Why It's So Important to Be Likeable on Facebook, and How to Do It

Aquent talks with Dave Kerpen, CEO, Likeable Media and Author of Like is the new link and the only choice is to be likeable.

Social Media: The Marketer’s Challenge

Over the last few years, the use of social media has been a hot topic, and one that has generated more questions but few answers. Aquent recently conducted a study to understand marketers’ uses of and challenges with social media. The study found that marketers realize that social media is an important part of their overall strategy, but that many struggle to find optimal ways to use it.

Managing Global Marketing Execution: A Core Competency

As products, market segments, and marketing messages proliferate globally, marketers face the hallenge of how to execute strategies that consistently communicate core product benefits in a manner that reflects local needs, competitive environments, and cultural preferences. What we have found in working with companies on global execution of marketing materials is that the key success factors are:

• Driving execution with a clear communication strategy and brand standards
• Controlling your own brand assets
• Managing a set of internal and external execution resources
• Measuring and auditing the results

The Business Case for Marketing Resource Management (MRM): Increasing ROI Through More Efficient Use of Marketing Resources

The marketing landscape has changed dramatically in recent years, and marketers are taking full advantage of new media channels, segmentation strategies, and capabilities to produce an everexpanding volume of work. To keep pace with escalating demands on their time, people, and budgets, marketing executives are investigating marketing resource management (MRM) solutions. An MRM solution that includes best-in-class software, process changes, and measurement tools can have a profound impact on such critical areas as planning, production management, workflow, and reporting. By automating and streamlining day-to-day operations, an MRM solution helps marketing departments work smarter and more efficiently.

Successful Creative Briefs: Linking Business Objectives and Creative Strategies

Call them what you will—“creative briefs,” “design briefs,” “marketing briefs,” “communications briefs,” or even “objectives and strategies statements”—the actual name is less important than helping creative and marketing professionals to fully understand and appreciate their potential value to any design initiative within your organization. Many designers and their clients have yet to completely embrace the creative brief as a vital part of the design process to share valuable information, build consensus, align expectations, and set clear objectives. This paper details how to create successful briefs and provides samples.

Having worked with hundreds of creative professionals to hone their business skills in order to improve communications and relationships between them and their clients, I am confident that the creative brief—when properly developed and adhered to—is one of the most valuable tools in the design process, providing a vital connection between business objectives and creative strategies. For clients, account managers, and creatives, a clear and well-prepared design brief can help make a project, just as a long-winded and unfocused brief can lead to its ultimate demise. While briefs should be customized to each individual discipline, company, and project, there are some common techniques that you can use to help ensure that your organization is not only creating impactful briefs, but is also getting the most out of them.

Ensuring Product Launch Success: The Often-Overlooked Role of Marketing Execution

Each year, companies launch more than 30,000 new products and services. Of these, marketing experts estimate that 70 percent fail within two years. When new product launches fail, they sometimes do so for a variety of strategic reasons, from flawed market research to poor product development to a bad distribution strategy.  Often, the failure of the launch is in the marketing execution: inconsistent product messaging, delayed sales-force collateral, and embarrassing flops at promotional events.  Execution problems can be attributed to the lack of an effective product launch marketing infrastructure. Few companies have a flexible and scalable infrastructure specifically for the management of marketing initiatives tied to product launches.

The Pragmatic Recession: what’s different this time around?

Ask experts and economic laymen alike in North America about the 2009 recession and you are likely to get more differing opinions than you will know what to do with. The newly inaugurated Obama administration is actively managing expectations, citing that it is “going to get worse before it gets better” and that the economic hardship “will take time, perhaps many years.” On the other hand, the Canadian central bank’s chief, Governor Mark Carney, just last week suggested a shorter duration than this and pointed to a milder recovery afterwards than experienced in previous recessions. With so many disparate positions over the severity and duration of this downturn, it seems at least one pattern has emerged creating common ground among many—the characteristics of this recession are very different than those of past incarnations.

Where You Stand Depends on Where You Sit:A Contextual Assessment of Marketing Challenges, Compensation, and Job Satisfaction

It’s not easy being in marketing management today. A dramatic shift in the marketing landscape—increased globalization, multiple media platforms, an explosion of market segments—has coincided with an uncertain economy and shifting organizational dynamics. Marketers at all levels of the organization are faced with enormous strategic and tactical challenges, but their views of these challenges are colored by where they are within the marketing profession hierarchy. Not surprisingly, marketing professionals’ sense of personal satisfaction with their jobs and their ensuing compensation align directly with their level of achievement and tenure in the profession.

Powerful Content Resources: A Short E-book Full of Links and Information About the Digital Media Content Business

This collection of tips and best practices will help you make your content a powerful asset for your organization. The resources, links, and recommendations in this document will be helpful to creative and technical professionals who work with digital media content assets such as text, videos, illustrations, photos, and sound.

Managing Co-employment Risk When Using a Staffing Agency

Co-employment is an important issue for any company using long-term contractors.¹ In 2000, Microsoft’s $97 million settlement for benefits liability to the contract workers who provided services from 1987 to 2000 raised co-employment awareness nationally. To limit exposure to co-employment benefits risk, companies have enacted various policies for using contractors such as placing time limits on their use, rotating staffing firms, etc.

However, these policies don’t get to the crux of the co-employment issue, but rather, underserve the companies that need long term contractors. A solid understanding of both co-employment and how to work with a staffing firm to best handle this issue is an important step in managing risk.

This paper will address these points by defining co-employment and co-employment liability as they relate to benefits, discussing the implications of the Microsoft case, and suggesting ways to lessen co- employment risk when using a staffing agency.