The Promise of Private-label Media Brands that create their own digital media are reaching customers in compelling new ways.

The Trouble with Brands Most consumer brands are not creating value. The exceptions share a set of “energized” attributes that companies can identify and exploit.

Measuring Your Way to Market Insight To build closer connections to customers, start by developing analytical prowess.

Digital Darwinism In the new marketing and media ecosystem, some will fail, some will thrive, and all will have to evolve.

50-plus: A Market That Marketers Still Miss Companies must adopt new marketing practices to tap into this extremely valuable demographic.

The House That Ogilvy Built The legendary advertising innovator David Ogilvy created an enduring organization using culture, integrity, and charm.

Major Media in the Shopping Aisle Marketers are using digital and video technology to reach shoppers at the moment that matters most.

The Metric behind the Slogan Creating new ways to measure success.

Winning the PR Wars CEOs must learn to manage the media if they want to influence how their stories are told.

A Breakaway Opportunity for "Inferior" Products As the difficult economy causes consumers to trade down in their purchases, companies need to adjust their offerings to their customers' new behavior.

The Evolution of Online Media Author of Always On and Booz & Company Partner Christopher Vollmer on how the media environment is changing and what it means for advertisers and marketers.

Tracking the Elusive Consumer Consumer choice modeling can help companies improve their market share by providing them with a better understanding of their consumers' preferences.

Web Sales with a Human Touch Bringing personalized service to e-commerce consumers.

New Life for Tired Brands How to discover the dormant vitality in an old product line.

On Track for Growth Not long ago, the railroad industry was known for ever-lower expectations and diminishing service. Now, railroad companies, both public and private, are reinventing themselves as customer-conscious businesses. Amtrak, British Rail, Canada’s CN, and New Zealand Railways are discovering that the key to success isn’t privatization, but more attentive marketing.

New Metrics for Media Traditional methods of measuring the impact of an advertisement, such as audience exposure and reach, are becoming obsolete thanks to outcome-based media metrics. These new innovations in metrics can more accurately measure the behavior and spending-patterns of consumers, and will help improve marketing ROI.

Travel 2.0 Winning over the travelers of the future will require technologies that, like human travel agents, can segment customers accurately and give them what they want.

Signals for the Coming Year Change may be certain, but for a business decision maker, some changes have more impact than others. Here are eight trends that will make the greatest difference in 2008.

Bridging the Marketing–Sales Chasm A common, fundamental disconnect between getting the message out and closing the deal can lead to lost sales opportunities. But it doesn’t have to.

Keeping Marketing’s Promises Ads that trumpet, “We’re unique!” are meaningless if the stores say, “No, we’re not.”

Web 2.0: Profiting from the Threat Fresh trends in consumer behavior driven by social media pose significant challenges to companies stuck in a traditional market-to-the-masses mind-set. Here’s how to thrive on the new Web.

Kevin George: Unilever’s Digital Media Strategy Unilever’s U.S. vice president and general manager of its deodorants division discusses his company’s approach to launching new products using a variety of new media channels.

The Situational Leader Jack Stahl, a former chief executive at Coca-Cola and Revlon, discusses how great leaders balance their broad strategic missions with constant attention to organizational detail.

Partners at the Point of Sale With “shelf-centered collaboration,” manufacturers and retailers can finally turn customer information into profitable insight. Working with carefully selected value chain partners and using new kinds of analytics, they can shift focus from the “mean” to the “meaningful”: from aggregated sales figures to a granular understanding of consumer demand by item, by store, and by day.

Rebuilding Lego, Brick by Brick This venerable company didn’t look as if it was in trouble, but it was destroying 250,000 euros in value every day. To rebuild profitability, the Danish toymaker retooled every aspects of its supply chain. That meant eliminating inefficiencies, aligning its innovation capacity with the market, and regearing to compete in the new big-box world.

See for Yourself Firsthand observation on the front lines can offer the critical insights that make for inspired — and inspiring — leadership.

The New Complete Marketer Do organizations with strategically focused, broadly responsible chief marketing officers produce better results than their traditionalist peers? Interviews with some of the most renowned CMOs in the world — from Procter & Gamble, Mercedes-Benz, Diageo, PepsiCo, NBC, Google, Yahoo, and more — show how marketing is changing faster than many companies realize.

Beyond the Borders Like the hordes of Americans who explored Europe in the 1960s and the droves of Japanese who traveled in the 1980s, a big wave of Chinese tourists is set to hit the global travel industry. Companies looking to grow in this segment will not be disappointed. To capitalize on the new boom, hotel operators, airlines, and touring companies should start building a good understanding of the travel habits and preferences of Chinese nationals traveling abroad, with particular attention to how they’re evolving.…Read More

Is Your Sales Force Adaptable? Do your company’s sales representatives have clear specialization? Do they operate within a logical reporting structure? Are established sales reps routinely working on things that temporary workers are capable of, at the expense of selling time? Here’s a five-step plan for fundamentally revamping a sales force.…Read More

Getting a Return on Financial-Services Marketing Financial services companies spend enormous sums on marketing -- more than $10 billion annually. But unlike consumer packaged goods purveyors, they lack clear outcome data to rigorously assess their ROI. The result is haphazard spending and an inability to evaluate the performance of marketing efforts. Analytical methods like breakeven analyses and consumer funnels can help services companies ground their marketing decisions in data rather than speculation.…Read More

