Earlier this month, Vermont's largest city, Burlington, held a mayoral election that featured two non-incumbents vying for the top municipal job in the state. Voters went to the polls on March 6 to choose between Democrat Miro Weinberger and Republican Kurt Wright. When Weinberger won a decisive 57 percent to...

Ben & Jerry's launched a new ice cream this week, "Schweddy Balls," in honor of Alec Baldwin's old Saturday Night Live skit. In an instant, Twitter was abuzz. Schweddy Balls and Ben & Jerry's both zoomed to the top of the trending list. Mashable wrote about...

A lot of people got very worked up last year over the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. In it, the Court decided that corporations were just like regular people and thus deserved the right of free speech. The more I read the news these days, the more I think those...

For most of us who work in marketing, we consider ourselves to work in a "creative" industry. That is: we're charged with coming up with creative solutions to marketing problems and, usually, the ones with the best creative ideas win. If you work in an agency, you've probably heard, ad...

This month's news about Magic Hat Brewery's sale to North American Breweries was a shock to us Vermonters. Magic Hat is one of my favorite brands, favorite beers and employs some of my favorite people. Now this original and quirky company risks losing its local control and connection,...

Several months ago, the FCC announced that it was formulating a national broadband policy. The U.S. was the last industrialized nation to do so, showing itself as a surprising laggard for our technically innovative country. Personally, I was encouraged that we had finally taken this step.

This week...

I spoke with an old friend recently who's working on an interesting new project. Dennis Downey released a new iPhone app named Poem Flow where people can read or experience a poem per day. With our increasingly short attention spans and our desire to click on links, it...

Online retail continues to grow while local communities struggle with deep economic problems. Do these two economic trajectories have anything to do with one other? While there may not be a causal link between the two trends, it's time for online-only retailers to do the right thing: Charge and pay...

Google launched Droid more than a month ago with a solid male-focused campaign which included rockets blasting the earth. Maybe Google leading with machismo was a good idea for capturing some marketing share from Apple's iPhone, but now you have to wonder if Google hasn't crossed the line to just...

I started using the site Twunfollow a few months back and since then I've seen evidence of what I call Ponzi schemes on Twitter.

Twunfollow sends you notices via e-mail any time anyone unfollows you on Twitter. I thought this would be a good listening tool to make sure I...

We’re seeing a media shift away from traditional outlets like print and TV towards outlets like mobile and digital devices. One of the huge implications in this is that our very stable economic model of advertising-driven content is starting to disappear right before our eyes. Newspapers can no longer afford...

There's no doubt that 2009 was the year of social media. Everyone, from small business owners to multinational brands, wanted to talk about it at every opportunity. I've never seen more excitement and interest in digital marketing than the response to social media. From small chambers of commerce meetings to...

Last week at the Tea Party rally at the U.S. Capitol, angry demonstrators held up signs protesting Health Care legislation, signs that showed piles of dead Holocaust victims from the concentration camp Dachau with a political slogan on top.

With that sign, the Tea Party stepped over the...

The teabaggers and the angry conservatives sure make a lot of noise these days. There seems to be as much noise talking about them making noise as the original noise itself. One thing seems to be clear, though: the online channel is a key element in the vitriol. It provides...