Marketing & Media
One morning last fall, I was checking my email. Not just any morning – it was the morning after the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States. There, in my inbox, a timely message: “Support Obama, buying from us.” Exactly how my forthcoming purchase would benefit the new...
It seems the new Obama government in the US is using social networking to include the American people in governing. In that it’s jumping on a wagon that’s becoming crowded by businesses desperate to hold “real” conversations with their customers. Unfortunately, as is too common today, it’s a nice idea...
In December, the Vancouver interactive marketing agency smashLAB got hits in the press press and a few in the minor press for its social networking site, makefive.com, in which people can list 5 things they’re passionate about as a way to start conversations. Both the Washington Post and the San...
At the beginning of a year, most of us reflect on the previous one in an attempt to divine some kind of image of the future. Sometimes, if the path is well defined, it results in a simple tweak. Sometimes it involves a wholesale scrubbing and drubbing that results in...
In an era when there are more jobs than people to fill them, today’s employers devise many techniques to woo workers. This is especially true for retailers, which have been scrambling for some time to find not only qualified workers, but any workers at all. When Burnaby-based Future Shop Ltd.
The local office for a national advertising agency discovers a fresh way to extend its brand There are no flashy green logos adorning the windows of Taxi Café on Richards Street in downtown Vancouver, no wooden counters lined with paper cups bearing indecipherable codes and no squadron of baristas...
Sun Media Corp. which owns Vancouver's 24 Hours free daily newspaper, as well as 42 other papers across Canada, cut 600 workers recently, most from its editorial departments. This follows previous cuts by other newspaper chains such as Canwest Global Communications Corp., which owns the Vancouver Sun and The Province...
It was a story no media outlet could resist. Apparently the National Do Not Call List had its own do-not-call list, and it included almost everybody. The federal government finally established a registry that would prevent telemarketers from contacting unwilling customers, and the public was eager to sign up. But...
The ink- and electron-stained wretches of the BCBusiness digital and editorial teams got together and reminisced about dropping out of high school, growing up in Comox, admiring Corey Hart's lips, grimacing through Alanis's ear-puncturing first career. And took comprehensive notes. And this, friend, is the result: the best and worst Canadian...
The latest business to employ open source and social networking thinking has run afoul of some authorities because it's breaking THE RULES. PickupPal.com organizes carpools for people via the Internet. It claims to be the world's largest carpooling community and has more than 6,000 members in BC. But PickupPal has...