Simon Mainwaring is a branding consultant, advertising creative director, blogger and speaker.
From the category archives:
by Simon on August 27, 2010 · View Comments
in Causes, Consumers, Future, Non Profit, Philanthropy, Social media, Values
One of the most encouraging and exciting applications of social gaming is the ability to leverage its massive popularity to generate contributions to causes and humanitarian crises. We saw this in January this year when Zynga created limited edition items in FarmVille, FishVille, Mafia Wars and Zynga Poker that were purchased by users from 47 [...]
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by Simon on August 25, 2010 · View Comments
The title for this post paraphrases a quote from a Chinese salesman featured in a story on counterfeit products in the New York Times magazine last weekend. While the salesman was speaking directly to accusations regarding the legality of selling counterfeit sneakers, he touched on a much larger issue for marketers.
Since the birth of modern [...]
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by Simon on August 17, 2010 · View Comments
in Brands, Community, Economy, GENERAL, Social media, Social networking, Values
I wanted to share with you this video of a speech by Nicolas Christakis from the Harvard Dept. of Sociology, on the shaping powers of social networks. He does a wonderful job of explaining stastically the forces and dynamics that drive social networks. In this case he uses the case of obesity to demonstrate how [...]
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When it comes to making the world a better place, corporations are often accused of apathy (the flip-side of blind self-interest). But if consumers are truly committed to social change, they must answer the same challenge. That’s why I think SocialVest is such as smart idea. It makes giving almost effortless removing yet another barrier [...]
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by Simon on August 2, 2010 · View Comments
in Advertising, Brands, Social media, Values
Last Friday I had to the privilege of speaking at the NCSA Annual Conference (National Collegiate Scouting Association) in Chicago. Not only did I get to meet some of the top athletes, coaches and scouts in the country, but I got to experience first hand what I believe is the most important trait that any [...]
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by Simon on July 28, 2010 · View Comments
in Advertising, Brands, Consumers, Social media, Values
Everywhere you look these days there’s another instance of a brand being caught out for disingenuous, duplicitous or unconscionable behavior. It’s almost as if they can’t believe either a) this Internet thing is here to stay, or b) that it requires transparency. So in an effort to shunt to process forward, let’s look at two [...]
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by Simon on June 20, 2010 · View Comments
in Advertising, Brands, Capitalism, Consumers, Globalization, MEDIA, Social media, Values
For those at the seminar who want further information, or for those who couldn’t make it, here are a synopsis, a list of key points and links to the case studies that I mentioned in my seminar at Cannes today.
SYNOPSIS: The advertising world is reeling from change – and it’s not just because they have [...]
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by Simon on June 14, 2010 · View Comments
in CORPORATE WEBSITES, Causes, Social media, Values, social entrepreneurship
I recently got a great post comment from @mikescheiner that I thought was extremely well put. He wrote:
“What most brands fail to understand is the perception you produce internally is reflected externally.”
This is spot on and I wanted to discuss how social media can be used to rally company employees around their brand, its values [...]
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