Listen Up: 100 Podcasts to Check Out (Beyond Serial)

By Allison Mabry   |   March 10, 2016

Podcasts have been around for many years, but they never really seemed to be for me. The format seemed tailor-made for road warriors or long-distance runners (of which I am neither). Then, there came Serial. You may have heard of it?

In late 2014, all over social media, my friends and acquaintances were consumed by the “did he or didn’t he?” questions of the murder case at the heart of Season 1 of Serial.

Read more >

Five Tips for Creating a Successful Infographic

By Allison Mabry   |   January 20, 2016

Infographics are a great way to add a visual “bang” to your marketing message—because they turn complex data and statistics into a more compelling, memorable format.

But did you know there’s actual science behind why your brain craves infographics? Studies show that it takes you less than 1/10 of a second to understand a visual scene and that color visuals increase the willingness to read by 80%. To really prove the point,

Read more >

What’s the key to being happier at work?

By Allison Mabry   |   June 19, 2015

In today’s open-concept office spaces, the noises from your coworkers can be incredibly distracting. To counter the conversations, office copier sounds, and keyboard clicks, some companies pipe in white noise to filter out the distractions. But a recent study has found an even more effective tool: listening to the sounds of nature. Read through the article for a 10-hour download of a babbling brook and see if this ridiculously simple trick provides a better soundtrack for your work day.

Read more >

How to organize your business's social media

By Allison Mabry   |   April 8, 2015

Here are some helpful tips to help you when updating your business’s social media. It’s easy to get pulled into the internet and all its entertainment and news features when trying to log on to update your business’s social media. All of us have had that experience of clicking on something that catches our eye…that takes away from our original intention of going online in the first place. With new venues appearing every week,

Read more >

Email signoffs: do they really matter?

By Allison Mabry   |   March 23, 2015

In this age of texting, mobile IMs and social media chats, email can seem like a thing of the past. But in the business world, the total number of emails being exchanged daily is higher than ever. In fact, 116.2 billion emails are expected to be exchanged worldwide in 2015—and the growth rate shows no signs of slowing down.

So, in a world of rampant email use, does it really matter how you “sign” those business emails?

Read more >

Funky will still fail if you’re doing it wrong

Guerilla marketing
By Allison Mabry   |   January 13, 2015

Any marketing idea—no matter how funky, gimmicky, or just plain weird—will fail if it’s poorly executed.

Here in Austin, we’ve developed an international reputation for keeping things weird.  This ethos can even include our marketing.  Did you know about the local company that used to ride rollerblades while distributing gig posters for bands?

While the public posting of ads isn’t the kind of marketing campaign we do here at DeLaune,

Read more >

Self-Rating Systems: Yelp Yourself?

Whole Foods peach display
By Allison Mabry   |   November 17, 2014

A nascent marketing trend is companies developing their own systems for rating themselves and their products. The question is whether customers will consider this helpful or self-serving.

Consider what Austin-based Whole Foods Market has recently implemented: a produce rating system of its own design called Responsibly Grown. This caught my attention because businesses don’t usually create systems that rate their own merchandise.  The lack of third-party independence makes a “my product is the best because I said so” rating rather unpersuasive. 

Read more >

From late-night phone calls to buckets of ice: Social media has potential

Jake from State Farm ad
By Allison Mabry   |   October 2, 2014

There’s a commercial my family stops to watch on the DVR every single time it comes on. It’s the “It’s Jake, from State Farm” commercial, which actually started running way back in 2011! There’s just something hilarious about the wife catching her husband making a 3 a.m. call to his insurance agent and mistakenly saying, “She sounds hideous”—prompting his deadpan response, “Well, she’s a guy.” The misunderstanding feels just so universal.

Anyway,

Read more >

How safe is your watering hole? Inside the jargon of cyber-security threat

IT guy for x-force
By Allison Mabry   |   June 11, 2014

Here at DeLaune and Associates, we are constantly writing about the steady rise of cyber-security threats. Our ears perk up when a major online retailer warns its users to change their passwords, or the local news says to refrain from using a specific browser. In our recent work with the IBM X-Force research and development team, we even learned that spam threats are alive and well—and that March 2014 marked the return of the highest levels of spam measured during the past two and half years.

Read more >

Cable TV gets personal and wins

Thank you card from Time Warner Cable
By Allison Mabry   |   March 6, 2014

by Barbara Goutelon

For several months now, my husband and I have been trying to decide if we’re ready to cut the cord on our cable TV subscription. We keep asking ourselves, do we really need a three-digit cable bill? He swears that he can live without the sports coverage, and I think I can survive without another “House Hunters” marathon.

But then, we caught the “Homeland” addiction. After watching a few episodes on DVD,

Read more >

Top