Gabriel Catalano®

MasterCard Brings E-Commerce to City Streets

For the past month, MasterCard has been running an out-of-home campaign to promote its MarketPlace e-commerce site. The goal? To get consumers’ attention both online and offline.

The credit card brand has put up storefront ads featuring black-and-white vinyl panels and taglines like: “A Smarter Way to Shop Online” and “Where Bargains Find You.” The effort, which includes ads in New York, Chicago, Miami and Philadelphia, wraps up this month.

The displays, set up in busy retail locations, consist of motion sensor-activated screens on which items like a purse, laptop and sneaker pop up when someone walks by. There is also a mobile component: Pedestrians can view the latest offers via MasterCard MarketPlace’s RSS feed and e-mail deals to themselves.

MasterCard hopes “to capitalize on consumers’ dual online-offline shopping behavior by directly placing the MasterCard MarketPlace ‘shop smarter’ message within the physical, brick-and-mortar shopping experience,” said Cheryl Guerin, the company’s svp of digital marketing. Storefronts were a “natural channel extension,” she said.

– Elaine Wong
For the past month, MasterCard has been running an out-of-home campaign to promote its MarketPlace e-commerce site. The goal? To get consumers’ attention both online and offline.

[ARG] Aseguran que habrá una «explosión» de redes inalámbricas en la región

Las redes inalámbricas de Internet de banda ancha tienen en la región un mercado potencial de 220 millones de conexiones, como alternativa o complementación de las redes fijas, según las proyecciones elaboradas por consultores privados.

La consultora NextTV Latam proyecta que en la región habrá esa cantidad de vínculos sin cables y de alta velocidad, al sumar tanto las conexiones de 3G o LTE ofrecida por las empresas de telefonía móvil como las redes Wimax y Wi-Fi.

Así lo aseguró el responsable de la consultora, Ariel Barlaro, al dar comienzo al seminario que se realizó esta semana en Buenos Aires para analizar el «despegue» de las redes inalámbricas.

Hay un mercado posible de 220 millones de vínculos sin cables de alta velocidad a Internet, al sumar conexiones de 3G, Wimax y Wi-Fi

Las redes inalámbricas de Internet de banda ancha tienen en la región un mercado potencial de 220 millones de conexiones, como alternativa o complementación de las redes fijas, según las proyecciones elaboradas por consultores privados.

La consultora NextTV Latam proyecta que en la región habrá esa cantidad de vínculos sin cables y de alta velocidad, al sumar tanto las conexiones de 3G o LTE ofrecida por las empresas de telefonía móvil como las redes Wimax y Wi-Fi.

Así lo aseguró el responsable de la consultora, Ariel Barlaro, al dar comienzo al seminario que se realizó esta semana en Buenos Aires para analizar el «despegue» de las redes inalámbricas. Continuar leyendo «[ARG] Aseguran que habrá una «explosión» de redes inalámbricas en la región»

[ARG] En pleno boom de consumo, ¿conviene invertir en una franquicia reconocida?

Es un negocio que miran de cerca los emprendedores y aquellos que recibieron algún dinero extra o una indemnización interesante. Hay más de 30 rubros con precios que arrancan en los $20.000. ¿Qué ganancias ofrecen y cómo les impacta la inflación?

En pleno boom de consumo, ¿conviene invertir en una franquicia reconocida?

Salir al mercado con una nueva propuesta de negocio es una opción riesgosa para quienes cuentan con una cantidad de dinero limitada para invertir.

Sucede que, en un mercado con altibajos y ante consumidores “ciclotímicos”, cuya confianza varía rápidamente ante cambios políticos o sociales, los riesgos que se deben asumir son mayores que los que presenta una economía estable.

En este contexto, es donde aparece la principal ventaja de las franquicias, ya que brindan un modelo probado, con todas las herramientas necesarias para gestionar.

Según los últimos datos relevados por la Asociación Argentina de Marcas y Franquicias (AAMF), el interés por invertir viene en ascenso, siendo el boom del consumo un elemento clave que juega a favor de la decisión.

“Las franquicias recuperaron el ritmo de crecimiento en los primeros meses del año, con un incremento de 14% entre la cantidad de locales que se abrieron de marcas ya existentes y los nuevos jugadores que entraron al sistema”, explicó Lucas Secades, director ejecutivo de la AAMF.

