About David Capece
David Capece has 13 years of management experience in strategy, i-banking, venture capital, branding, marketing, and social media. He is Founder and CEO of Sparxoo, a digital media consulting firm based in Tampa FL, where he has worked with leading organizations such as Comcast, NBC, Fox Sports, Lifetime, The Cosmopolitan Las Vegas, and Habitat for Humanity, as well as many entrepreneurs. Prior to founding Sparxoo, David was a senior strategist at Interbrand, the world’s largest branding agency. Previously, he was Senior Director of Marketing for ESPN.com and served as senior strategist and “acting CFO” for ESPN’s Publishing and New Media business units. David is a Wharton MBA from the Class of 2003, and has a BA from Johns Hopkins University.
The following is the summary of our interview with Justin Premick of AWeber, an email marketing software company. 1. What role does email marketing play in creating or supporting a brand? A common belief about email marketing is it’s purely … Continue reading →
Posted in Digital Marketing, Featured
by David Capece
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Thursday, January 5th, 2012
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Tagged Branding, Business Development, Digital Marketing, Email Marketing, Entrepreneur, Growth, Market Trends, Marketing Mix, Social Media, Strategy
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If your team prioritizes innovation, we applaud you for recognizing the importance of innovation in gaining competitive advantage. For best results, prioritize ideation and embrace non-traditional methods to come up with ideas. The extra weeks and months of ideation can be the difference between pursuing a winner and a loser. Continue reading →
The world’s leading brands continually innovate. While we often think of Google and Apple as innovation juggernauts (and they are), there is innovation afoot at older brands such as Pepsi, McDonald’s, and Mercedes. Whether created organically or purchased, whether incremental improvements or transformational, innovation is vital in today’s rapidly evolving, competitive global economy. At Sparxoo, our team of brand & innovation strategists has led many brand innovation workshops and expert worksessions with Fortune 500 companies. Our formula: start with creativity to spark new ideas and add in strategy to structure and focus ideas across identified goals. Great ideas can come from anywhere, so tap into your leaders, your Gen Y talent, your customers, and industry experts. Continue reading →
Posted in Featured, Strategy & Trends
by David Capece
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Monday, May 30th, 2011
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Tagged Innovation
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Developing financial projections can seem like a monumental challenge, especially for emerging businesses that have little track record. After all, if you are operating at a loss with $0 revenue, how can you project a future state in which you have millions in revenue and are operating profitably? While financial modeling can be an inexact science, it can be incredibly helpful in pushing you to think about the future state of your business. Continue reading →
When you think about what’s going to make you a successful entrepreneur, or successful in life … “I’m smart” is not enough. Good for you if you’re smart. But it’s going to take something more. Courage and charisma. Confidence and commitment. You might not be a supermodel … but if you give 110%, bring passion, and embrace what makes you different, you can be a super entrepreneur.
Continue reading →
Posted in Featured, Strategy & Trends
by David Capece
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Tuesday, April 19th, 2011
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Tagged Entrepreneurship, Ideas
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For the past 3+ years, Sparxoo has had the privelege of leading strategy assignments for major companies such as NBC, Fox Sports, Comcast, Lifetime, JP Morgan Chase, and others. We frequently lead innovation workshops and experts work-sessions to stretch thinking and spur growth. Today, for the first time, we had our own brand innovation workshop. Many firms are great at strategy, and many more at creative. We seek to be unique in our ability to integrate strategy and creative, all while focusing on making meaningful connections. Continue reading →
We want tourists to use TripTwit to get an instant sense of what is going on in the place they’re visiting. What’s unique about TripTwit is it’s relevancy. When you search New York you’re not going to see tweets from a tourist saying “I love New York!”. Instead you’re going to see tweets about restaurant specials, hotel discounts, museum exhibits, etc. There is a lot of business logic behind the scenes to cut down on the noise that’s prevalent on Twitter so that a user is only seeing tweets that are useful. Additionally, there are numerous filter and search options to further improve relevancy. For example, you can choose to see tweets from local nightlife or search for children’s events that are happening in real-time. Continue reading →
If you could reduce your product packaging costs by 38% while offering a more sustainable solution to your customers, would you think twice? Many companies are taking bold steps to incorporate sustainability into their core business strategy, reaping not only brand and customer benefits, but bottom line benefits as well. Continue reading →
Posted in Strategy & Trends
by David Capece
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Monday, February 7th, 2011
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Tagged Consumer, social cause
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We recently interviewed Eran Eyal, a crowdsourcing entrepreneur and founder of Evly.com. Eran and the Evly team launched Evly.com as a culmination of their aspiration to create a software platform that would let anyone build a crowdsourcing or crowdfunding website, quickly and easily.
Of crowdsourcing, Eran says, “Crowdsourcing is all about aligning the right crowds to help them achieve unified intent. Whilst social media is amazing in the sense that businesses and their consumers are able to interact, crowdsourcing provides the reason, focus and impetus for that conversation to occur meaningfully and toward a tangible and quantifiable end. Most importantly to point out at this stage is that it is not something particularly new – humans have been doing it since we were Nomads who came together to achieve goals tacit to our basic needs of survival and adaptability. This is just technology catching up with one of our most basic and natural tendencies as a species. Tribes formed to solve problems – not for banter.” Enjoy the transcript of our interview which shares insight into crowdsourcing and entrepreneurship. Continue reading →
At Sparxoo, we are passionate for health & wellness (see our coverage of the healthy eating trend. In our journey for better health, we have become a fan of Carrie Kukuda, a health and fitness coach in Tampa, and an emerging entrepreneur. In addition to leading a series of outstanding boot camps, Carrie publishes advice on health and fitness. Carrie has really impressed our team with her commitment to leading a healthy life. In the spirit of the holiday, Carrie has shared her 26 Tips to Fighting the Holiday Bulge. Our favorite is tip #21: split a treat.
