I Love New York

My friend Hilarie Cutler, living in Stockholm, asked a question on her Facebook page: does New York miss me? Here is my response -

Here’s what I believe about the city that never sleeps: it never forgets. New York is not a regular city. It is a living, breathing organism that is made up of every person that ever came there and was touched by it. They all (we all) made a mark on her just as she left her mark on us. You’ll know this when you go back again because she will welcome you with open arms. She will look different but will feel familiar and comfortable – like going to visit a favorite cousin you haven’t seen in years.
New York: bagles, pizza, bars, neighborhoods, hot dogs, street vendors, buildings, shops, rush hour, subways, artists and poets – it just gets into your soul and it sticks. If you don’t feel that then you never will and New York won’t care – it will just say thanks for stopping by and come visit again some time when you have some cash. But if you love it it will always love you back.

The Future of Marketing Now

The world of advertising and marketing is a perpetual state of chaos. You can get dizzy from all the spinning. Does anyone really know where the trends are leading us? People write books about it but if you’ve ever read those books you’d quickly realize that they are 90% bullshit (the legendary Faith Popcorn comes to mind). Technology changes faster than a blink and with technology, the media minds shift so that the only thing you can be sure of is that you just can’t be sure of anything.

Today Google is the top dog. Tomorrow? Who the hell knows? TV and print, while maybe not dead, are going through such cyclonic changes that nothing is as it seems it was only a year ago. Can you believe that Newsweek may be going out of business? Holy cow!

The Internet has changed everything of course. It has effected TV and print media mostly. Viewing and reading habits are forever changed. Ironically, the one type of media  that hasn’t been affected much is good old fashioned radio. Radio may be old technology but it has a steady, captive audience - mostly riding around in cars.

The trend that has become obvious to me is that today the database is everything. With a large, accurate demographic specific database you can get your message out to whoever you need to get it to - faster, cheaper and more directly than just about any other way available today. Just look what Obama was able to do by mastering the Internet.  Database marketing is right now where the future is going.

 The thing is, very few people are really on to the power of database marketing. It’s not sexy. It’s been the balliwick of a lot of entrepreneurs, multi-level scammers and a few direct marketing pioneers. But most small to mid-sized businesses haven’t caught on yet because they don’t really understand it. And I imagine there is some fear of anti-spamming laws that would keep people from exploring the benefits of this method of outreach. Let me tell you though, database marketing  is going to replace most forms of direct response advertising in the not too distant future.

There are smart small businesses out there collecting massive amounts of customer data and using it to reach millions of people who they would not ordinarily be able to reach due to cost and scale. Experts who specialize in SEO strategies designed to strategically increase database size are going to be making a killing.

Want to make your business grow? Want to have a business? This is the way to go. More later.

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