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Innovation

Kenan Samms

Three Companies that Started down the Trust Path with Customers First

They do it by talking about and engaging with topics and content that will make their customers smarter. Or they share tidbits that are fun and engaging, and share the love. These are the secrets of successful corporate blogs - and ...READ»

Kenan Samms

Five Companies that Fix their Story to Inspire Service

Branding as a strategy means little if the customer experience is not there. If your story doesn’t align with what you do, all of the clever tactics you can come up with to follow your lofty goal will not make the cut.Unless you can ...READ»

Kenan Samms

Would CPG Brands Compete with their Own Channels for Customers?

AdAge writes an interesting article about going beyond online ads to eCommerce opportunities for CPG brands. Will it pay off? Services are easier to deliver online. A few product dot-bombs in the early 2000s made us keenly aware of ...READ»

Kenan Samms

Customer Issues and the Bottom Line

Many marketers spend a considerable amount of time calculating the ROI of campaigns by looking at cost per lead (CPL) or Web conversion numbers. You are probably quite smart yourself to the ways of lead nurturing and its importance in ...READ»

Kenan Samms

Innovation and Failure

There is a good relationship between innovation and failure. As Monica Harrington shares, Microsoft Bob gave plenty of very smart people a run for their money - and lessons to take to their next project.   Those are familiar ...READ»

Kenan Samms

Mad Men and Trust Agents

They’re at the opposite ends of the conversation spectrum. The show context is that of media and advertising, two areas that are undergoing rapid change - some would call it a decline. Mad Men captivated the public’s imagination ...READ»

Kenan Samms

Fluency in Customer Conversation is a Key Business Driver

There is a reason why this publication is called Fast Company. The US has an even shorter attention span than many places I’ve had the fortune of spending time in. I’ve been writing about customer conversation here for more than ...READ»

Kenan Samms

How to Give Your Company Service Deadlines

Usually it’s the customers who give you deadlines - and sometimes ultimatums - on service. Needing something done by, support within “x” time, service at “y” time and place. What would happen if you turned that concept on ...READ»

Kenan Samms

How you can get the Most out of Customer Service

We spend so much time talking about how to improve customer service that I thought one post on how to improve customer attitude would be time well spent. If you think about it, we call a customer support line only when we have a ...READ»

Kenan Samms

How to Map to the Social Media Engagement Profile of Your Customers

You probably already know that Forrester’s social technographics profile can help you analyze the social profile of your customer base. As authors Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li explain in the book Groundswell, people increasingly use ...READ»

Kenan Samms

How to Answer the Social Phone

It seems that if there are many ways to listen in the social Web, there are also many reasons with the ways to answer. Tom Asacker puts it well, we define ourselves both according to what we identify with and what we reject, and given ...READ»

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iDate Internet Dating Conference

This conference makes us think of those happy couples in the eHarmony ads (gag), but the side of Internet dating that most of us don't see is actually the most financially successful. The biggest casual-fling sites, such as Adult ...READ»

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World Economic Forum Annual Meeting

Hello, home-court advantage! According to new data from the World Economic Forum, Switzerland -- which hosts the WEF's annual meeting -- has the most competitive economy in the world, besting the second-ranked United States, which had ...READ»

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Cattle Industry Annual Convention and Trade Show

Beef lovers, take note: The 6,000 ranchers at this bovine confab may not look like power brokers, but they're ultimately in charge of a $76 billion industry -- and the products that land on your plates. Lately, they worry, too little ...READ»

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Sundance Film Festival

When the Sundance Film Festival started in 1985, it was rare for independent directors to have their films picked up by major studios. Not anymore, and in recent years the festival has acquired a more mainstream Hollywood vibe, ...READ»

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National Pavement Expo

For the 2,000 attendees at this annual road show, the recession could have been one giant pothole. "When the economy goes bad, the guys who usually work on highways and state roads step down into the smaller pavement markets, so ...READ»

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American Idol Season 9

In its eighth season, the television juggernaut that is American Idol brought in an incredible $850 mil-lion in advertising revenue and attracted a Nielsen-topping 27 million viewers per episode. The bad news: Ad revenue was ...READ»

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Consumer Electronics Show

Every year, thousands of geeks gather in Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show, the world's largest consumer technology trade show. This year's keynote speakers feature regulars such as Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer ...READ»

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BCS National Championship Game

America hates the Bowl Championship Series. Even its fans acknowledge that college football still doesn't have fair postseason matchups, and President Obama has called for an eight-team playoff, saying he's "fed up" with the ...READ»

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National Candy Cane Day

Sweet-toothed consumers will spend $214 million on candy canes this holiday season -- 2 billion of them in all. Sales are expected to be up 2% over last year -- growth that Dylan Lauren, founder of the New York sugar palace ...READ»

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10th Anniversary of Chinese Sovereignty in Macau

After nearly 500 years as a Portuguese colony, Macau returned to Chinese rule in 1999. The territory has always technically been connected to China -- it is, after all, primarily a peninsula -- but in other ways, the two are worlds ...READ»

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National Regifting Day

Two points about regifting: First, if Jacqueline Onassis did it, how tacky could it be? In 1971, she gave her second husband, Aristotle Onassis, a watch once owned by JFK that had been a gift from a socialite couple. It was ...READ»

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Avatar

According to Hollywood hype, James Cameron's Avatar -- a blockbuster tale pitting blue, loincloth-clad aliens against human invaders -- will kick-start the 3-D age of film. But if the Titanic director's sci-fi ...READ»

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World Anti-Aging Congress

With 77 million boomers marching toward early-bird specials and Viagra-fueled nights, the anti-aging business is ... booming. But let's look past the (wrinkle-free) surface of the $56 billion industry: The real growth has been in ...READ»

Expo! Expo!
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Expo! Expo! 2009

If you're wondering why the International Association of Exhibitions and Events stages an event about staging events, you're not alone. "I've tried explaining it to my elderly mother," says IAEE president Steven Hacker. "She never ...READ»

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