You may have noticed that I added a link on the first right sidebar to a blog named Notworking Effects. This is a second blog that I am starting up, but it’s going to be a little bit different than freedmarketer.com. The second blog, run on the Grogger site, is crowd-sourced. Whereas you as a reader can only comment on my posts here, you can author your own at Notworking Effects. The focus [...]

Amidst all the anticipation of the iPad announcement, some on the internet asked what Steve Jobs would pull out for his “One More Thing” slide (a point that was eventually shown to be moot.)  One rumor was that Apple would use today’s program to announce a CDMA or LTE iPhone for Verizon Wireless.  Boy Genius Report even posted a story about a kick-off event that would coincide with [...]

People who follow technology even casually (you know those people; they’re the kind who follow links from Twitter and Facebook to blog posts) tend to pay attention to advertisements for cell phones and cell phone carriers.  It’s a rapidly changing market, and the attempts to one-up the competition often lead to fun commercials.  A few months ago, Verizon Wireless opted to attack AT&T [...]

Last week, I was looking over some links that my friends had posted on Facebook when I came across one titled “Miracle Whip to Colbert: We Will Own You” from Comedy Central’s Insider blog.  Miracle Whip has launched new ads portraying itself as a louder and  more exciting alternative to mayonnaise.  Stephen Colbert, on his show, took this as an affront to the good name of mayo [...]

In my last post, I touched on the importance of being in first or second place in your market.  It makes sense at a basic level, after all, the higher your market share, the more products or services you sell.  Thought leaders agree.  Authors like Al Ries and Jack Trout repeat it time and time again.  Jack Welch held this concept as gospel and insisted that business units in GE’s portfolio [...]

Last night while Twittering about helping people out with some marketing ideas, a friend asked me what I meant when I tweeted about positioning.  It led me to think about how little many people think about marketing and what it entails.  Usually, the requests that I get are either for things like newsletter help or coming up with names for products.  People tend to be surprised when I barrage them [...]

While I was still at NYU Stern, I decided that the best way that I could supplement my business education was to use my free time to digest some classic marketing literature.  I figured it was a more productive way to spend my time on planes, for example, than working through another sudoku puzzle.  Besides, by starting while I was still in school, I could more easily transition from the constant [...]