 30 min for free. This is a place that has started to connect to a new model from and ancient history.  A place where history has been preserved and upgraded to a modern stability - where the cross-communication between French culture and language to those of English is just a way of life - the natural way of connecting in a multi-cultural structure.

(1) Read More...

In 1997 (Wow! Thirteen years ago - time flies when you're thinking), while I was a full time Professor at the University of Victoria - I wrote and published a small paper called Technomics: How Access to Information Will Change Global Business.  That was before the term "search engines" was part of common, everyday discourse (and before Google was even a company).

Here we are, way after the turn of the millennium, 2009, and what was my dream in 1997 - The Connected Market Space - has become a reality with our flagship site, Realestock.com.

(0) Read More...

Ok, at the moment, I’m forced to leave Disneyland and shiny new cars and be serious about a matter I feel very strongly about. An article in nearly every Canadian newspaper recently headlined that a Fraser Institute study concluded (this is a “conclusion” so it has to be right...) “Canada’s Internet Pharmacy Business with the USA [is] Threatening Canadian Supplies.” Does anyone really believe this in this day and age? Let’s analyze what we are saying about commodities and manufactured items, by looking at some that we know are in short supply.

(0) Read More...