Tesar-Reynes

News of GM’s impeding collapse dominated headlines yesterday. The question for me is: Is this a failure to market or a failure to create a quality product?

My solution, from a marketing standpoint, is to focus on one thing: price. Like I wrote last week, consumers are concerned primarily with value in our stumbling economy.

While viewing a CNN piece on the state of GM, I found it interesting that during a commercial break a 30 second GM spot aired. It was typical of American car commercials: electric guitar in the background, an over-excited voice bragging about dealer financing. Do these advertisers really …

With the holidays around the corner, how will advertisers counter effects of a slumping economy in the most important shopping season of the year?

According to a Times article today, it all comes down to one word – price.

The article talks about how consumer psychology is changing. Nowadays buyers are skipping “luxury” items from Macy’s in favor of the practical buy from Wal-Mart. When you’re constantly bombarded with messages of a slumping economy, it makes you think twice about reaching for that $100 sweater from Ralph Lauren.

Consider Tim Calkins opinion, a professor of marketing at …

I have a big stack of things that I’ve cut out, written down, or saved for future blog posts. When I am not inspired to write, I dive into this stack for some ideas. Thus I found a thought-provoking article in an old issue of Ad Week that I thought was worth commenting on.

The headline was “The Digital Skills Jobseekers Need to Survive Now.” The article describes five personality traits that help contribute in a digital perspective. The first is the hacker, who is capable of going into a site figuring out how it actually works. They may also contribute code to make it better.

The second is the technologically curious, a person who doesn’t write the code, but will nonetheless go into a place and rummage around to figure out how …

In tough times, job cutbacks are inevitable.  Having lived through some myself,  here are some suggestions to keep your job.

1.  Follow the money.

If possible try and work on an account or brand that has relatively consistent spending.  Areas such as health care, manufacturing and certain business services fall into this category.

2. Work for a winner.

There are certain golden people in the office that everyone knows are the stars.  If cutbacks occur, they will not be affected nor will the people who work for them.

3. Get credit for your work.

It is wonderful to be a team player, but make sure that people know what are the individual contributions you have made to the organization.

4. Nurture your network.

Make sure you grow and contact your network of friends, …

I woke up the other night in a cold sweat about the economy and the
consequence for me and my family. This was not the first time and I’m
pretty sure this won’t be the last of these occurrences.

So I’m wide awake and walk down to the basement where my office is located. I have a little ritual for fear spasms like this:

1) The first is to realize that I have survived the downturn of 1970, 1980, 1982, 1990, the Dot Com bust and 9/11.

2) The second is to catalog worst case scenarios for me and my family and the likelihood of any of them happening.

3) The third is to focus on the Serenity Prayer and figure out what I can and can’t control.

4) The fourth is …

Tony forwarded an article to me the other day called “War of the Ages – how a host of new agency realities are pushing boomers out before their time.”

The article talks about how older (read 40-60 year old) executives are being pushed out of ad agencies because of their lack of digital experience.

Ageism, as the article states, is becoming a real problem. There are two sides to this argument, I suppose.

On the one hand, it’s the fault of executives who are not adapting to the times. As people of digital disciplines become more relevant, you can’t blame agencies for placing more value on that skill set.

On the other hand, while agencies are profiting from digital advertisers, they are losing the years of client management experience and long-term …

Moving is one of my most despised events.  We just moved our office, two blocks from 500 N. Michigan Ave to 333 N. Michigan Ave.

It was a very emotional move for me; we’d been at that same address and phone number since 1983.  Every dent in the wall, every discoloration in the carpet generated some sort of memory.  That was the address where we bought our first computer.  That was the place where we had our first $1 million year.  That was the first place where our database went over 10,000 people.  That was also the address where we survived three recessions.

We ended up moving because the rents in the …

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I swear my heart drops every time I read one of these articles. Wednesday the Times printed the results of a consumer confidence survey. The survey recorded its worst reading in 16 years.

And in the Tribune, Gail MarksJarvis wrote in article headlined, “Confidence in consumers on the wane”, citing results from a Redbook survey.

Does this make the marketer’s job harder? Of course. But how does it effect the job market in the …