10% Rule of The Spread of Ideas

From a few years ago, but still interesting.

Sociological theory: Ideas don't go anywhere until they are adopted by approximately 10% of the population. After that, there's a good chance they continue to spread and  become the majority idea.

This is important to understand as a marketer.

Interesting Subject Headings For Marketers

I came across the subject Headings below.  Follow the links to find books on marketing and public opinion. Public opinion -- United States. National characteristics, American.  Social psychology -- United States.  Consumption (Economics) -- United States.

Ad$pender - The Problem of Zero Results

Ad$pender is usually a wonderful database that gives you advertising budgets for categories of products, companies and brands.  You can use the database from off-campus with your regular net ID and password.

HOWEVER, a common problem is building your query and getting no results.

This is because a data point is missing. Instead of n/a in your results, you just get a big fat zero for the whole thing. Through trial and error, you'll have to adjust your query in order to get results.


I'll let AdSpender explain.

What does “There were no results for the report you requested” mean? This means that there was no activity found for the report you ran. This could happen for a number of reasons. For example, the brands included in your report may not have had any activity during the time period you requested, or perhaps dollars or ratings were not yet available for the time period you included in the report. In this situation you should check data availability or change some of your selections before running your report again.

Note: This tutorial is excellent, but it starts with the old library page. AdSpender still works exactly the same - just find Ad$pender here.

Offbeat Subject Headings for Marketing or Advertising

Ah, here's some cool subject headings for the marketers and advertisers:

Influence, Social Influence, and Persuasion. These are interesting - and dark - books about how humans think and are influenced by others.

Many of these books are written with marketing and consumer persuasion in mind....

Hey, there's a whole movie about this stuff called The Joneses. Funny premise: a family moves into a high end subdivision and starts trying to convince the neighbors to buy certain products...

Passport Tutorial

Business At The Movies: Glengarry Glenn Ross

This is the famous speech Alec Baldwin gives to his sales force in the movie Glengarry Glenn Ross.
Always be closing.NSFW.

Ad $ Summary

The help video for Ad $ Summary.

Book Review: Two Books By Frank Luntz (Recommended For Marketers)

What Americans Really Want 
Words That Work 

Frank Luntz is a political consultant who pioneered studying how people react to words - instead of actions. He was a master at calculating how people perceive a problem and packaging policies - both corporate and political -that met those expectations.  You didn't have to change your actual policy!

He's also very good at finding the gulf between people's stated values and their actual values and exploiting that.

We have two of his books here.  Interesting guy and a must read for marketers.

University Reporter Video

Here's the video for University Reporter. This is a great database for getting consumer profiles for various brands, products, and economic activities.

Are Those Ad$pender Numbers Right?

So you ran your search in Ad$pender - and got some results. Company X spent $1.3 million advertising its new product. Is that number accurate?

Well, yes, but here's a trick to put your mind at ease.

Go to Advertising RedBooks databases and USUALLY the company and the total spent will be there.

Go to ABI Inform and enter keywords like Company X and advertising budget, marketing, etc...Sooner or later you will find the ballpark number for the budget in a recent year.

Effective Business Communication

Here's some more subject headings to help out the management majors and salespeople. Heck, any one could benefit from this material.

Here are cool books on doing superior business presentations.

Also: business communication is a good place to look. You will find information about streamlining your writing, communicating core ideas, and persuading an audience.

Austin Influencers on Social Media

If you're a charismatic, good-looking person who wants to blog or make videos about your clothes or  the restaurants you go to you might consider becoming an influencer.

Companies pay you to promote their products on social media but it looks all authentic and street and stuff because you portray yourself as just this cool person rapping about your life. Except your life has product placements.

Read all about it here – some people actually do this for a living.

Marketing Subject Headings

 Here are some subject headings for marketing that may not be the most obvious things to come to your mind.
 
Consumer Behavior
Marketing - Psychological Aspects
Marketing Research.
Consumers Research
Consumer Psychology
Marketing - Data Processing
Branding
Social Marketing
Analyzing Web Users (Google Analytics, etc..,)
advertising campaigns
advocacy advertising
public relations
publicity
sales presentations
special events marketing
sports-marketing

Social Interaction Books for Marketing and Advertising

Here are some offbeat subject headings with some very fascinating material for you:

Exchange Theory (sociology)

Social Interaction

Social Groups

Helps you understand group dynamics and human relations.

Use in marketing and understanding human nature in general.

Book Review: The Professional Fence

Book: The Professional Fence by Carl Klockars.

One of the best books about negotiation and small business management I have ever read.

And it's about professional fences - you know, the people that traffic in stolen goods!

Check out the negotiation tactics the fence uses in dealing with the thief. One of my favorite strategies is how the fence will often state something as a fact that is not true. Or how fences conspire to fix prices in the underworld.

You will see these tactics - misstatements, misdirection, intentionally misleading math, apples to oranges comparisons - time and time again in your business dealings even in the law-abiding world.

What about a business model? Check out the book's intro about famed London thief Jonathan Wild and how he organized the London underworld so that all goods would come to him.

Telling ya, check it out.

Making Lists in Simply Map

Want to know where people by the most used SUVs?  Eat the most hot pockets?  This video will show you how to generate lists in Simply Map..

Advertising Red Books

Advertising Red Books Online database makes tracking media buys WAY easier. Breaks out the brand and the media categories, as well as YOY% change. 

Featured Book: Thinking Fast and Slow

Our copy here.

Should you think fast or slow? Some people say your Zen like first instinct reaction is the correct one. And that's a legitimate point of view.

Some people say no – saying that your first instinct is almost always wrong and you should stop and think carefully.

Thinking Fast and Slow is the title of this book by Daniel Kahnemann. He delights in pointing out how simple tricks like anchoring bias affect people's cognition. The book lists several other cognition failures that produce incorrect short-term judgment. It's worth reading to get an idea of these pitfalls.

Both schools of thought - be Zen, be cautious - probably have merit.

New Marketline Video

I made a new video about getting market share, size, and company/brand shares in Marketline.

Find Individual Consumers in Reference USA

Reference USA lets you enter characteristics (income, interests, and more) and then returns actual individuals (national, or by zip code, county, etc.). Includes street addresses and some phone numbers. You can also look up by individual name.