By Francis Moran
It’s Super Bowl weekend, that time of year when a very large swath of North America — and even some of the rest of the world — tunes in to see a once-a-year clash of multimillion-dollar Goliaths fighting it out in a no-holds-barred battle. There will be drama. There will be pathos. There will be unexpectedly brilliant plays. There will be dismal and desperate failures. There will almost certainly be scantily clad young women cavorting about.
There will also be a football game, but that doesn’t really interest me. The spectacle that I and many marketers will tune in to see is the annual showdown of Super Bowl ads.
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By Daylin Mantyka
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are Techvibes, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post and copyblogger.
Startup Financing: There’s More Than One Way to Skin a Cat
One anonymous angel with a self-admitted “chip on my shoulder” provides their opinion on pay-to-pitch investment conferences.
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By Leo Valiquette
There was an interesting story in the Globe and Mail last week that got me thinking about the distinction between product marketing and brand marketing.
The Globe’s Susan Krashinsky was writing about Newfoundland and Labrador’s tourism industry and how the province’s efforts to brand itself with a memorable advertising campaign has provoked the best form of flattery possible – plagiarism.
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By Bob Bailly
Over the holidays, I was looking for a present for my wife and found myself checking out a pre-Christmas sale at a local department store. During my time at the mall I was bombarded with generic Christmas music everywhere I went. Despite my urge to gag at the arrangements, when I was absorbed in the purer business of shopping, I actually caught myself singing along to several of the tunes.
At a cerebral level, listening to the musical pap made me feel like just another cranky holiday shopper, but deep down it was making me happy. Recognizing that I was being manipulated by these businesses in a subtle way got me once again thinking about the impact music has, or can have, on our behaviour. I’ve also been intrigued by my 21-month-old grandson’s fascination with music and rhythm. These things led me to revisit some research I did a couple of years ago on the affects that music can have on education.
Bottom line, music does help wire the brain, and the potential use in our lives is beyond measure.
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By Leo Valiquette
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are TechCrunch, Polaris Venture Partners, Pando Daily, Gust and MarketingSherpa.
Median angel deal size rises as startups look for more runway amid a series A bottleneck
TechCrunch’s Kim-Mai Cutler writes about how the median size of angel deals rose to $640,000 in the third quarter of last year – a five-quarter high – as startups looked for more runway amid a bottleneck for Series A rounds. Silicon Valley Bank partnered with data company CB Insights and the Angel Resource Institute to survey different angel groups about activity in the fall of last year.
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