Claudia D'Arcy

I love a good paradox, I really do. Which is good because I often think my whole life is contained in a huge paradox of sorts. I am a marketer that actually dislikes the root concept of marketing. I spend my time on social media, but in a large group I’m not that social. I love the work I do, but I hate change and online marketing is always changing. And at any given time (often simultaneously),I love Google and then I hate Google.

Needless to say, Google plays into all and Google Plus touches on all. After acknowledging that I naturally resist change and grumbling as it is in my nature, I got over myself and spent some serious time trying my best to find my happy place on Google Plus.   Read the rest of this entry »

An Inside Look at What the Newsweek Mad Men Advertising Issue Means

Ad Age wrote this week about how Newsweek is reviving its 1960s design for a special ‘Mad Men’ issue. At DragonSearch, we have been working on a whole introspective on old vintage advertisements in, oddly enough, our own “Mad Men” theme which has been running for quite a while. Now I have to admit that while I don’t watch Mad Men, I do have a good appreciation for most things retro and this one article (that basically advertises for ads in an upcoming issue of styled advertisements based on a  TV show about advertisers – ha! say that ten times fast) says a whole lot about advertisement and marketing. What’s even more interesting is that while the article is about retro advertisements and Newsweek, this Ad Age piece says much more about marketing today. Read the rest of this entry »

This is part two of Social Media Integrations of 2012 where I discussed the hopeful future use of QR codes in advertising and beyond. Now I will discuss the integrations I would like to see made at Facebook.

The Most Needed Facebook Update Ever: Facebook Integration of Events, Places, Pages, and Communities

The third item on my integration wish list is for Facebook to merge their data sources. Right now information comes from far too many places:

Facebook Place Pages are fed into the Facebook database via Localeze. These are pumped in automatically and often are duplicates of a business or brand page on Facebook. While Facebook does have an internally mechanism to claim a Place page, having duplicate pages does dilute the activity and invites confusion to users . This also seems to confuse business owners, as I don’t often see place pages claimed by businesses! Granted one can claim a place page and then have it combined to their actual Brand page, but it’s not all that simple. Read the rest of this entry »

QR Codes in Advertising, Facebook and Beyond

It is pretty safe to say that I have integrated social media into my life.  Social media permeates my work, my home, my family, and my social interactions. Even if I decide to take time offline, I still know the ways that I could be incorporating social media marketing into everything I do.

Being that I spend my days using social networking for business and personally, then reading about new technology and tools, I have put together a little list of things I would like to see. It’s not a case of full on social media predictions or a report of how Gary Vaynerchuck, Chris Brogan and Others think social media will change in 2012, but rather, improvements that IMHO, are really needed (AKA make my life a whole lot easier!). Read the rest of this entry »

Once upon a time, it was considered perfectly acceptable for men to spank women, especially if the woman being spanked was that man’s wife.

This Chase and Sanborn Coffee ad is really advertising their form of a stay fresh lid that will keep their coffee ever so fresh.  Rather than speak of the benefits of having fresher coffee, they threaten “woe be unto you” and visually show how perfectly coifed wives will be spanked by their husbands if their coffee is “flat or stale.”   No matter how much one might adore their cup of joe, we do now wonder how the threat of bodily harm would inspire a person to choose one coffee brand over another. This vintage ad demonstrates the level of acceptance that society felt overall towards men who spank their wives and of spousal abuse in general, not so very long ago. Read the rest of this entry »