Bayard Brewin

Bayard Brewin
Bayard Brewin

Director of Market Strategy

Oddly obsessed with the intersection of policy, media, message and meaning. (Hey, some people have ESPN. To each his own.)

November 17 2011
Marketing and Social media

Social Marketing is Strategy. Social Media is Id. (Part I)

by Bayard Brewin on the topics of and

When marketing practitioners discuss the tools of the trade amongst ourselves, we usually manage to keep the customer in mind. We do care about the fact that someone has to earn the money we spend, and we need to produce measurable results. To get there, we may recommend a certain level of print or online investment to get certain shares of voice, or certain mixes of tactics to get viral effects. But we also know clients have budget, culture and operation limits that can make these targets impossible. Those limits can force us to re-focus tactics around events (like tradeshows) or calendar cycles (like peak quarters) that tend to drive sales outcomes.

August 10 2011
2011 trends and Social media

Rethinking The Customer When Economics Turn Extreme

by Bayard Brewin on the topics of and

When you’re launching a new product or service, parked in your head is a pretty clear picture of your customer – where they live and work, what they eat and wear, even how they shop. You craft elaborate plans to convert their needs into action, based on what you think is sound research and solid process.

But what happens when your customer changes in unexpected ways? What do you do when recession forces you to rethink who they are – especially when their new home isn’t home at all?

April 6 2011
Branding and Marketing

Epsilon, Email and Epiphanies on Direct Marketing

by Bayard Brewin on the topics of and

While you were sleeping, the email marketing world turned last week – and it’s not welcome news for purveyors of mass customer contact.

Around the end of March, unknown intruders gained access to servers at Epsilon, the world’s largest email service provider. Among the data harvested in this attack were millions of end-customer names and email addresses from blue-chip marketers like Amazon, Best Buy, Capital One, Citigroup, Hilton, Marriott, TiVo, US Bank, and Walt Disney.

It took several days for Epsilon to identify the intrusion, days more before an accurate list of affected clients was publicly available, and still more before each of those marketers contacted their customers. During this period, speculation in trade and general press ran rampant, but the affected parties (clearly listening to their legal counsels) were largely silent.

Whether you’re a marketer or an interactive creative, here are the big questions you’re now facing:

March 31 2011
Branding and Social media

Aligning your online persona with offline audiences

by Bayard Brewin on the topics of and

 

What happens when your social media effort is true to your brand, but betrays your environment?
 
That was the larger – and mostly unanswered – question posed earlier this month at SXSWi 2011, when social media coordinators from Greenpeace and PETA led a panel on Hashtag Takeovers (the tactic of activating large numbers of your followers to spam a third-party Twitter hashtag, with the intent of changing its original context). The speakers’ intention was to show what they considered innovative strategies for disrupting corporate social media campaigns, and leveraging that messaging against itself for top-of-mind awareness. Within 20 minutes, they got a taste of their own medicine…

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