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 Denzil Doyle
A few years ago, a group of hockey enthusiasts from southwestern Ontario embarked on an ambitious campaign to establish an NHL hockey club in their area. A nasty comment that went around at the time was that it would never happen because if it did, Toronto would want one as well.
That joke came to mind when I was asked to comment on the enthusiasm for the MaRS Centre, a Toronto-based innovation centre, only this time the shoe is on the other foot; MaRS appears to be a successful business accelerator that is being emulated across the country. In fact, it appears to have been looked at in some detail by the people who played a key role in the planning of the Ottawa Innovation Centre, to be located at the Bayview yards area.
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By Francis Moran
This is a word cloud of the more than 200 blog posts we published here in 2012. In one fell swoop, it graphically illustrates our preoccupations over the past year, the subject matter we returned to time and again as we looked at the unique challenges of bringing technology to market.
Not surprisingly, the most frequently mentioned word — and by a significant margin — in all our content last year was”marketing.” We are, after all, marketing strategists, and we created this blog as a resource where technology companies, both startups and more established ventures, could find solid counsel on how to master this mix of art and science. This will continue to be our main focus this coming year.
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By Leo Valiquette
Though we took our usual holiday break in December, we still covered a lot of ground on the blog during the month. Scotland’s startup scene, the unintended consequences of Canada’s Scientific Research and Experimental Development tax credit program, and practical pointers for handing off a content marketing program were among the many topics we covered.
In case you missed any of it, here is a handy recap of our posts, as ranked by the enthusiasm of our readers:
Dec. 5: It’s that time again to put life and work in perspective, by Leo Valiquette
Dec. 12: Don’t spit your PR effort into the wind, by Leo Valiquette
Dec. 6: SR&ED and the law of unintended consequences, by Francis Moran
Dec. 20: Is this my very last blog post?, by Francis Moran
Dec. 3: Lessons from Project Glass: Why embracing technology is not optional, by Megan Totka
Dec. 17: Commercializing research in Scotland, by Maurice Smith
Dec. 4: Top 10 questions every strategic communicator should ask, by Caroline Kealey
Dec. 10: Apple versus Samsung: Samsung’s ‘out’ to escape infringement, by David French
Dec. 11: A timely post about succession planning in content marketing, by Alexandra Reid
Dec. 13: Content is the sun around which all else revolves, by Francis Moran
Dec. 19: Businesses must think like publishers, says C.C. Chapman, by Alexandra Reid
Dec. 18: Data mining, DNA or otherwise, no substitute for real customer dialogue, by Leo Valiquette
By Leo Valiquette
I trust everyone has had a happy holiday season, even — dare I say it — a merry Christmas. It’s now back to work with depleted bank accounts, expanded waistlines and perhaps a few stories to share from another mad shopping season.
We all do it in some fashion – hunt for the bargains that begin popping up ere the break of dawn on Black Friday south of the border. Midnight Madness and the Pre-Boxing Day Blowout now rival the traditional Boxing Day bonanza, while post-holiday sales continue to creep further and further into January as retailers attempt to keep the tills ringing.
When confronted by packed parking lots and long lineups, it is often easy to focus on the price of the prize in hand and forget that the root of any successful customer experience begins with service. Granted, working retail is no cake walk during the holidays and many customers can be faulted for a lack of common courtesy or holiday cheer. But as is the case with the sale of any product or service, it is the responsibility of the vendor or retailer to give the customer what they want and, if circumstances warrant, take the time to learn about their needs and respond to them.
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