MIKESTOPFORTH

In a recent Direct Message exchange with Casey Monteiro (@Casey_ek_se) on Twitter, he referred to the social media presence of a prominent brand as “lipstick on a pig”. The brand he was referring to was FNB – the bank I’ve just switched my main account to based almost entirely on the advocacy of my peers [...]

I mentioned in a recent post that people love to complain. We are far quicker to pick up on the mistakes of brands and incidences of bad service than we are to compliment and laud when brands exceed expectations. This is human nature. As a direct result my clients typically freak out when presented with [...]

There is much being said about how brands should engage with customers in social media. Words like “authenticity”, “transparency”, “immediacy”, “personability” and others are bandied about as we as consultants, together with our clients, figure out the rules of content and community online. This is a good thing. Brands tend to forget that platforms like [...]

I recently upgraded from a much-loved Audi A4 1.8T to my all-time dream car, a Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG. It’s not that I didn’t like the Audi, on the contrary on many levels it’s an easier, more comfortable car than the C63 – it has more headroom on the driver’s side, a softer ride and in [...]

A couple of weeks back I received an email from Rui Esteves, a co-founder of Vida e Caffe, of which I am enormous fan. After the enormous success of Vida Rui has not rested on his laurels, instead choosing to reinvent the beer industry with the same passion and conviction he and his business partners [...]

Disclaimer: Toyota is a Cerebra client. My mom is a Grade One teacher at Benoni Junior School. She shared this cool service story with me the other day, I thought it was pretty exceptional and wanted to give them some airtime. She tells it as such: Sitting in the East Rand Toyota showroom recently while [...]

One of my professional speaking colleagues, Erik Vermeulen, forwarded a very cool email newsletter to me the other day. Normally that would tick me off but the newsletter, produced by Scott Ginsberg (check out his site and blog, they’re awesome), had an article titled 46 Marketing Mistakes Your Company Is (Probably) Making that caught my eye. I read it an thought I’d share it with you – some of it ought to be familiar already but there are a bunch of cool thoughts I thoroughly enjoyed…

If you’ve seen any of my presentations or read this blog for any length of time you’ll knw that Dell and I have some history.

Since the now infamous incident when a glitch on Dell‘s local e-commerce led to the sale of literally thousands of laptops for next to nothing thanks to the SA blogosphere, I have been in touch with Dell’s marketing team. The subsequent goodwill Dell fostered thanks to regular attempts to play an active role in the local online community (like sponsoring the 2007 and 2008 SA Blog Awards and inviting bloggers to top-notch product launches) has helped position them as a progressive brand in the consumer electronics / IT sector that really gives a damn about digitally connected citizens and social media. This is significant considering the bulk of their business comes from massive corporate accounts, not dudes like you and I.

In my spare spare time I’m a drummer.  Not the hard core, head-thrashing, authority-hating type, but more into jazz, funk and classic rock sounds.  I’ve been playing now for about ten years but am not nearly the drummer I could be owing largely to the fact that I seldom get the time to commit to practicing as one ought to with any musical instrument.

Going to the music store to upgrade or splash out on new equipment is always a highlight for any musician.  I know though, remembering back to my early days as a beginner, that going to a specialist store to ask about specialist equipment is often pretty intimidating…