The Truth About Global Marketing — or — Drop the BRICs!

The NYAMA has just finished fielding an important new study on marketing in Emerging Markets. Come to the NYAMA offices for headline findings and a discussion on global marketing with senior executives from Ketchum, Voltan Capital and Charney Research along with WSJ’s frontier markets correspondent Dan Keeler!

If you do any marketing in the emerging markets, this study and this event is for you!

It is next Tuesday, April 21st. It’s free, but space is limited, so sign up now.

Some important stuff:  The study is being spearheaded by Prof. Don Sexton, president of the NYAMA, and Craig Charney PhD, head of the NYAMA Insights Committee. The study is made possible through the generous support of ResearchNOW and Charney Research

See you there!

Best marketer of the year, cont’d

Ad Age has also nominated Lego as one of the top 5 marketers of the year.  We, dear readers, are in the cat-bird seat to select the winner.

In my last post I waxed eloquent about Hyundai (my choice for winner) and McDonald’s.

This post I want to wax eloquent about Legos.  They have been phenomenal in the past couple of years.

Today I was walking through the fabled F.A.O. Schwartz toy story here in NYC.  I was picking up my daughter from a birthday party that was being held in a special party room of the store.  We took a few minutes to just wander around the store and talk.  At one point my daughter pointed and said, “How cool is that!  It’s the Harry Potter characters in Lego.”  Indeed, there was an enormous Rubeus Hagrid along with Harry and several other characters.

So, Legos, you got a big thumbs up from a 12 year-old girl who remembers playing with your toys when she was younger and now sees a whole new reason to play with them…without feeling childish.  How cool is that!

Just remember, vote early and vote often!

Best marketer of the year: Hyundai!

Ad Age has given all of us readers the opportunity to pick the marketer of the year.  My vote is for Hyundai.

The editors have done all of the hard work, sifting through all of the candidates and making a strong case for the finalists. The five finalists they are presenting are Amazon, Hyundai, Lego, McDonald’s and Walmart.

The two who really stand out are McDonald’s and Hyundai.

McDonald’s has been a perennial top marketer since their turn-around in 2004.  They won the marketer of the year award back then and continue keep up their momentum.  They just keep getting better and better at it.  Some people say that McDonald’s is doing well because of the bad economy.  Yes and no is my response.  Yes the economy makes people more interested in a lower cost alternative.  But no because McDonald’s is up far more than Burger King or other competitors.

So why don’t I vote for McDonald’s a marketer of the year?  Mostly because they’ve already been there.  It’s time for another Cinderella story to be given the prize.

My vote goes to Hyundai because they have an incredible story of moving the brand from a “me-too” car from Korea to a “me first” car for everyone concerned about the economy and the environment.  Hyundai is top of the charts in product quality and now the audacious buyer’s assurance marketing campaign has caught everyone’s attention.  They had a great story to tell and they had a great way to sell their story.

As they say in South Philly, “vote early and vote often”!

AdAge nominations