What we can Learn from Gangnam Style

Internet sensation, South Korean pop star Psy first released “Gangnam Style” in July of 2012. Unbeknownst to all, it would go on to viral like no video has gone viral before. How could a song with references very specific to Seoul culture later go on to become to most watched video in the world surpassing 1 billion views in December 2012. K-Pop has generally only been popular in its native country South Korea, but “Gangnam Style” has somehow broken the barrier and has gone above and beyond reaching Western countries and neighboring Asian countries alike. The K-Pop industry is not a new one; Psy’s song is not the first big K-Pop hit in South Korea. What steps did YG Entertainment and Psy take to create something that could be so universally appealing?

According to the Harvard Business Review, Psy did three things that set him apart. Make your product or brand more ownable.

Gangnam Style became such a significant cultural meme that its suffix “Style” could be easily rebranded and applied to different unrelated subjects. A grammar school in England made a similar video titled “Tad Gram Style”. Some felt compelled to create ...

Super Bowl Strategies on a Smaller Scale

While the Super Bowl is often full of nonsensical, decidedly nontraditional advertising, the most effective ads are created with a shrewd marketing strategy in mind.  These ads follow strategies that can be advantageous to companies of any size or budget.  Businessweek.com’s Steve McKee offers these insightful rules to Super Bowl marketing that could be equally applicable your firm’s marketing efforts. 

The first, perhaps most important rule is putting strategy first.  Creativity is important and can get people talking about an advertisement but creativity without strategy can just leave viewers confused.  Take for example epidemic.com and lifeminders.com.  These startups aired Super Bowl commercials in 2000 that may have been creative but did not make much of an effort to describe what kinds of services these companies provided.  Both companies are now long gone.  The second rule is to be relevant.  The most effective advertising efforts are often based on a topical subject.  For instance, FedEx’s 2003 ad offered a humorous take on Castaway, a recent blockbuster hit at the time.  The best advertising campaigns keep it simple.  Google’s “Parisian Love” commercial offered a simple display of what the search engine could offer, ...

Five Important Things Social Media Pulls You Away ...

Social media is a wonderful boon, but at the same time it can be a very distracting culture that sucks you in and pulls you away from the things you need to get done. As a business, you need to be well versed in using social media, so here are some tips to avoid falling into the pit trap that many succumb to when using social media for personal use. 

Depending on how you use it, social media can be either your best friend or worst enemy. People these days seem to rely more and more on sites like Facebook and Twitter in their everyday lives. For some, social media can be addicting. This, however, is an extreme scenario. Most people learn how to incorporate social media into their lives with moderation, if not inherently productive. The fact of the matter is that social media is a whole new platform of human communication that is very important to people across the world. As a businessperson, it would be a good idea to become more familiar with the ins and outs of social media. 

You might be wondering how it would ...

Inbound marketing VS outbound marketing

When it comes to marketing, there are two primary tactics we can use: inbound marketing and outbound marketing. But which one can win in the final competition? Let’s see the differences first.

Inbound marketing: it uses blogs, eBooks, podcasts, social media networking, and other forms to make yourself easy to be found, attracts customers to your websites, and earns potential clients. Inbound marketing strategy is focusing on customers finding you. It attracts people’s attentions by posting creative, fresh, up-dated and targeted content. It is far less expensive than outbound marketing, and with more and more people having access to Internet, the number of targeted audiences is considerable.

Outbound marketing: it buys attention by TV ads, paper mail, radio, spam, cold-calling, and other traditional ways. As a matter of fact, most people never open a direct mail. Obviously, it is not only a waste of money, but also a waste of time, resource, and trees. Also, it is likely that we always skip the television ads. Compared with inbound marketing, this method is more expensive, and less effective.

However, outbound marketing is still in our life. There are still customers who usually do not ...

Expected Issues in Job Report

There are several issues that one could expect to read about when one checks out Friday's Job Report. The employment situation in the country is a topic that many are paying close attention to, because the number of jobs that are created in the country has a large impact on how the overall economy will perform. There are a few key points that people should look out for when the report becomes available. 

A main takeaway point is that the current state of the job market isn't conducive to bringing down the unemployment by any significant amount. Most surveys expect that the unemployment rate will remain unchanged at 8.2% for the time being. Every month, around 120,000 Americans are expected to enter the job market. If there are fewer jobs than that number created during the month, then the unemployment rate will certainly rise, as these people are left unable to find a job. The number of jobs created needs to keep up with the number of new workers entering the workforce. 

While the country's unemployment numbers are not as good as many would want them to be, American has been ...

What Does the Future of Twitter Hold?

Twitter is one of the strongest social marketing forces today, and it's developments are not just fueled by new changes from the company, but by its users and new social media trends. What started as just a simple way to share whatever activity you're doing in the moment has evolved into a strong marketing tool that can help users search for anything, get involved with others, and communicate directly with the companies that they buy products/services from.

As Twitter is moving forward, it's gaining new features and capabilities. It's quickly growing as a main tool to use for real time searches, catching up to search megastars Google and Bing. It continues to be an effective tool to drive traffic towards blogs and websites, and as a way for individuals or companies to gain exposure and connect with audiences. It is a connecting point for trending, popular and historic events, allowing users across the globe to communicate, turning Twitter into a sort of website forum of the world that everyone naturally uses. And Twitter itself is grafting onto other mediums, where every social website has a button linked to Twitter, and every newscaster, celebrity, and ...