By Cary Hatch, MDB Communications

Amid the toughest economic climate in decades, new opportunities have emerged. Surprisingly, the marketing ecosystem is evolving to satisfy the new needs and realities of brand leaders and the industry as a whole.

Earlier this month, The Washington Post Company announced second-quarter financial results and reported that its newspaper division lost $2.9 million during Q2.  While the company is larger than its media operations, we provide the following focus on how their newspaper and broadcast television operations did during the quarter.

By Vicki Stearn, Think Out Loud Media

Communicators' core goals and basic questions haven’t changed that much over the past 50 years: Who is the client’s target audience or audiences? Who or what influences that audience? Where is the audience? Where are the influencers? How do we reach that audience in a trusted environment where the client’s message will be heard effectively?

Residents of the DC area expressed a desire to “live green” when asked about their attitudes toward using ecologically friendly products and services. While 72% of area residents were overall committed to “living green”, 21% stated that they were “very committed.” The overall commitment was higher in the Northern Virginia suburbs (80%) relative to the Maryland suburbs (70%) and the District of Columbia (50%).

By Vicki Stearn, Think Out Loud Media

A nuclear detonation was the “event” at the center of the PRSA-NCC Professional Development Workshop “When a Crisis Strikes: Scenario-Based Training to Avoid Communications Regrets Before, During and After a High Stakes Event.” More than 50 public relations professionals attended the July 20 workshop, led by Tim Tinker, director of Booz Allen Hamilton’s Center for Risk and Crisis Communications.

By Jim Lansbury, RP3 Agency

According to recent Ad Age article, the success of “Mad Men” on AMC has inspired the network to make its first foray into reality TV with advertising competition show “The Pitch.” But the show, announced in April, has yet to sign a contract with a participating agency. In fact, they’ve been turned down by dozens of New York’s biggest agencies.

By Brian Wolak

Where do Baltimore businesspeople rank on the social media scale? Charm City is tied at 38 with 10 other cities, cracking the list of 50 Most Social Cities.

By Brian Wolak

Where do Washington, D.C., businesspeople rank on the social media scale? D.C. is tied at 20 with four other cities, cracking the list of 50 Most Social Cities.

NetProspex, a B2B sales and marketing database, assigned a social index score (NPSI) based on

By Nichole Paro, RP3 Agency

In between reading the requisite marketing manuals – you know, the ones I carry around to make myself look smarter – I try to find time to keep up with popular literature. It helps me stay connected, balanced, and, well, sane. I’ve just finished reading Keith Richards’ autobiography, “Life.” It is a spectacularly raw and honest account

The best person to build your social media strategy is you. And according to Vocus, they just made it easy.

Vocus reports that it took the best social media research out there - Marketing Sherpa's Social Media Roadmap and 2011/2012 Benchmark Reports - and turned it into an interactive tool that lets you create a custom strategy tailored exactly to your needs.

According to a WB&A Market Research study, residents of the Washington, DC, area were almost evenly divided on the location of the planned Metro station at Washington Dulles International Airport.  Just over one-third (36%) thought the station should be under ground, while one-third (33%) believe the station should be above ground. The remaining 31% did not know or did not have an opinion as to where the station should be built.

The Washington, DC, and Baltimore area MarkeTrak^® consumer studies show that area residents are feeling less optimistic about economic conditions than they were earlier this year. The MarkeTrak^® Optimism Index, a 100-point indicator of area residents’ perceptions of current and future economic conditions, fell in both the DC and Baltimore markets.

By Lauren Bachner, West Glen Communications

One of the most commonly asked questions that WestGlen receives from existing and potential clients is, “Can a PSA be re-distributed with success?”

The answer is YES – you can re-distribute a PSA that has already made the media rounds, and often with similar or even greater success.

By Marketwire

Congratulations!  You’ve just created a thought-provoking, awe-inspiring and call-to-action-laden piece of content.  ROI and back-pats, here we come.  But then you let it sit there.  Few people read it, nobody shares it and you’re the only one who tweets it.  What happened?  By rights, creating content that reaches the audiences we want to reach, grabs their attention and causes them to react in a positive way should be second nature for PR professionals and marketers; it’s what we’ve been trained do. 

