Jacob Smith

A friend works in marketing for a global cosmetics company and was discussing its latest campaign to get women to buy more lipsticks. Most women, research suggests, have two lipsticks. One for work and one for play. The marketing team needed to find a way to get women to buy just one more lipstick. Their …
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Thanks to Malcolm Gladwell for this observation. In his best-selling book, The Tipping Point, he talks about his amusement that on every packet of Ivory soap is a phone number where people with issues or comments can ring in. “Who would bother?” he wonders. Well, it turns out this strategy is the perfect ‘maven trap’ …
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I’m a big fan of the radio show, This American Life. Each week, Ira Glass and his team pick a topic and examine it from several perspectives. Like a play, there are several acts that illuminate a story in fresh and surprising ways. It’s long form journalism through voice and week after week, it delivers …
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With more than 100 million views, KONY2012 has certainly captured worldwide attention. Don’t know what I’m talking about? In brief, US-based organization called ‘Invisible Children’ created a thirty minute video and campaign to highlight the plight of Ugandan children stolen from their families and enlisted as child soldiers. The man responsible for the kidnapping and …
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Sometimes, clients leave. Usually this is not a bitter divorce as much as an amicable parting of ways, often inevitable in the best of working relationships. The reasons are as varied as the clients we work with. Building a professional relationship includes planning for the end so that moving on leaves everyone feeling good about …
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Psssst. Want to find out how to get people to do what you want? Silly question. Of course you do. Most of us want to influence behavior in some way – be it increasing web traffic, getting people to buy from you, or to take the action you want. Psychologists and advertisers have created entire …
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I’ve just spent the last couple of minutes writing the headline for this blog post. I toyed with:- How to Increase Traffic with a Killer Headline – mmmm Secrets to Writing a Killer Headline – not outcome based How to Increase Traffic To Your Site – boring I decided on “6 Proven Headlines That Spike …
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Best-selling, controversial writer, Bret Easton Ellis, set the Twitterverse alight over the weekend. For around five hours, he mused on what his American Psycho character, Patrick Bateman, might be up to these days and managed to gather fourteen pages of notes from his followers. Ellis tweeted: “1.00 am in LA and sitting at my desk …
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Yes, it’s harder to get people’s attention these days, and I generally have two responses. The first is despair at how difficult it is to break through all the noise. But then I remember I can also view this noise as an opportunity – to become even more creative. And think outside the box. I …
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In the past, when something especially important happened to a client, Dinkum Interactive used to send them a batch of homemade cookies. And they weren’t just any cookies but decorated with the Dinkum Interactive logo. The cookies became one of our more effective marketing tools generating buzz, smiles, feedback and more. For a business like …
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