The Agitator

OK, summer is over, you’ve had a week to get back into work mode, and so The Agitator is ready to offer some heavy lifting this week. We’ve been saving up some important stuff on social media. First up is a new report from the Pew internet Project, called The Internet & Civic ...  Read more

Here are two recent articles from Marketing Daily describing the current state of play of cause marketing in the U.S. In the first, sponsorship giant IEG projects that $1.55 billion will be spent on cause marketing in 2009. IEG cites survey data saying that 41% believe companies should increase ...  Read more

I was reading this article from Online Spin about the competition between Nielsen Online and comScore as to who has the biggest and best online panel for measuring online behavior. This is the sort of thing that market researchers can get quite passionate about. And indeed, given that marketers ...  Read more

NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof just wrote the fascinating story of Scott Harrison, a fundraiser and skillful marketer who, as Kristof puts its, is making clean water sexy. Some important fundraising lessons here. Scott is a 33-year-old ex-nightclub promoter who "got religion" while ...  Read more

At the risk of signaling my age, I’m pleased to report that all those Saturday mornings of watching Mr. Wizard on black & white TV paid off. I just scored 100% on Pew Research Center’s science quiz. Mr. Wizard would be proud! You can take the quiz here. Of  greater ...  Read more

Happy to hand the megaphone today to Guest Agitator Janice Christensen, for her thoughts on the powerful mobilizing — and through that, fundraising — role of Twitter. Janice is the former Director of Campaigns of Amnesty International USA, a board member of the Torture Abolition and ...  Read more

Here’s an interesting column from Stuart Elliott of the NY Times regarding anger as a motivator in commercial advertising. It seems that commercial marketers are traditionally quite skittish about tapping into the palpable anger people feel about the economy. But the times might be ...  Read more

Much has been written about candidate use of online tools in the 2008 election. But here’s one of the best pieces I’ve seen regarding sophisticated use of the internet for issue campaigning. The focus was California’s Proposition 8, which sought to ban same-sex marriages ...  Read more

Here from Pew Research is — for my money — the definitive report on the role of the internet in last year’s election. Below are some topline findings from Pew’s report, but you should treat this as "must read" if you are serious about engaging folks online around ...  Read more

The late David Ogilvy was among the greatest advertising geniuses who ever lived. He built a truly remarkable global agency and contributed more than his fair share to both the creative and management sides of the business. Among Ogilvy’s more unconventional beliefs was that truly great ...  Read more