By Nick Paradise and Richard M. Coad, MDB Communications 

Augmented reality or “AR” is an interesting new addition to the digital marketing world.    With AR, a live view of a physical, real-world environment is augmented with computer-generated sensory input like sound and graphics.  (This is in contrast to virtual reality, which simulates the real world in a digital environment.)  AR is common

By Greg Kihlström

When Jon Stewart tapped the Trust for the National Mall as the official non-profit of the Rally to Restore Sanity last October, the three-year-old organization was thrust into the national spotlight. Carousel30 Interactive, the Trust’s digital agency, helped plan and execute a digital campaign around the rally that saw an increase in website traffic of 1,700 percent and over $500,000 in donations.

Traditionalists take note: Only 25 percent of social media users say their friends/peers are credible when it comes to making recommendations online (down from 45 percent three years ago). And, 72 percent of news consumers still get their information from traditional sources like television, radio and print media. But don’t get too happy.

By Matt Goddard, CEO of R2integrated, and a believer in the networked world.

When the writers of Star Trek created the civilization “The Borg”, they provided us with an interesting glimpse into what decision making behavior might be like if we could communicate better. The Borg was a race of humans who once lived their lives like you and I. Over time, the Borg created a set of communication tools that were so efficient that everyone in society was networked to each other and all information flowed from a single source… in their case,

R2integrated CEO Matt Goddard recently joined other digital marketing thought leaders from Google, AOL, Yahoo!, and NBC Universal (among others) to discuss how brands find their customers in a data-driven world as top industry experts and insiders dive deeply into the challenges and success stories of audience targeting, management, and monetization.

By Rebecca Woolf,

How do you measure success?

This is one of the first questions we get at West Glen from clients when distributing a public service announcement. Is it media value? Markets aired? Viewer impressions? How do you measure success in your own professional life? Often, our most memorable professional moments are those when we feel powerful and motivated by an achievement

Awkward question: Are your social media followers actually interested?

As more brands get online, customers are getting bored. They hit the 'like' button but you never hear from them again.

Results from a nationally-representative survey concluded that about 40 percent of iPad owners have not used the device to read a single e-book. According to media and publishing forecast firm Simba Information's "Trade E-Book Publishing 2011," the survey also revealed a shift in demographic makeup of the e-book buyer from men to women during 2010 - which brings the e-book format more in line with longtime trends in print books.

By Jeff Caporizzo

One result of the overload of messages and marketing that defines communications today is the increased emphasis on good creative. Remarkable work goes a long way in punching through the noise out there. It's no coincidence that two strong brands -  Apple and Starbucks - also boast and leverage award-winning design teams recognized the world over for their talent and vision. (It's my opinion that Starbucks' success rests solidly on great design, but that is another post.)

By Dan Rosenthal

Has anyone noticed?

Communication is all over us. Our eyeballs are measured on some researcher's screen 24/7. It's on our bananas, our Facebook page, our baseball bats, our apps. But.

By Amy Garland

It all starts with the open.

It’s likely that the end goal of your email marketing campaign is to get your subscribers to convert. Whether it’s purchasing your product, taking a survey, or signing up for an event, you want recipients to take a certain action, but that’s not an issue if no one sees your email in the first place, right?

ZilYen teamed up with the American Marketing Association's DC chapter and delivered a tutorial presentation on how brand relates to business and the bottom line.  Covering recent brand gaffes

While the top-50 U.S. newspapers seem to be just starting to build their Facebook fan base, reports Journalistics, Twitter has been a priority for a while. If you were to rank the top-25 U.S. newspapers by Twitter followers, the order would be much different than if you were to rank them by circulation, it continued.

Forbes Jeff Bercovici had an interesting piece on March 25 about a list compiled by NY Times blogger and "statistics-dicer extraordinaire Nate Silver (see above) as evidence that the Times is uniquely well positioned to charge readers’ for online access. (The paper is the second most-cited news outlet after the Associated Press, and it’s the most linked to by bloggers.)"

By Jeff Caporizzo