Louis Halpern's View on Internet & Hotel Marketing

As everyone grapples with Web 2.0, mobile marketing/J2ME, blogging and user-generated content along with a host of other new digital applications, sneaking up almost unnoticed is the next new phenomenon, virtual worlds.

Virtual worlds are websites where people, in the form of avatars, live much like they do in the real world. They socialise, build homes, buy clothes and possessions but without the restrictions of a physical body or gravity. Many digital consumers are now spending hours upon hours in what is a ring fenced synthetic world.

Figures for the phenomenon are breathtaking. Second Life, which along with There.com and Warcraft is one of the leading virtual worlds, boasts one million signed up members with thousands online at any one time. This…

During the summer of 2006 every person in Malmaison’s database received an email. It was a simple, uncluttered message dominated by an eye-catching image. At first glance, the sight of beautiful dandelion seeds drifting sedately into a deep blue sky no doubt soothed a few minds and brightened the day for many. Then something happened. The ‘delete’ button didn’t get pressed. Instead, heads leaned closer to monitors, eyes widened and eyebrows were raised

Those weren’t ordinary dandelion seeds. They were transforming. They were subtly turning into something else: the Malmaison logo.

Bold design, an unusual visual element and Malmaison’s strong brand identity were combined to deliver exactly the kind of twist their target audience has come to expect from this innovative company.…

A little bit about my posts to date:

Mobile firms miss a trick – UK mobile phone operators take anywhere between 40-60% of revenue on mobile marketing campaigns – a significant barrier to any progressive marketers wanting to embrace the format. more…

Evaluating integrated communications – Marketers’ mindsets will need to change before integrated campaign evaluation takes an equal seat alongside planning, strategy, creative, etc. Data quality available to marketers today is such that those brands and agencies who embrace this information will gain a notable competitive advantage. Likewise, those that don’t pay attention to the data now available will suffer accordingly. more…

Media owners of the future – The fragmentation of traditional media was already an unstoppable process a decade ago. Now there’s no doubt…

The evaluation of integrated campaigns is a topic rarely looked at by the mainstream marketing press. Flick through the pages of Campaign, Marketing, Marketing Week or niche publications like New Media Age and barely a nod is cast in the direction of campaign evaluation. Why? It’s simply assumed and taken for granted that campaign evaluation ‘works’. After all, each marketing channel has its own tried and tested method of measuring effectiveness and verifying ROI.

To most commentators schooled in their various areas of marketing expertise, it would seem that all is rosy in the land of campaign evaluation. Of course, to some extent it is but wait, what happens when the optimum marketing solution is an integrated campaign that involves nine…

Whilst the fragmentation of traditional media was already an unstoppable process a decade ago, there is no doubt that the digital revolution has added its own mix of rocket fuel which is becoming more potent with every technological advance. We’ve become a fractile society of individuals in a way that, as Lord Rees Mogg asserts in “The Sovereign Individual”, could eventually even undermine the power of nation states themselves. It will demand a radical re-assessment of the world we live in and the way that as humans we interact with each other.

As part of these seismic trends, marketers are ill-prepared for the changes in media that now loom on the horizon, all driven by the very industry we work in.…