Read the ful article from Forbes.com

Here is our latest spot for Pick Up Stix. It hit the air this week! See if you can catch it on TV.

After 20 years in this business, here’s what I know: There’s nothing more important than being able to communicate your ideas in front of a group. It might be across a conference table and it might be in a more formal environment in a review or client presentation. It’s perilous. You’ve spent all this time preparing and you know if you can’t engage your audience, make your point with passion and come across as a smart, likable person, you probably won’t get what you came for. This is a great story about how Steve Jobs does it. We can all learn something here!

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=8655775

Social networking won’t save you, but that doesn’t mean it should be ignored or go unused. The truth is, going to social networks to revitalize your brand probably won’t work on its own. Just because you can make small talk with your consumers, share some fun photos, and tweet until you’re blue in the face doesn’t mean your brand will become as good as gold. Yes, connecting via social marketing efforts is good, and you should do it, but don’t put all your hopes in this vast new and ever changing world. Obviously there have been brands who have had great success on the social fronts and have made some notable waves (Virgin America, Dunkin’ Donuts) but the majority of brands today have to use multiple channel and many layers to truly create a buzz.

Here’s what you should know about social marketing - it’s changing the way consumers think about brands and how they relate to them. It seems that each of our lives so are wrapped up in this world of social networks that whatever we do, whatever we say, whatever we buy, those become part of who we are, part of our web identity. If you only drink a certain brand of liquor, or only fly on a certain airline, or wear a particular clothing line, those things come through on social networks and the brand becomes part of your image.

From a marketing perspective, it is important to approach social marketing with the goal of connecting to the consumers lifestyle, not just trying to make as many friends as possible or create a viral buzz. Those are great for the short-term, but if you want to be ahead of the curve and remembered in the long-term, it’s time to start thinking about connecting on a personal level with consumers, they’ll return by promoting your brand through their own web identities. Networks will change, but the ground work has been laid that is changing the way consumers look at brands, advertising, and in which brands they will give loyalty to.

How much would you pay to have consumers seek your brand out, give you their email addresses and full names, and the have them tell nearly 1 million of their friends to do the same?

Restaurant chain, TGI Friday’s, is now on the tail-end of their subtly ambitious Facebook campaign designed to do just that, and they’ve succeeded. It’s a modern day word-of-mouth effort that started with a seemingly normal Facebook member, simply known as Woody. The young twenty-something began to tell as many people as he could on Facebook that if he were to get more than half-a-million fans before the end of September, that TGI Friday’s would agree to give those people a free burger. Now it’s clear that this “Woody” has been in on the whole thing from the beginning, just take a look at his interest and date of birth on his Facebook profile. But there is something interesting about the rapid success of this campaign - truly viral.

In just over two weeks, 875,371 Facebook users became fans and registered their email addresses and names with Woody to receive a free burger (since this was posted, that number has increased by 132). Users didn’t just stop there, they’ve created 46 separate discussion board topics, added 233 photos and posted over 250,000 wall comments. Simply said, they’ve done more than what’s required to get a free burger, they’ve become involved, contributed, and told their friends.

TGI Friday’s has struggled with its brand image. They’ve been viewed as dated, out-of-touch, and sleepy, but come October 1st when all the free burger vouchers hit email inboxes, you better believe that TGI Friday’s across the nation will be full of a younger, more social demographic. Hopefully they’ll be able to make a good impression and keep these twenty-somethings coming back.

A few weeks back, I mentioned premium brands - how premium brands can maintain a premium image in a down economy. Some of these brands have decided to give special deals and run limited promotions to stay afloat, but not Restoration Hardware - they are premium to the bitter end.

This week, Restoration Hardware will raise retail prices around 25% on average across their entire line of home furnishings in an effort to say, “We are premium!”

After seeing a near 20% drop in sales, a reflection of the down housing market, the strategy is to boost the brands reputation of quality craftsmanship and boost the price to match the quality. There is a fear across the industry about devaluation of brands, one that Restoration Hardware hopes to fight by building a campaign around design, the highest quality materials, and a relaxed high-end luxury.

To do this, Restoration Hardware has changed their media plan and will now be running ads in luxury publications like Architectural Digest, Haute Living, and Vanity Fair. The direct marketing efforts are changing too. Restoration Hardware is famous in the industry for their seasonal catalogs, and now they will be getting an upgrade - higher quality paper, full bleed, and unique page sizes will feature designers and their products carried by the home furnishings retailer.

So will it work? This new strategy will either push the brand to new heights and place it in the realm of Baker Furniture and Karges, or it will result in self inflicted brand death. There will always be a market for high-end products, but Restoration Hardware has not built its success on just well-to-do consumers, and this strategy may alienate one of the core targets. Even CMO, Ian Sears, suggests that if this radical approach doesn’t work, he’ll likely be out of a job without much delay. We’ll just have to wait to see how the brand does through the holiday season in to the new year!

Get the whole article on Ad Age: http://adage.com/abstract.php?article_id=137647

The viability of social networks has been in question since the beginning of their existence. How can they be monetized? Will they be self-sustaining? The largest social network, Facebook, is answering with positive cash-flow.

Social networks, especially the larger ones, have a unique set of problems. They offer services to users free-of-charge, which means they must provide the storage space and bandwidth for all the candid photos, “I love you” messages, and karaoke videos. In turn, these networks hope to generate revenues by selling highly contextualized ad space. But success has been limited simply because network membership has increased far more rapidly than these sites can sell ads.

Facebook, however, is finally getting results. “It’s certainly meaningful to show that this is absolutely the real deal. Facebook is executing. People are spending money on the site,” said Broadpoint Amtech analyst Ben Schachter.

Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg explained at his keynote presentation this week that this news will allow Facebook to be a “strong independent service for the long term.”

Just like every other business, Facebook depends on user and advertiser engagement. The services that Facebook now offers have become popular and unique enough for users to now spend more time on Facebook than any other social network, which has clearly been grabbing the attention of not just big budgeted marketers, but smaller ones who are also looking to connect.

This week, Kronos Inc. reported some good news that may point to economic recovery, but shows that we have a long road ahead.

According to job data analyzed by Kronos Inc., retailers increased the number of new hires by 0.25% from just seven months ago, hiring nearly 3% of those who applied for a position. Still, retail hiring rates are half of what they were in 2006, but at least the signs of recovery are appearing.

While this is commonly one of the most important factors that will show recovery because our economy is built on consumer spending, this data also indicates that discount retailers are hiring the largest percentage of applicants, showing that while consumers are spending again, they are spending less and their habits may have changed for the long-term.

With the coming holiday season, retailers typically bolster up their sales and customer service staffs, which may cloud the true state of retail well-being. A better understanding of the retail environment can be expected this next month when retailers begin to higher seasonal staff.