In January, as most people are planning and executing their New Year’s resolutions (see my last post), my mind often wanders to playing catch up on things I didn’t do last year. It never fails that I always fall behind on keeping up with the latest and greatest movies – especially the ones that get nominated for the academy awards. And nothing makes the Oscars more irrelevant than not having seen at least one nominated movie.
With that in mind and a long fourteen hour flight to Sydney from Seattle ahead of me, I decided to watch the Oscar-nominated Moneyball.
Does art imitate life or is it the other way around? Given Moneyball is based on the nonfiction best seller by author Michael Lewis, the answer doesn’t much matter; that is unless you look outside of baseball.
Watching Moneyball, I was struck by how similar the plot is to what we see going on with mobile marketers around the world. Read some key dialogue from the movie:
“There is an epidemic failure within the game to understand what is really happening. And this leads people who run Major League Baseball teams to misjudge their players and mismanage their teams. I apologize.” (Peter Brand)
Tagged 'context' 
From Moneyball to Mobileball: The Answer is in the Data
Why Relevance Rules Digital Marketing
When you look at the buffet of content available to us these days – from every conceivable source, on every established and emerging platform – you might think that content remains the manna of digital marketing that it once was.
It’d be an understatement to say that brands have embraced content creation as a marketing strategy. Branded content has become a staple of cross-platform, integrated marketing campaigns everywhere, as a nearly fail-proof way to engage consumers, and turn them into customers. As industry analyst Rebecca Lieb said recently, every single one of the major brands she speaks with is increasing its production of original content.
But am I alone in thinking that maybe it’s enough already? Sooner or later, some savvy startup or sprawling conglomerate has to realize that the long tail is losing its appeal. More isn’t always better, as Sheena Iyengar said in her awesome TED Talk. What we need isn’t customization, but relevance.
So how can we, as marketers, deliver the relevance customers want and need? How can we ensure that our content – whether it’s an article, an ad, or an image – reaches the right consumers in the most relevant and meaningful way?
Behavioral targeting gets part of the... Read more
