WILL YOUR COMPANY’S REPUTATION GET TWITTERED AWAY?   By Liz Alexander, Ph.D. In some industries, facing a crisis is an everyday risk of doing business, which is why we might have expected more from the CEOs of British Petroleum (BP), Carnival Corporation, and Toyota Motor Corporation with respect to crisis management. Yet gaffe-prone Tony Hayward [...]

FIVE FUNDAMENTALS FOR OPTIMIZING MARKETING STATS WITH MEASUREMENT AND ANALYTICS By Laura Patterson The Institute for Supply Management recently bottom lined a business confidence and economic update report by stating, “Slow growth – if any – remains a top concern among American businesses.” With forecasts like that, it’s not surprising that the leadership team’s expectations [...]

IN A DIGITAL WORLD, WHY HOSPITALITY AND CUSTOMER SERVICE STILL REIGN SUPREME By Maria Orozova Everywhere I turn lately, it seems there’s a growing nostalgia for the glory years of American business. Audiences are cheering shows like Mad Men for celebrating the golden age of the ad industry on Madison Avenue. They see something exciting [...]

WHY STRONG MESSAGING AND STICKING WITH IT IS VITAL FOR ANY EXECUTIVE By Katie Gardner Harvey Chief executives often find themselves in front of the public as the face of an organization. Sometimes the CEO has a role in an organization’s marketing, like J. Patrick Doyle of Domino’s Pizza or Gary Kelly of Southwest Airlines. [...]

CASE STUDY OF ONE COMPANY UNDERSTANDING THE IMPORTANCE OF: KNOW THYSELF By  Brian Giuffrida Quietly Taking a Leadership Position When our company was founded, it quietly set out to solve a very specific set of problems for one type of organization in a single market. Not surprisingly, with a single mission, market, and focus the [...]

GENERATION TX: CREATING A COLLEGE-GOING CULTURE ACROSS TEXAS By Katherine Jones With 20 percent of Texas’ population over 25 having a high school diploma as their highest level of educational attainment, Texas ranks last among the 50 states. Only 17.4 percent of Texans with children between the ages of 0-14 have a bachelor’s degree. This [...]

By Dave Shaw and David Wenger There are a thousand theories for how to strengthen your company’s brand, and most of them are probably totally workable. At the very least, they must have worked at one time for some company, or they wouldn’t have found their way into someone’s book on brand building. But how [...]

By Lauren Peters You’re on your way home and stop at the neighborhood HEB or Tom Thumb to pick up a short list of ‘honey, on your way home would you stop and . . .’ You’re standing in the checkout line and spot a strange looking bar code on one of the packages. It [...]

By Stan Richards and Danny Bryan Let’s say that you’ve gathered the sharpest, most creative minds in the entire industry under your roof. You’ve fostered their intellect. You’ve rewarded their acumen. You’ve hailed their brainpower. But the question is: Have you embraced your employees’ hearts? Therein lies the nut of the issue when it comes [...]

By Doug Lyon I remember the first focus groups I ever attended. I had read and studied about them while in school at the University of Texas. I had seen the infamous “two-way mirror” in films and textbooks. Now this was actually the first time I was going to experience them one-on-one and be an [...]

Social media has created social influence marketing, defined as the role that consumer generated media plays in purchase decisions.

What are the attributes a CEO should look for in a marketing executive who can lead such change? Start with these eight.