According to a new study in the Neuron Journal our brains respond similarly to compliments as they do to cash rewards. Good Morning America even featured a short clip based on the findings of this report.

Hmm. The video has been removed, I’ll see if I can find it somewhere on d’ ol Internet.
Taking the video [...]

This article is a  postmortem examination of my social media experiment. Just to add some context to what follows, I used the Ning platform to create a social portal for my company’s year-long customer travel incentive program – complete with a blog, forum, and individual member profiles.
Meatball Sundae Explained
photo courtesy of worth1000 If you’re [...]

We are in a period hailed as the decade of design. Louis Cheskin’s theory of “sensation transference,” is still relevant, even more so today. In a nutshell, Cheskin believed that when people assess something in a supermarket or a website, they will unconsciously transfer sensations they have about the design or packaging of the product/website [...]

Marketing is tough. We juggle the constant demands of improving value in the customer life cycle while always attempting to legitimize the credibility of our function within the organization. Therefore it is not surprising that strengthening the accountability of the marketing department is a consistent theme in this year’s CMO Council annual Marketing Outlook survey.
According [...]

In Chief Marketer, I read an article entitled After the Promotion: What Do I Do with the Names? The piece reinforced what I already know and have been practicing – use the data you collect on your customers from sweepstakes, trade shows and training classes to continue an ongoing relationship.
For example, at a bare minimum [...]

We marketers have a tendency to become enamored with the buzz surrounding the latest technology craze. Sure Web 2.0 has its merits, and email marketing generates gargantuan ROI when used properly, but many times simpler, time honored gestures are those that have the most impact on your customers.
Case in point. I recently canceled membership with [...]