Mobile is the hot new shopping device. But many retailers still think of it as just another communications tool or an element of a multichannel marketing campaign. Rather it’s where people go to accomplish everyday tasks with more ease and choice than was possible in the pre-Internet world. By virtue of living in the pockets and purses of consumers, mobile has become the always-on concierge of the modern day retail environment. The difference between a mobile strategy that sells and one that stumbles is simply how well it serves customers. More »

It used to be that marketing was relatively straightforward: to sell a product, you run an ad campaign; to build a brand, you run an ad campaign. By the 1990s, marketers had not only become obsessed with buying advertising, they had gotten very good at it, and used it well to build global brands like Marlboro and Coca-Cola. But today, the web has infiltrated our daily lives, leaving marketers with a very different and much more difficult job. More »

Marketers are wasting millions of dollars by failing to apply what works in digital marketing to their mobile initiatives. Here's how to stop the bleeding. More »

Twenty years after the Internet first went mainstream, most businesses have yet to take full advantage of the most fundamental opportunity it has created for them. Thanks to digital media, companies can create their own relationships with consumers at incredible scale--and they can use the data from these interactions to build better products, produce more effective marketing and, ultimately, make their customers happier. More »

If you think about the history of brands since World War II, most of them were fundamentally built through storytelling. A 30-second ad would blast out a narrative for a passive audience. But on the Web, consumers are not a captive audience, so marketers need a very different approach. More »

There’s plenty that even the most cutting-edge startup founders can learn from old-school Fortune 500 CEOs, stodgy though they may seem. Here are five lessons that fly in the face of the typical startup ethos. More »

In the mythical 1960s, marketers had it much easier: If you had a product to sell, you hired Don Draper to create an advertisement. Dad would see the ad while reading the newspaper. Mom and the kids would gather around the family TV, see the spot, get excited, and buy the product on their next trip to the store. The job of the marketing executive was mostly to buy advertising, and they got very good at it. By the 1990s, the best marketers in the world had become experts at launching ad campaign after ad campaign, driving the growth of global brands like Nike and Coca-Cola. More »

Jobs in tech are stronger than ever. In 2011, Amazon hired 22,500 people, bringing its workforce up to 56,200, and Google hired 8,000 people — more than ever in a single year. The technology sector is booming, and while not all of these jobs require an engineering degree, getting a gig can be harder than getting into an Ivy League school. Competition between businesses is too steep for firms to hire those who aren’t qualified, and demand for these positions is greater than the skills that exist in the marketplace. More »