Genius article about the financial collapse and those who saw it coming.
The era that defined Wall Street is finally, officially over. Michael Lewis, who chronicled its excess in Liar’s Poker, returns to his old haunt to figure out what went wrong.
Do you really need to pay that much for advertising anymore? Why not just create a viral campaign or a YouTube video. Of course you’ll need to spend some money to create the campaign and get the initial traffic going, but if you do it wisely you don’t need to spend nearly as much as you would on TV. Big advertisers like P&G are learning how to spend money online wisely, and their learning by working with and at Google.
Both companies had something to gain. Mountain View-based Google controls 74 percent of “search term†advertising spending, the Journal reported, citing the research firm eMarketer Inc. Meanwhile, Cincinnati-based P&G ranked as the nation’s largest advertiser in 2007, having spent $5.2 billion compared with $4.9 billion in 2006, according to Advertising Age magazine.
Among the revelations for P&G workers: Google data revealed that online searches for the word “coupons†rose about 50 percent in a 12-month period, according to the Journal.
P&G regularly offers pamphlets of coupons for its products through its Brand Saver newspaper insert.
Nike has created a social network that actually helps them make money and sell shoes – at least running shoes so far. Nike is always ahead of the game and everyone else tries to catch up and copy what they’re doing:
In the two years since it launched Nike+, a technology that tracks data of every run and connects runners around the world at a Web site, nikeplus.com, Nike has built a legion of fans. In August, for instance, 800,000 runners logged on and signed up to run a 10K race sponsored by Nike simultaneously in 25 cities, from Chicago to São Paulo. Now the company is testing a social network to promote its basketball shoes.
How Nike+ benefits the company’s bottom line is harder to gauge. Some analysts back up Nike’s claims that the site is renewing the popularity of its running shoes. SportsOneSource, a Princeton (N.J.) market research firm, says Nike accounted for 48% of all running-shoe sales in the U.S in 2006. Today, its share is 61%. “A significant amount of the growth comes from Nike+,” says Matt Powell, a SportsOneSource analyst.
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