Las empresas que explotan este formato también están de acuerdo con este crecimiento, especialmente en el interior del país, donde el consumo se duplicó en comparación con la Ciudad de Buenos Aires.

En el caso de The Coffee Store, Analía González, responsable de Relaciones Institucionales del grupo, señaló que «la franquicia es un modelo de comercialización que, en mayor o menor medida, se ha desarrollado con éxito en gran parte del mundo».

Y añadió: «El grado de madurez varía en cada país, que va desde mercados incipientes hasta un sistema con gran tradición y conocimiento en los círculos empresariales y el ciudadano medio, pasando por mercados en explosión, siendo un exponente claro del concepto de globalización y afán emprendedor de cada individuo y empresa».

Es un negocio que miran de cerca los emprendedores y aquellos que recibieron algún dinero extra o una indemnización interesante. Hay más de 30 rubros con precios que arrancan en los $20.000. ¿Qué ganancias ofrecen y cómo les impacta la inflación?

En pleno boom de consumo, ¿conviene invertir en una franquicia reconocida?

Salir al mercado con una nueva propuesta de negocio es una opción riesgosa para quienes cuentan con una cantidad de dinero limitada para invertir.

En este contexto, es donde aparece la principal ventaja de las franquicias, ya que brindan un modelo probado, con todas las herramientas necesarias para gestionar.

Según los últimos datos relevados por la Asociación Argentina de Marcas y Franquicias (AAMF), el interés por invertir viene en ascenso, siendo el boom del consumo un elemento clave que juega a favor de la decisión.

“Las franquicias recuperaron el ritmo de crecimiento en los primeros meses del año, con un incremento de 14% entre la cantidad de locales que se abrieron de marcas ya existentes y los nuevos jugadores que entraron al sistema”, explicó Lucas Secades, director ejecutivo de la AAMF.

[ARG]Las búsquedas (…) que hacen los argentinos en Google

Hagamos la prueba juntos. Hay que abrir el buscador Google, en cualquier navegador de Internet, y tipear “cómo hacer”, pero sin apretar el botón de buscar. Y así nos enteramos de que mientras nosotros estamos buscando algo, hay miles de argentinos que al mismo tiempo están buscando cómo hacer “un currículum vitae”, “una monografía”, “panqueques”, “un grupo en Facebook” o “rastas”. Todas esas opciones son las Google Suggest (o sugerencias de Google), una herramienta que tiene el rastreador más popular de la Web y que sirve para orientarnos en la búsqueda.

Tipeando preguntas inconclusas, el programa muestra lo que más se busca. (…)

Por Diego Geddes
http://www.clarin.com

5-step Process for Business Transformation and Organizational Stability

During the past few weeks, I’ve spoken with many business leaders in the GCC. The topic on every one’s mind is, of course, the economy and how their business can weather the storm. Many of these executives had read my previous posts on restoring an organizational immune system, and on reducing complexity in key areas to increase business stability. Most of them had the same question: where do we start?

The answer is to start at the top – with those in charge of leading the business. The 5-step process below begins there and provides a roadmap for mobilizing the entire organization in support of transformation. It’s important to realize that business transformation isn’t a miracle cure for all business problems. It’s an ongoing journey and a continuous process. There’s no one end point, but every step you take will be a lifesaver for your company. Here’s how you can make sure you’re moving in the right direction, let’s see…

Blogging Innovation
by Kamal Hassan

5-Step Process for Business Transformation and Organizational Stability During the past few weeks, I’ve spoken with many business leaders in the GCC. The topic on every one’s mind is, of course, the economy and how their business can weather the storm. Many of these executives had read my previous posts on restoring an organizational immune system, and on reducing complexity in key areas to increase business stability. Most of them had the same question: where do we start?

