What We're Thinking: imc²

imc² Releases Q3 Positive Impact Update

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:34:31 GMT

Having issued our first-ever quarterly Positive Impact update in August, we continue our commitment to measure, report and perform against the annual goals set in our 2008 Positive Impact Report. Following the Global Reporting ...

Primer: Drive Brand Engagement through Facebook

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:47:28 GMT

It's safe to assume we all know what Facebook is, but there’s a distinct difference between your personal Facebook usage and brand marketing via Facebook. As you can imagine, with 300 million active users worldwide, the opportunities to ...

Augmented Reality…At a Glance

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 09:11:56 GMT

Augmented Reality (AR) is an exciting, fast-growing technology that is taking engagement to the next level for many marketers. It involves the real-time viewing of actual physical environments whose elements are merged with digital information to ...

Making a Love Connection

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:37:16 GMT

In a reprint of an article Doug Levy authored for iMedia Connection, the imc² CEO infuses a little fun in the conversation about engagement in the evolving marketplace. In Making a Love Connection: Four Ways to Build Sustainable Relationships ...

imc² releases Q2 positive impact update

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:00:30 GMT

Having already become the only agency to issue a GRI-compliant sustainability report, we are not content to merely reflect on our accomplishments. Instead, we are continuing to integrate sustainability, measure our impacts and track performance on a ...

What advertising do consumers trust?!

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 11:38:05 GMT

eMarketer recently published an article What advertising do consumers trust?! Check out how Doug Levy, imc²'s CEO, answered this question and other thoughts on the article's findings. With trust a key element in ...

Personas...it's as simple as that.

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 10:18:49 GMT

After reading Forrester's "A Persona By Any Other Name" I started thinking, we have been using personas for awhile at my company, long enough to remember when they were referred to as Target Audience Personas. But in this day of enlightened ...

Adherence: Is It Worth the Investment?

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 13:43:57 GMT

Although the pharmaceutical industry typically considers an increase in new prescriptions the benchmark of a successful marketing program, the benefits of adherence sometimes get overlooked. This imc² point of view shares how efforts focused on ...

Is social media right for your healthcare brand?

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 10:14:27 GMT

Pharmaceutical marketing and social media may seem irreconcilable—after all, a regulatory environment is not the most inviting landscape for the kind of open, casual and unfiltered dialog that people associate with online social networks. But in ...

People are the medium

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:35:03 GMT

Joe Marchese almost gets it right in his Media Post article, "People Are The Medium." Ah, yes, people are the medium! This is a great insight, I believe. And, oh how complex!! Producing a 30-second spot or a print ad seems so simple compared to a ...

Should sustainability be a core part of a business?

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:25:47 GMT

Some may think that a focus on sustainability is a luxury - something that should only be done in good times when time and money are in ample supply. When approached as charity, sustainability is just that. But, what about sustainability as ...

Capturing consumers’ attention through gaming.

Fri, 29 May 2009 12:49:00 GMT

Did you know that 65 percent of American heads of households are playing video games and the average age of today's gamer is 35? Taking these stats into consideration, it's easy to see why more and more marketers are using gaming to connect with ...

Thinking about using behavioral targeting? Read this first.

Tue, 12 May 2009 11:03:33 GMT

Behavioral targeting is a way to use historical data gathered on users’ activities to target specific persons or groups (consumers) for advertisements and messaging. Ads are delivered to consumers based on the sites they visit or what they do on ...

Behavioral targeting through social networks…At a Glance

Tue, 12 May 2009 10:57:29 GMT

Behavioral targeting through online social networking is a way to reach out to specific audiences based on their activities, as well as target those most active in their social networks. The idea is that if one person is actively involved with a ...

Twitter in 140 characters or less…At a Glance

Mon, 11 May 2009 08:46:29 GMT

Is your brand ready to jump on the Twitter bandwagon? Not really sure what the heck a tweet is? This device agnostic, microblogging platform allows marketers to engage in more direct conversations with consumers. While this kind of direct, two-way ...

Still wondering if social media is for you? You’re not alone.

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:17:31 GMT

A nagging question on many brand marketers’ minds is whether social media is right for their brands? We believe it absolutely is! That is, if customer depth and building brand trust top your list of marketing objectives AND you can answer YES to the ...

Research shows email marketing remains strong.

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:03:14 GMT

With the rise of social networking, text messaging and instant messaging, many marketers are quick to say email marketing is over. But, email marketers with strong strategies that include clean, targeted recipient lists find email is more effective ...

Are we heading toward another browser war?

