Jamie Beckland

Amazon is a digital native company, which means that they think first about the customer, and the customer’s needs and goals.  So, when they decided that they needed to start advertising on television, they went about the process in a way that activated their passionate and committed fan base.

The Facebook Era: Useless for Intended AudienceClara Shih gives a good overview of what Facebook is good for in The Facebook Era (affiliate link). Of course, this book suffers from what all books, increasingly, suffer from: the fact that they’re books.  By the time they are edited and published, 25% of the information is outdated.

Justin Kownacki is great at taking down marketing douchebags, but misses the mark when talking about Microsoft’s Windows 7 campaign. The basic premise is that he takes Microsoft to task for treating the customer like they don’t understand the technology, they don’t care about the technology, and they’re lazy.  He is wrong – this campaign [...]

On timeline for health care bill in the Senate: SS: Uh, but of course the debate about the actual nuts and bolts of the legislation, that will go on for weeks or months… DS: Oh, that probably won’t start until well after Thanksgiving and it will go on and it’s predicted that it will be [...]

Penelope Trunk recently wrote about how to travel for business, with lots of really concrete practical tips.  Her overarching theme is an important one: when traveling for business, you are doing your job.  You are not having fun.  You are working – usually on one big, important thing that is meaningful both for the company [...]

When you first start monitoring social media conversations, it’s like drinking from a fire hose.  There are lots of new information coming at you, and you have to decide how to respond to all of it.  This can lead to some mishaps as brands learn, but sometimes, it is downright ridiculous.

Twitter creates customer service for the haves, but not the have-nots.

Chris Anderson’s new book, Free: The Past and Future of a Radical Price, will scare you. And it should. If you’re in the business of selling anything, you need to think about how you might be able to give it away. Because if you don’t, someone else will.