Entries by Ross Dawson

Speaking about professional services marketing

Bruce Marcus has been writing the Marcus Letter on Professional Services Marketing for about a decade, originally as a print newsletter, and now online. His broad experience makes him one of the true doyens of the field. His excellent recent book, co-authored with August Aquila, Client at the Core, goes into the practical detail of […]

Collaborative filtering for music picks up pace

I believe that “collaborative filtering” is at the heart of how the networks are coming to life. The basic concept is that we must collaborate to filter the massive information overload we face. We can do this simply by taking the recommendations of friends we know and trust. However now software can amalgamate the views […]

Localized blog search

A new Australia-specific blog search engine called gnoos will be launched in February in pre-beta form, by Ben Barren’s company Feedcorp. This is interesting and relevant because many blog conversations are often about local issues, not least politics. Some blog search engines, such as Bloghub.com and LSBlogs.com, offer the ability to search within countries, but […]

Is the balance of power shifting from advertising to PR?

A thought-provoking article in this week’s The Economist, subtitled “As advertising struggles, PR steps into the breach,” suggests that PR will grow faster than the advertising industry. It refers to an internal Procter & Gamble study that found that PR gives a better return on investment than advertising. Investment bank Veronis Suhler Stevenson has forecast […]

Welcoming a busy and fun year ahead!

Back from a fabulous holiday in Thailand, and straight into an array of very interesting – and time-consuming – client work. Blogging is central to who I am, but clients ultimately have priority. I’ll try to make sure I maintain my target of 2-3 posts a week (or sometimes more), but do expect a little […]

On holidays!

I’m about to head off to Thailand for two weeks with my wonderful wife Victoria. I’ve been to Thailand a fair bit over the years, but it’s first time for Victoria, and we’re going to two places I haven’t been before: Hua Hin, a resort area a few hours drive south of Bangkok for some […]

Global business and outsourcing

If you happening to be flying Qantas anywhere in the world in the month of January, you can listen to an interview with me on the Qantas radio business channel, hosted by Peter Switzer. The interview was on the general theme of the future of the global economy and followed quite a few different tangents, […]

The future of robots in an aging Japan

As a highly relevant follow up on my earlier post on emotion-focused robots, there’s a great article in the current issue of The Economist on Japan’s peculiarly propitious environment for robots. With the news just out that Japan’s population has peaked and is starting to decline, it is a particularly pointed issue where workers will […]

Needy and therapeutic robot toys

A group from New York University (NYU)’s Interactive Telecommunications program has come up with an intriguing idea that seems to have struck a chord. Their “Needies” are soft stuffed toys with microprocessors and wireless technology that not only vocally request attention from the people around them and respond well to being petted and held, but […]

Steps to corporate blogging

So, corporate executives are saying, it sounds like we need to be doing something about this “blogging” thing. So what do we do? According to Marketing Sherpa, there are five steps for major corporations launching blogs: set goals, assemble stakeholders, decide who can blog, write a formal blogging policy, and announce the policy. Sounds sensible, […]