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:09:25 GMT

You may have noticed a flurry of articles about various new Web browsers. The release of Internet Explorer (IE) 8 brings concerns about allowing users to surf anonymously. And while IE’s market share once stood at a massive 95 percent, Mozilla’s ...

Social networking can be a marketer’s best friend.

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 13:37:06 GMT

Social networking, in its earliest form, consisted of message boards, which were a simple tool to enable communication among individuals with like interests. While message boards remain popular, social networking now includes a variety of ...

How brands can make the most of mobile marketing.

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 14:16:07 GMT

The mobile phone is an intimate part of our daily lives. It is our constant companion: in our pocket, our purse or literally attached to our hip. It has become more than a phone – it is now both a communication device and an extension of our ...

Is online the only way to connect with today’s teens?

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:40:06 GMT

Teenagers, teens, millennials…whatever you call them, today’s youth has the Internet burned into their brains. Technology is an assumed part of their environment, and the Internet is not always on as much as it is always around. As a result, we’ve ...

Spreading a brand message through viral marketing.

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:01:02 GMT

Satisfied customers tell an average of three people about a product or service they like. But, they’ll tell 11 people about a product or service they don’t like. Viral marketing is based on this natural human behavior: people like to be a source of ...

Confluence: The merging and e-merging of trends.

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:33:59 GMT

imc² has written a lot about predictions and speculations about a number of emerging trends…everything from gaming to widgets to viral campaigns to social media. It shouldn’t surprise you that it’s becoming more and more difficult to distinguish ...

Is there really a place for marketers on Facebook?

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:14:55 GMT

Facebook, a social networking website founded by a college drop-out, originally started as a way for Harvard undergraduates to connect online. Facebook has since morphed into a social networking platform open to all ages – and is growing rapidly in ...

Who’s playing games online?

Sun, 25 May 2008 14:05:04 GMT

Just about everybody. When most marketers think of "gamers," they immediately picture an 18-34 male locked in his basement for hours a day. And while this profile does match certain categories of gamers, research shows that online gaming reaches ...

Going viral – what you should and shouldn’t do.

Thu, 15 May 2008 14:08:16 GMT

First, take a deep breath and make sure you understand what an effort like this entails. Keep in mind, you don’t create a viral campaign, but rather develop exceptional content and enable it to be spread via word of "mouse," as it’s called these ...

Using onsite video to drive marketing objectives.

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:24:18 GMT

With 84 percent of U.S. Internet households now having a broadband connection, the use of online video is exploding. Video is showing up everywhere – from social networking sites where users share their own videos to product sites that provide ...

Are widgets really for me and my brand?

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 13:38:57 GMT

Some of our clients have been asking about widgets and their place in their marketing toolkit. So, we decided to share in the attached document – what widgets are, some best-in-class examples, and how marketers can use them. Download imc²’s ...

Men are from Mars, but are all women from Venus?

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 13:57:48 GMT

We’ve all heard the phrase, “men are from Mars and women from Venus,” but does that extend to the Internet? As an agency that has worked with dozens of brands targeting women online, imc² wanted to know. imc² surveyed more than 4,000 people to ...

What the research is telling us about online consumer reviews.

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 13:55:15 GMT

Giving consumers a voice could give your brand a boost. The reviews are in—consumers are becoming more accustomed to reading and providing product reviews when shopping online. Yet, as of August 2007, only one-third of U.S. retail e-commerce ...

How to effectively use widgets in your marketing mix.

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 14:06:10 GMT

Although widgets have received a lot of press in recent months, they are not a new technology. These mini applications date back to Pointcast, a screensaver you could configure to pull stock quotes and weather information – circa 1992. However, the ...

Integrated marketing: 5 steps to synchronizing marketing efforts.

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 14:12:55 GMT

Teamwork. Ingrained in us since we were young kids on the baseball or soccer field. The topic of many a corporate retreat. With its absence comes many failed projects. As marketers, every one of us has been in a room with a “team,” where we smiled, ...

Trying to reach moms online? Start with a search engine.

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 14:10:43 GMT

A study by DoubleClick Performics revealed moms are online several times per day, and while they are, they’re spending a lot of time on search engines. In fact, 86% of those surveyed said search engines are the most efficient way to find ...

Can you connect with baby boomers through the digital world?

Sun, 09 Sep 2007 14:02:08 GMT

In 1945, the U.S. was rejoicing over the end of World War II and the beginning of happier, more prosperous times. Americans had been in a constant state of rationing and struggle with World War II and before that, The Great Depression. They were ...