A 21st-Century Approach to Product Launches Proctor and Gamble, the master of the 20th-century product launch, is still a trendsetter when it comes to bringing new products to market. Their introduction of Crest Whitestrips in 2000 is a case study in the contemporary approach. The key lessons: leverage preexisting brands, master the “soft launch,” and use multiple channels to reach consumers.…Read More

Services in Search of True Marketing ROI Financial services companies spend enormous sums on marketing -- more than $10 billion annually. But unlike consumer packaged goods purveyors, they lack clear outcome data to rigorously assess their ROI. The result is haphazard spending and an inability to evaluate the performance of marketing efforts. Analytical methods like breakeven analyses and consumer funnels can help services companies ground their marketing decisions in data rather than speculation.

The Luxury Touch According to a recent survey conducted by Booz Allen Hamilton, superior customer service is what separates good luxury brands from great ones. Companies known for their customer satisfaction, such as Nordstrom, Ritz-Carlton and Lexus, use a rigorous process to instill a customer-centric philosophy in all levels of the organization, and systematically train and reward employees to focus on keeping customers happy. A customer-focused model can also translate into business success: each customer-centric company consistently outperformed its peers, even during years when the industry as a whole suffered. Once customers have grown accustomed to high levels of service, they are often willing to pay a premium for superior service and tend to remain loyal to the brands that provide it.

Marketers, Meet the Millennial Generation Marketers trying to reach Generation Y may find that traditional techniques don’t work with this young group of consumers. Generation Y has been bombarded with 20th-century advertising since early childhood, and they filter it out very astutely. Targeting them effectively means that campaigns have a shorter life cycle, distinctions like “above the line/below the line” are not relevant, and traditional market research is not always effective.

The Future of Advertising Is Now Marketers take heed: After years of over-hype, digital media are finally mainstream. Influential companies, like Procter & Gamble, DaimlerChrysler, and Unilever, are leading the revolution. Their experience shows that major growth opportunities abound for companies that reconfigure their businesses to utilize the latest forms of digital media distribution.

Growth Champions What distinguishes a truly great marketer? In an era of unlimited opportunities but constrained resources, the only metric that matters is growth. In a survey conducted in conjunction with the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), Booz Allen Hamilton uncovers the key characteristics shared by the world’s most successful marketers.

Beyond Brand Management The marketing profession is undergoing its most significant transformation of the last half-century. As traditional forms of marketing such as direct mail and brand advertising are supplanted by unprecedented forms of electronic media, marketers find themselves forced to master new skills, both qualitative and quantitative. For the first time in decades, marketers will need to think entrepreneurially, act independently, and cultivate a new set of skills to adapt to a changing landscape.

The DNA of Marketing Marketing organizations are widely perceived to be falling short of the high expectations company leaders have for them. A new survey of 4,000 marketing executives by Booz Allen Hamilton and the Association of National Advertisers shows that poor functioning stems from the "DNA" of marketing organizations. Learn how to change your DNA and you will improve performance and profitability.

Why Ad Agencies Need Chief Integration Officers As digital media reshapes the media landscape, creative teams need to work closer than ever with their strategic counterparts to ensure a seamless integration of corporate strategy with content production and distribution. Randall Rothenberg, Booz Allen Hamilton’s senior director of intellectual capital, highlights important takeaways from the American Association of Advertising Agencies annual trade show. (AdAge.com subscription required.)

In Need of a Resync? Accelerating Marketing Effectiveness and Unlocking Greater Revenue Potential A new Booz Allen Hamilton study reveals that while marketers often do great work, it’s often not the right work because it’s misaligned with the overall business agenda. That points to an opportunity to reconfigure the marketing role to unlock latent organic growth potential and boost business performance.

Dueling Technologies at the Point of Sale Using a mobile phone to make payments is easier, faster, cheaper, and more secure than credit cards, checks, and even cash. So why are the United States and Europe so slow to adopt the technology?

City Planet From Mumbai to Lagos to Curitiba to Karachi, companies must learn to operate in cosmopolitan slums, with thriving markets, aging populations, and the most creative economies in history.

The Hidden Costs of Clicks Online retailing survivors like Amazon.com learned early why some items, like books, make money online, while others, like toys, don't. The answer lies in grasping how product life cycles, packaging, and a host of other variables affect the cost-to-serve of each item. As online retailing continues its growth spurt, this concept is now more important than ever.

Does Your Marketing Fit Your Company's Needs? Too many marketing departments are out of sync with the rest of their company. Booz Allen Hamilton and the Association of National Advertisers identified six distinct types of marketing organizations, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. A free, five-minute test illuminates your marketing organization profile and how to boost performance.

Lessons from Grey Goose: The Superpremium Premium Marketers of everything from vodka to gasoline are cashing in on the opportunities in premium and superpremium branding. These "premium-plus" product classes let companies charge up to 200 percent over the average price in the category, but beware the pitfalls.

When Art Meets Science: The Challenge of ROI Marketing How can a company be sure it's spending the right amount of money on the right kind of marketing? One answer might be ROI marketing, which uses sophisticated metrics and computer models to analyze and quantify marketing spending and return on investment. But ROI marketing is much more than a measurement system; it’s a marketing management philosophy.