Author Archive for 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.
Playboy’s Internet Strategy: The Smoking Jacket
Playboy’s unveiled its Internet strategy in the form of TheSmokingJacket last week. The headlines read: “Playboy launches nudity-free website aimed at bored office workers seeking laughs.” What is the goal, and will this internet property succeed?
Playboy, an iconic brand that peaked many years ago, faces many of the same “challenges as its peers in the media industry: increased competition for consumer attention in the face of shrinking overall spending in the television and print businesses, the migration of advertisers to other platforms, higher manufacturing costs and the uncertainty created by the current state of the global economy…
SEO Tips For the Digital Marketer
If you are serious about Internet as a traffic driving channel, there’s a pretty good economic argument for search engine optimization. As part of our SEO immersion we are constantly learning from other experts and reading great tips.
1. Select Key Words: There is an art and a science to selecting key words. You’ll need to get into the mindset of potential customers who are searching for your products and services and then develop a list of key search words. You can use a free Google search tool, free tools on SEOBook.com, or a paid discovery tool such as KeyWordDiscovery.com which has a free trial and is $70 per month for a subscription.
Top 5 Traits of a Great Salesperson
Imagine walking into a room of 100 strangers and trying to sell a future, uproven concept. Now imagine walking into a room of 100 of your best friends to try and make the same sale. With the strangers, you need to take time to break the ice, build rappoire and establish credibility. With your friends, you already have a certain level of trust built up so it will greatly accelerate the discussion. As a sales person, your value is directly linked to the value of your network, and your ability to successfully expand your network of influence.
Marketing Advice as Consumer Saving Increases
35 years after the US personal savings rate peaked at 14.6%, the personal savings rate recently upticked to 4% in May 2010 (it turned negative in 2005). Indeed, the Federal Reserve released data that showed credit card balances dropped $8.5 billion during April 2010, the 19th month in an unprecedented stretch of declining credit card debt.
Return On Engagement: A Social Media Manual
Return on Engagement is a book about content, strategy, and design techniques for digital marketing, by Tim Frick. Tim has provided creative media services since the early 1990s, creating design-driven media solutions for education, arts, non-profit…
Gulf Coast Tourism Ads In Wake of BP Oil Spill
BP’s oils spill has jeopardized the $20 billion travel and tourism business along the Gulf Coast. State governments have bargained with BP for advertising budgets of $25 million for Florida and $15 million tourism grants to Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. The following 3 tv ads (1 for the entire Gulf Region, 1 for Mississippi, and 1 for Alabama) all welcome tourists to enjoy the clean beaches of the Gulf. With oil spewing offshore, this is obviously a touchy subject.
BP Oil Spill: Profits Over Planet
While BP’s spill cleanup costs have eclipsed $1 billion and could eventually cost over $10 billion, can you really put a price on the damage to the environment? If it is true that BP cut corners and that they put on a fraudulent show for the President Obama’s Gulf visit (as reported by CNN’s Anderson Cooper), does BP really deserve to still be worth $130 billion? Consumers … this is your opportunity to vote with your wallet. Many of you are angered and would love to change BP’s slogan of Beyond Petroleum to Bankruptcy Protection. The backlash has spread to Facebook with over 200,000 fans of Boycott BP.
Sency Betting on Real-Time Local Search
With the buzz around Four Square, Sency has the opportunity to garner attention. Their next milestone is to reach 1 million unique users. As they attract more and more users, Sency will be challenged to evolve from “oh, that’s cool” to “wow, I plan to check back frequently.” Right now, real-time location based search of community chatter is a novelty: interesting, but not vital. There is potential for it to catch on …
10 Tips for Online Survey Research
Not long ago, market researchers depended on phone surveys and mall intercepts. The Internet has made research more affordable, accessible, and timely. In fact, most online research surveys can go from setup to response to data in a week or less. We…
Creative Briefs for Design Success
One of the great challenges is to translate business vision into creative execution. Indeed, many creative marketing projects get underway without a common set of expectations between executive leadership, marketing and creative. This can result in…
10 Tips for Focus Group Research
Focus groups can provide you with the insight to improve products, prioritize development, and elevate communications. With the benefit of real customer feedback, your strategy and development will be much stronger. High impact focus groups are not…
2012 The Movie: A NetFlix No-No
If you haven’t already seen 2012, please don’t. Instead, choose an Oscar flick that lives up to the standards of excellent storytelling, real emotions, and puts in some surprises and special effects that enhance the overall story.
Audi Goes Green for the Super Bowl
We give credit to Audi for standing out with their Green ad featuring the Green Police and Cheap Trick. The integration of Cheap Trick was the key to making this ad relevant in the Super Bowl. Overall, Audi’s ad is fun, light-hearted, and upbeat, with the tag “green has never felt so right”.
How To Value Your Startup Business
As we all know, your business is only worth whatever the highest bidder in the market is willing to pay. On eBay, it’s easy to discover prices as there is a formal bidding system. In the stock market, prices fluctuate in real-time, and every day a company has…
Funding Innovation for Entrepreneurs
Innovation is a process that involves creating, advancing, refining, and executing (see full Entrepreneur.com article). Most innovation projects have an unprofitable startup period. To sustain innovation projects, you’ll need a combination of investment and sweat equity with the promise of reward over time. Large-scale innovation projects can take significant money and many years…
Top 5 Tips for Socially Responsible Investing
“Many socially responsible investors are under the impression that there needs to be a tradeoff between social impact and financial returns. We believe it’s possible to have both and tradeoff is not always necessary,” said Josh Cohen, managing partner at the VC…
How to Gain Insight from Market Research
To compete today, we must understand our customers and new customer targets as though they are our friends. By keeping a pulse on customer preferences, we gain greater…
Stengthening Brand America: Interview with Edward Burghard
Earlier this year, we conducted a survey of emerging leaders and presented the results in our America State of the Union 2009 report. We covered the ideal traits of America, including opportunity, innovation, diversity, and generosity. Since that time, Brand America was ranked #1 in FutureBrand’s Country Brand Index and President Barack Obama has been characterized by some as the new Brand Manager for Brand America. While it appears that we are on the right track, there are significant challenges to strengthening Brand America. We interviewed branding expert Ed Burghard of The Burghard Group to gain new perspective on the challenges and best practices for place branding.
Creating a Valuable Network of Business Relationships
While I am a big fan of LinkedIn, it’s critical to understand that LinkedIn is not a substitute for human connection. LinkedIn and other social networks help you more easily navigate to like-minded professionals. However, you still need to activate these relationships. Richie Hecker, who blogs at Bootsrapper.com says, “I have a policy that I will meet and buy anyone a cup of coffee that asks to meet with me and try to help them if I can. I give away a lot of free ideas and advice and make a lot of introductions for people.”
Top 5 Holiday Gift Ideas for Executives
With the holidays upon us, it’s time to find the perfect gift for your client, cube mate, or the big dog in the corner office. Here are 5 simple ideas to jumpstart your holiday shopping. The reality is that most executives already have more than they could ever ask for. Will a fancy pen make a difference to a millionaire leader who has a Ferrari? Instead of a throwaway gift, how about a charitable donation? The same $50 that is spent on an overpriced pen could be used towards a Kiva gift certificate to help underprivileged entrepreneurs or $35 could pay for roof shingles at a Habitat for Humanity build. To bring in the New Year, how about impressing an executive with an inspirational gift. My favorite example is hand-made turtle pottery from Hawaii.
