Dwayne Flinchum Experiences in brand identity, marketing & media

There were few surprises when GM made an announcement a few days before the Facebook IPO that it would pull its $10 million annual spend on paid Facebook ads. In fact, I doubt that Facebook has been very successful for the nation’s 3rd largest advertiser. One might argue (and many analysts did) that

I rarely use this Blog to make personal or professional announcements, but I am so proud and excited by this news that I’ll make an exception. As of today, I’ll be a principal in a new venture called OrgCentric, a company created exclusively to serve nonprofit organizations and deliver expertise acr

The New York Times has a very capable and impressive coverage of the media industry through reporters like David Carr, Stuart Elliott, and David Pogue. The April 24 blog post by Nick Wingfield makes an excellent point: The user experience in media, especially apps, is shifting dramatically and quick

It’s almost impossible for many of us to think about chauvinistic advertising of the 1950’s and 1960’s and not think of Don Draper and Mad Men. Taschen has just released a two-volume showcase, ‘Mid-Century Ads: Advertising From the “Mad Men” Era' (Taschen, 720 pages, $59.99) Taschen.com In recent ye

I was recently speaking with an accomplished commercial photographer about how the industry has changed. The market for corporate and editorial photography has been commoditized — as almost everything has been — by technology. On top of everything, agencies like Corbis and Getty have been purchasing

It always starts as a whisper: “If you build it, they will come.” It’s no secret that the Internet has been rather fertile playing ground for a whole generation of successful start-up companies. We all know what the first web bubble felt like. Remember Webvan? Or Friendster? The capitalization of th

It’s the Holy Grail of marketing: Being able to foresee a fad or trend, and capitalize on it. I was recently talking to an analytics expert who shared that he once worked for a large retailer that would monitor purchasing habits early in the day on the U.S. east coast — and let that inform [...] R

Proctor and Gamble has manofthehouse.com. For teens, the company also started beinggirl.com. For mothers, it started homemadesimple.com. Yahoo has thepostgame.com. Richemont (maker of Piaget, Dunhill and Montblanc) has net-a-porter.com. Increasingly, corporate brands are enjoying the success of thei

He’s at it again. Mike Bloomberg made a savvy, if unpredictable purchase of BusinessWeek in October 2009, promptly hired new key editorial managers and redesigned the publication as Bloomberg Businessweek. Now, as reported in The New York Times, he’s launching another print pub, this time for luxury

Donny Deutsch recently spoke about Tim Tebow and he made an interesting point: We as Americans are often much more intrigued by athletes and celebrities that are being bad, than we are by the ones who are just working and persevering, trying to deliver results. It seems true, but American ideals are