The Problem of Defining Innovation

Hutch Carpenter just wrote a nice post outlining 25 different definitions of innovation. This is an interesting exercise. He breaks the definitions down into five sub-categories, which all reflect slightly different takes on the nature of innovation. Continuar leyendo «The Problem of Defining Innovation»

The Innovation gap between Executives and their teams

Most large organizations are built to optimize a set of predictable processes which support and maintain a given set of products or services. Over time our management styles have migrated to the point where we’ve optimized these processes and the products they enable to the detriment of new thinking, new products and new services. At least that’s what the senior executives think. What they miss is that while we’ve gotten really good at managing the status quo, most people aren’t energized by that work, and actually have plenty of free brain cycles left to commit to interesting new work. Most senior executives not only remember the organization as it was, but underestimate the engagement, capability and insight of the people who are in those roles now, or just don’t make enough demands of those teams. To those executives, the organization seems «brittle» – too unwilling or unable to change to meet the dynamics of the marketplace. That’s too bad, because I suspect they are wrong about their organizations.

It strikes me regularly that senior executives of many firms underestimate the insights and abilities of their companies. I guess that many of us grow up with a backward-looking preference. We prefer to remember how things were «when we were there» and expect those attributes and features to remain the same. For most of us, the people we worked with and the companies we worked for are still locked in the past, unbending and unchanging.

I’m stealing a bit from Seth Godin‘s recent post about «senior management«. His point, and mine, aren’t that senior managers are myopic or uninspired, although that’s certainly possible. It’s more that they have a vision but often aren’t confident that the organization can achieve the vision without painful change. These executives remember the organization as it was, rather than as it is. Continuar leyendo

The Creativity Crisis? What Creativity Crisis?

The most important thing to understand about America’s «crisis of creativity» is that there isn’t one. The notion that American business creativity is either at risk or in decline is laughable. Arguments that «Yankee ingenuity» is ebbing into oxymoron are ludicrous. They invite ridicule. So here it comes.

Yes, America’s economy is awful. But so what? Hard times haven’t nicked, dented or damaged this country’s creative core competence. To the contrary, they’ve made more people more interested in being more creative. Spend serious time at research university labs. Or sit in on 10K business plan competitions. Or wander through Silicon Valley incubators and Texas industrial parks. Or listen to top-tier venture capitalists. You’ll be impressed. There’s no shortage of creativity and ingenuity here.

The evidence overwhelmingly suggests the only measurable «creativity crisis» America faces is an embarrassment of riches. We’re spoiled for choice.

The most important thing to understand about America’s «crisis of creativity» is that there isn’t one. The notion that American business creativity is either at risk or in decline is laughable. Arguments that «Yankee ingenuity» is ebbing into oxymoron are ludicrous. They invite ridicule. So here it comes.

The evidence overwhelmingly suggests the only measurable «creativity crisis» America faces is an embarrassment of riches. We’re spoiled for choice. Continuar leyendo «The Creativity Crisis? What Creativity Crisis?»

Innovating your business model

Competition in industries is essentially competition between business models. A recent tweet by @TimKastelle which led to a post about the evolution of the business model concept reminded me of a great creative exercise to help you look at your and other industries dominant business model as a lego kit, which when broken apart can be reconnected like building blocks to create new types of business concepts.

Competition in industries is essentially competition between business models. A recent tweet by @TimKastelle which led to a post about the evolution of the business model concept reminded me of a great creative exercise to help you look at your and other industries dominant business model as a lego kit, which when broken apart can be reconnected like building blocks to create new types of business concepts. Continuar leyendo «Innovating your business model»

In Innovation, Culture Trumps! Learnings from P&G

Quick – what company do you think of when you hear «Open Innovation»? Many think of P&G – they were, and are, at the forefront of Open Innovation (OI) and the results are now case studies at business schools around the world and benchmarks for many. I had the chance to talk with Chris Thoen, P&G’s OI guru, at the 2nd Annual OI Summit. It seems that everyone has interviewed him and if you google him, you’ll find a lot of great learnings on how P&G has grown their OI initiatives and made it a part of their culture. Of course I wanted to ask him something original, so, being interesting in how we learn, and apply, from failure, I asked Chris what he thought was one of their key failures and what they learned from it. The answer surprised me.

Quick – what company do you think of when you hear «Open Innovation«? Many think of P&G – they were, and are, at the forefront of Open Innovation (OI) and the results are now case studies at business schools around the world and benchmarks for many. I had the chance to talk with Chris Thoen, P&G’s OI guru, at the 2^nd Annual OI Summit. It seems that everyone has interviewed him and if you google him, you’ll find a lot of great learnings on how P&G has grown their OI initiatives and made it a part of their culture. Of course I wanted to ask him something original, so, being interesting in how we learn, and apply, from failure, I asked Chris what he thought was one of their key failures and what they learned from it. The answer surprised me. Continuar leyendo

Invention is easy, Commercialization is hard!

