A Marketing Mix

Author J.K. Rowling has chosen to do a number of interesting things with the launch of the e-book versions of her Harry Potter series.
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After months of anticipation, the e-book versions of author J.K. Rowling’s phenomenally successful Harry Potter series are now available through Rowling’s Pottermore online unit, and as my PaidContent colleague Laura Owen has noted in her post on the launch, Rowling has chosen to do a number of interesting things with her e-books, including releasing them without digital-rights management restrictions. Obviously, the success of the Potter series has given Rowling the ability to effectively dictate terms to just about anyone, even a powerhouse like Amazon, but there are still lessons that other book publishers should take from what she is doing. 

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One of the encouraging things about the Pottermore launch is that the books will be available on virtually every platform simultaneously, including the Sony Reader, the Nook from Barnes & Noble, the Kindle and Google’s e-book service (which is part of Google Play).

George Lois -"the real-life ad man who emerged in the '60s to create a storied body of branding and magazine work. Lois conjured the "I want my MTV" slogan, invented the Lean Cuisine concept and, as the well-worn story goes, believed in his concepts so fervently that he once threatened to jump off a third-floor window ledge when executives rejected his matzo cracker campaign."

Plus: a guide to the contenders who said "yes."...

People condemn targeted advertising for its "creepiness" but the real issue is that we are giving private companies more power.

"Rather than caring about what they know about me, we should care about what they know about us. Detailed knowledge of individuals and their behavior coupled with the aggregate data on human behavior now available at unprecedented scale grants incredible power. Knowing about all of us - how we behave, how our behavior has changed over time, under what conditions our behavior is subject to change, and what factors are likely to impact our decision-making under various conditions - provides a roadmap for designing persuasive technologies. For the most part, the ethical implications of widespread deployment of persuasive technologies remains unexamined..."

"According to a recent report by She-conomy, women account for 85% of all consumer purchases, including everything from autos to health care, and spend about $5 trillion annually, over half of the U.S. GDP. Women also dominate social sharing and online content creation; according to a report by bazaarvoice, women produced 60% of user-generated content in Q2 of 2011 and, interestingly, are generally more positive than men.So you’d have thought marketers would appreciate the importance of the female demographic. And yet, according to the same report by She-conomy, 91% of women said that advertisers don’t understand them. So where is it going wrong and, more importantly, which companies are getting it right, and how?.."

The “chick lit” box never really did justice to the full spectrum of women’s experience that many of these novels address—and is no longer relevant to the work being published now.

For something that’s been around for just a few years, PayPer Click advertising, or PPC has become an established part of online marketing for many companies. Put simply, “Paid search marketing is the process of gaining traffic by purchasing ads on search engines. It is sometimes referred to as CPC (cost-per-click) or PPC (pay-per-click) marketing, because most search ads are sold on a CPC / PPC basis.” (Source: Search Engine Land). Yet while PPC seems to have become a staple of online marketing, there are clear signs that it is dying out as a lone marketing resource. For example, recent research has revealed that just 18% of SMEs using Google Adwords actually recoup their investment (Source: YouGov).

Last December I wrote of the need for more brand ambassadors.

Yesterday's advertising for tomorrow's magazine today. (Is Newsweek's New 'Mad Men' Issue with retro ads available in UK?