Design Can Carry A Brand

By Dominique Trempont, Guest Author A brand is the emotional vibration between a company and its customers. That vibration is about establishing trust that customers should expect a consistent experience with the products and services of a company. An example of that emotional vibration is Jaguar, at least in the 1950s and 1960s.

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Time Warner’s Ad Network Move

In a previous post, I discussed Time Warner’s digital media strategy. In this one, I will analyze their move into Ad Networks, via an investment in Adify, a small company providing technology infrastructure services for building and running ad networks. [If you are new to the field on online advertising, please read my interview with

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Monetizing Blogs via Ad Networks

We have spent a few weeks discussing online advertising and ad networks with the CEO of Adify. In this post, let’s take a look at how blogs would be able to leverage quality ad networks. Today, the notion of ‘A-List’ bloggers depends on 2 things: (a) Traffic (b) Content. Often, you find blogs with high

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Social Entrepreneur: Harish Hande (Part 5)

Here Harish provides us with a case study of his business model. This is just one example, and they have 80,000 installations, so you can appreciate the impact Selco has had. SM: A lot of our readers likely have no idea what a very poor village in India looks like or what issues they deal

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Microfranchise: Early Adopters

By David Stoker, Guest Author Whenever ‘MicroFranchising’ is mentioned a prominent example is cited: the Scojo Foundation. It was recently highlighted in the January 2007 edition of the Economist and in an article by Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar in the Economic Times entitled MicroFranchising: the Next Big Thing. Scojo brings reading glasses to the poor

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Social Entrepreneur: Harish Hande (Part 4)

Selco has faced some significant challenges, as you might imagine. Here we talk about some of the second-phase obstacles that Selco is in some ways still working to overcome. SM: Were there any other obstacles that stand out? HH: Another obstacle we faced was making the transition from solar lighting to solar power. One of

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Grameen on MicroFranchising

By David Stoker, Guest Author The Grameen Bank has been the leading institution in the field of microcredit and microfinance. They are also leading the way in the field of MicroFranchising as they have expanded into a Grameen Family of Enterprises. Perhaps the most impactful of their microfranchises has been Grameen Phone and its Village

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Social Entrepreneur: Harish Hande (Part 3)

Here we delve into the philosophy behind Selco – what makes the company what it is. We explore not only the operations philosophy, but also some of the social and cultural philosophies of the company. SM: Can you explain the business of Selco at this point to us? HH: The whole philosophy of Selco is

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