Via http://www.mills-scofield.com/

Introducing the buyer-centric revolution

Beyond the organisation’s go-to-market goals and imperatives, marketing also makes a bigger, broader economic contribution. Every economy involves production and consumption; supply and demand. How well the economy works, however, doesn’t just depend on production prowess but on how well production and consumption/supply and demand are aligned. If you’re brilliant at supply, but you supply something for which there is no demand, then your production activities haven’t created wealth. They have created waste instead.

Ditto: if you have produced stuff people want but they can’t navigate their way to it, your efforts are as good as wasted. So the magic ingredients in any economic system are not production and consumption in isolation, but the alignment and navigation that bring them into line, in sync. Marketing’s broader economic contribution, then, is to ensure that production is a wealth creating rather than a waste creating activity. Pretty important in other words.

Now: a question. Who says it is the God-given right or duty of organisations to direct, manage and organise these economically critical tasks of alignment and navigation? The principle of alignment and navigation holds true whether it is carried out by producers (the source of supply), a third party such as a government, or the source of demand (‘the consumer’).

Reinventing marketing

Sometimes something is so obvious you don’t need to give it a second thought. It’s obvious for example that the sun orbits the earth and it’s obvious that the marketing is something that’s done by marketers who are employed by organisations to achieve the goals the organisation sets them.

Obvious perhaps, but sometimes the obvious hides a deeper not-so-obvious truth. To glimpse this deeper truth we first need to see how our initial assumption colours everything – everything – marketers do. If ‘marketing’ is done by marketers working for organisations then:

— the purpose of marketing: to help the organisation achieve its go-to-market goals.

— the processes marketers use – processes that help the organisation pursue its purpose, of course.

— the metrics marketers use to measure how well they are doing.

For any practitioner, this is a vast, rich and complex agenda. But as I’ve noted before, it’s also stunningly limited. So let’s step outside of it for just a moment. Continuar leyendo «Introducing the buyer-centric revolution»

Older Adults Nearly Double Social Media Presence [STATS]

A new study from Pew Internet found that between April 2009 and May 2010, social networking site usage grew 88% among Internet users aged 55-64, and the 65 and older group’s social networking presence grew 100% in the same time frame.

Young people still dominate social networks like Facebook (Facebook), but their usage only grew 13% during the year covered by Pew’s report. Older adults are catching up at an incredibly quick pace, though it remains to be seen whether they will pass the youth or hit a ceiling at or below the usage levels reported by young adults and teens.

Samuel Axon

Young people still dominate social networks like Facebook (), but their usage only grew 13% during the year covered by Pew’s report. Older adults are catching up at an incredibly quick pace, though it remains to be seen whether they will pass the youth or hit a ceiling at or below the usage levels reported by young adults and teens. Continuar leyendo «Older Adults Nearly Double Social Media Presence [STATS]»

Conducción y tecnología

Seguramente no llegará a ser una aplicación popular – la necesidad de calibrarlo cuidadosamente cada vez que se monta en el vehículo restringe su uso a quienes tienen un iPhone 3GS ocioso que utilizar de manera dedicada – pero es muy posible que estemos viendo el futuro cercano de los dispositivos electrónicos aplicados a la conducción de vehículos: una aplicación de realidad aumentada para iPhone, ImaGinyze Augmented Driving, que por $2.99 permite montar el iPhone en el parabrisas e interpreta los objetos que tiene ante sí, señalando los carriles, los obstáculos, los automóviles que tenemos delante, las distancias de seguridad en función de la velocidad a la que circulamos, etc. Continuar leyendo «Conducción y tecnología»

“Spicing” Up the Brand Personality

If you haven’t yet seen the Emmy winning Old Spice commercials in action and haven’t quoted the Old Spice Guy at least once in conversation over the past few months, you must be sleeping under a rock (well, okay, maybe only a few fanatics are actually quoting the commercials…).

Never-the-less, the Old Spice phenomenon has created a surge of conversation around virality and brand engagement with the online audience. But let’s talk about the brand personality, because – to me – that’s one of the main things that really made this campaign go big.

So, what makes a great brand personality? (let’s see)

by Kristin Parrish