1. Start Strong: eat a healthy breakfast. If you don’t, you will tend to overeat the rest of the day.
2. Curb your appetite. Drink a glass of water before every meal. It will help you fill up faster & help you eat less. Continue reading →
Posted in Strategy & Trends
by David Capece
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Wednesday, December 15th, 2010
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Tagged Entrepreneurship
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For the past 5 years, Google AdWords has been one of the most effective ways to drive high ROI marketing. As AdWords competition increases, you can make some improvements to get the most out of your campaign. The Sparxoo team spoke to the Google AdWords Energize team and has some tips to improve your Google AdWords performance…
Read more about Adwords. Continue reading →
Posted in Digital Marketing
by David Capece
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Friday, December 10th, 2010
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Tagged Digital, Marketing
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Build Trust and Respect as an Ethical Company
Walk into an Elevation Burger and you’ll notice it isn’t your typical burger joint. Posters line the walls touting its mission to locally sourced ingredients as much as possible. Their social mission makes Elevation Burger more than just a burger place, it is a place to support environmental sustainability. Therein, lies a relationship and trust.
Read more benefits of a social mission. Continue reading →
Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh recently spoke to American Marketing Association Tampa Bay and shared his journey in creating Zappos, which sold to Amazon for approximately $900 million in 2009. The presentation was part of Tony Hsieh’s bus tour coinciding with the release of his best selling book, “Delivering Happiness.” At Zappos, passion and purpose are the ingredients that lead to profits. They’ve got a truly engaged team, a brand culture that embraces “weirdness” and inspired a spontaneous parade of pirates. We know you want profits, but don’t lose site of greater purpose and happiness. Your employees and customers will appreciate it.
Continue reading →
An interivew with Carl Taylor … Where do you personally draw your inspiration from?
“People who have been there and done what I want to do. It not only gives me someone and a strategy to model but it motivates me to get on with it. I think “If they can do it, so can I.” Another personal inspiration for me is Superman… it’s a bit strange I know but Superman to me is all about playing to your strengths and avoiding your weaknesses. Superman’s weakness is Kryptonite so he has to avoid it and when he avoids it, he is strong, fast and on top of his game.” Continue reading →
Posted in Strategy & Trends
by David Capece
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Monday, October 11th, 2010
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Tagged Entrepreneurship, Gen Y, Startup
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The difference between runaway business success and mediocrity often comes down to having a great sales strategy. Yes, you need a great product that uniquely addresses a market need. And marketing dollars are always helpful. The final measurement success is revenue and profits, so spend the time developing a sales strategy and focus on Sales. Sales. Sales. Continue reading →
Posted in Featured, Startups & Innovation
by David Capece
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Wednesday, September 29th, 2010
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Tagged Growth, Marketing, sales
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Facebook, Twitter, and Four Square have become the new digital leaders by enabling users to connect with each other and share ideas, experiences, and ultimately their lives. Much of the interactions rely on a visual exchange of text and images. A new startup, Blurts believes there is another sense that can be tapped into to enhance social media. If you were going to guess taste or smell, well the digital world isn’t quite there yet. Blurts is bringing audio to social media in a new way. It’s kind of like twitter for podcasts. Continue reading →
Interbrand released its 2010 Best Global Brands report this week (brand report highlights). This is the 12th year that the report has been published, and we’ve often wondered if there are deeper insights that can be garnered from this report. We’ve analyzed the past 12 years of data with a specific eye to the following questions:
1. Do changes in brand value predict changes in stock value, or merely reflect information that is already priced in?
2. Do the brands with the strongest momentum hold up in recessions?
3. Can the report provide insight into the broader market? Continue reading →
Posted in Featured, Market Trends
by David Capece
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Tuesday, September 21st, 2010
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Tagged Analytics, Brand, Investor, Trends
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This year’s rankings showed significant change with Apple and Google leaping, and Dell, Toyota, Nokia, and Citi plummeting. Interbrand’s report highlights that consumer behavior is more difficult to predict than ever. Interbrand’s best global brands report says, “the current economic climate is a risky landscape for today’s brands … one that is fraught with contradictions and vocal customers scrutinizing your ever move. The same customer might opt to buy an iPad instead of a laptop, purchase private label toothpaste, and then match a Zara skirt with Christian Louboutin shoes.” Continue reading →
Posted in Featured, Market Trends
by David Capece
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Friday, September 17th, 2010
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While there is hope in the startup world (Q2 2010 featured the highest venture-backed IPO volume and amount raised since 2007), the investment community remains very discerning in their allocation of scarce… Continue reading →
Posted in Featured, Startups & Innovation
by David Capece
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Wednesday, September 8th, 2010
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Tagged Startup, Venture Capital
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Internet businesses are finally profitable. In some cases, Internet companies are wildly profitable with operating margins of 35%. It’s not just Google that has scaled. 10 years ago, Internet companies went public without revenue. Now, companies such as OpenTable are at 15% + operating margins just a year after IPO. It’s not just Internet platform companies that achieve great scale. 24/7 Wall Street believes that Gawker keeps over 50% of its revenue as operating income. Continue reading →
