In this day and age of social media and things ‘going viral’, I’m always surprised when an individual or a company does or says something deliberately controversial. So, I was both surprised and disheartened to see the clearly incendiary remarks about his target audience from Mark Jeffries, CEO of the teenage-focused retail chain Abercrombie & Fitch. It will definitely be interesting to see what happens with A&F as time goes on – but I thought that it was time to [...]

Last week, I was in LA for the Variety Entertainment & Technology Summit as well as Digital Hollywood to participate on panels discussing the role social media insights and strategy play for the Media & Entertainment world. With these conferences just behind us and Mother’s Day just ahead this Sunday, I thought I would combine the two for the May installment of the Brand Passion Index, so I looked at moms and entertainment! Powered by the NetBase Insight Composer, I [...]

Twitter has gone so mainstream that now even my dad and Warren Buffet have Twitter handles! Apparently Buffet has always had an aversion to technology, but he jumped on the social media bandwagon – and rapidly accrued hundreds of thousands of followers in mere minutes. We saw further evidence of social media’s ubiquity in the last election – Obama for America was totally dialed into social, connecting with voters, and then powered their social analytics strategy with NetBase insights. So [...]

As the April 13th installment of the Wall Street Journal Sentiment Tracker showed, currency and all of its different incarnations is top of mind these days, particularly on social media.  And this week on Saturday’s WSJ Sentiment Tracker covered the social response to the design of the new $100 bill.  As with many topics on the social web, online users were polarized and had some strong opinions – 32% like the new design, while 22% find it ugly, 43% talked [...]

Currency has come in many forms over the centuries.  Here in the US we have some odd ones like the 2 dollar bill or the Susan B. Anthony coin, which just didn’t seem to take off. Currency also evolves – when I backpacked through Europe in my late teens, I could not keep track of all those colorful bills from country to country, and now there is the ubiquity of the  Euro (except for the UK of course). And apparently [...]

This may show my age and only make sense to women my age, but to this day, when I think of Lancôme, I still think of Isabella Rossellini. Something about the resonance of her classic beauty still compels me to buy their products. And whenever I see Brooke Shields, I still hear “nothing gets between me and my Calvin’s” in my head. Picking the right celebrity to represent your brand can be incredibly powerful – it builds brand passion and [...]

Over the last couple weeks, I have been doing lots of research for an upcoming article on the glass ceiling and how it applies to the balance between work and home life for modern women. Much of what I found was quite encouraging, but the April 6th installment of the Wall Street Journal Sentiment Tracker, on Brittney Griner potentially playing in the NBA, showed me that even at 6’8” you can still hit your head and not break the glass [...]

After years of working in Silicon Valley, a long daily commute has become commonplace to me, and for the most part, I barely notice my fellow commuters and their in-car antics anymore. In the past, though, I’ve seen people putting on makeup, eating breakfast, even one guy shaving his face. However, when I saw that the March 30th installment of the Wall Street Journal Sentiment Tracker was about a new survey showing that adults are now admitting to texting and [...]

I’m not much of a late night TV person these days, but when I did watch, it was always with the classic Johnny Carson. In the episodes I have seen of Jay Leno, I still haven’t quite gotten used to him being in charge, so with the news that Jimmy Fallon may soon be taking over, I can’t believe it’s already time for the changing of the guards. The March 23rd installment of the Wall Street Journal Sentiment Tracker, powered [...]

Well, technology has surprised me yet again – Minority Report became a reality much faster than I thought possible. The splash that Google Glass made at SXSW last week is indicative of Google’s latest product taking us one step closer to new levels of personalization…and in turn, privacy concerns are intensifying as well. The March 16th installment of the Wall Street Journal Sentiment Tracker showed that social media users on Facebook and Twitter are indeed divided on this newest innovation; [...]