Marketing | Advertising | Digital Media Thoughts and Observations

More Whole Foods

August 26, 2009

Here are five more reasons why Whole Foods isn't going to succumb to a boycott anytime soon, from Mashable, "5 Social Media Lessons Learned from Whole Foods," (http://bit.ly/mUpT5).

Wither Whole Foods?

August 26, 2009

Here's a thoughtful rant (if a rant can be thoughtful) on The Huffington Post by fellow Vermonter Rob Smart, "Is Whole Foods Losing Its Sustainable Luster" (http://bit.ly/RAwnT).

Rob's point is that Whole Foods CEO John Mackey's recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal (in case you missed it, http://bit.ly/12Dlpb) is a tempest in a teapot and that the real story is about "how a small, well-intentioned sustaintable food company lost its way." Maybe.

Clearly, Mackey took a risk criticizing ObamaCare and offering an alternative. He had to know that his "non-progressive" thoughts about health care would alienate his customer base. Yet he chose to be provocative and to advance the debate, even at the risk of damaging his company's hard-won network of passionate believers.

Despite the called-for boycott of Whole Foods, I doubt Mackey's op-ed will damage the brand. Whole Foods is too good at what it does and real foodies are going to be reluctant to avoid the Whole Foods groaning table.

My two cents. Yours?

Web 2.0, the Book

August 18, 2009

The dog days of summer are here so it's time to pick up a good read.

I just started Web 2.0 and Beyond by Tom Funk, published by Praeger. Funk has been on the front lines of ecommerce since 1995 and does an admirable job describing the wild, wild Web as it exists today. He even takes a stab at Web 3.0 in the last chapter.

Funk not only describes the ever-evolving Web, he puts recent developments, the mobile Web, for example, in context.

The book is a solid guide to the Web today. The challenge with a book like this, though, is that it's soon outdated. Read it now for maximum benefit.

Stat Stats

August 7, 2009

One of the most popular stories in this week's New York Times was about statistics. Really.

The gist of it was this: college students today should brush up on their statistics big time. Why? It's the future. I even sent a copy to my rising college senior son's iPhone.

The story got my attention for another reason. The advertising business has always had a quantitative dimension. Think media metrics and brand tracking studies, for example. But the emergence of digital media and all its associated metrics has upped the statistical ante. Tomorrow's marketing and advertising leaders are likely to be quant jocks not creative stars or brand gurus. Or so it seems.

You can read the complete story, "For Today's Graduate, Just One Word: Statistics," to draw your own conclusions (http://bit.ly/cQNtv).

Seth Wisdom

August 3, 2009

A few more words of wisdom from marketing guru and blogger Seth Godin (http://bit.ly/13oZQf).