Blog entries

To Facebook or Not to Facebook?

Gregg Astoorian — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 15:28:09 +0100

Email is a thing of the past, according to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Although this might be wishful thinking on the Facebook side, I have been hearing a lot lately regarding this question: will email be supplanted by social networking platforms?

For sales and marketing Read More...

The Art of Marketing

Gregg Astoorian — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100

On March 2 in Toronto I'll be attending a conference entitled "The Art of Marketing" with a speakers list that reads a bit like a Who's Who of popular marketing gurus, including Seth Godin, Dan Heath and Mitch Joel. Despite what has seemed like the drawn out death rattle of conference events like this over the paRead More...

How Much of an Expert do you Need?

Gregg Astoorian — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100

I was asked the other day whether or not I would turn a potential client away if I wasn't an expert in the field I was being asked to write in. It's an interesting question, because it goes right to the reason why so many outsourced communication projects are only marginally successful at best, particularly in morRead More...

Neuroscience and Marketing?

Gregg Astoorian — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 04:00:00 +0100

This fall I'll be speaking at a conference in Orlando on the topic of effective organizational communication, specifically to address how the rational and emotional components of our thinking relates to how we perceive and act on messages.

Modern neuroscience offers a lot of Read More...

The Problem with Convergence?

Gregg Astoorian — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 04:00:00 +0100

The vision of convergence -- anytime, anywhere communications -- has been the holy grail of the telecom industry for almost 20 years in one form or another. Converged services combine voice, data and video and deliver them across a span of public, private, wired and wireless networks in a way that is seamless and conRead More...

Ergo Reborn

Gregg Astoorian — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 19:15:06 +0100

For those of you familiar with me and my previous work as a consultant and marketer, welcome to Ergo Communications, the new face of The Ergo Group. If you're new to Ergo, welcome!

Why the name change? Starting this year, Ergo has taken a new direction to focus on one specific area: writing compelling customer Read More...

Green IT: Where There's Sheep, There's Fertilizer

Gregg Astoorian — Tue, 13 May 2008 23:00:00 +0100

Since last year, "Green IT" has tipped over spectacularly in capturing the hearts, minds and maybe even wallets of IT managers and executives everywhere Therefore, in a true spirit of enquiry, I've started reading "Green to Gold". This is a 2006 book by Daniel Esty and Andrew WinRead More...

Next Year: Googin?

Gregg Astoorian — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 04:00:00 +0100

Between Xohm's delayed launch, the FCC quiet period affecting the 700MHz auction winners, and no huge product announcements, CTIA this year was fairly uneventful. The only exception was Richard Branson's keynote, during which he Read More...

Physics vs Marketing

Gregg Astoorian — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 23:00:00 +0100

In this article from Network World, we see an interesting example of how when marketing hype meets physics, physics generally wins until someone clever enough comes along to solve the problem.

The article provides an update from the WLAN group at Siemens, who appear to have solved a pesky problem cRead More...

It's About Us, Not You

Gregg Astoorian — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 23:00:00 +0100

During his keynote speech last month at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona John Chambers spoke of a shift Cisco is seeing from personalized communication to social networking. As Chambers put it, "it's no longer about you, it's about us.".

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHtB0AkyURead More...

The "Four E's"

Gregg Astoorian — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0100

I recently ran across a talk from Oglive One's Brian Featherstonhaugh and was impressed with his take on the traditional (and some might say outmoded) "4 P's of Marketing".

It's no secret that the internet is changing the nature of business communications and marketing. Even ten years ago, books such as &Read More...