It has been a great year of learning and accomplishment for Rubinson Partners and I wanted to thank my clients, academic sponsors at NYU, network of resources and thought partners such as Judah Phillips web analytics guru at Monster, Erwin Ephron, Dave Lundahl founder at InsightsNow, Pat Hanlon (author of Primal Branding), and Frank Cotignola at Kraft. I hope it has been a fabulous year for you and a prelude to being “touched by” an even better 2012. That’s a pun, because what has had more of an effect on daily living than touch screens on our phones, tablets, in the car or cab, ATM, etc.? And it is just starting…apps have not yet hit the tipping point.

I wanted to give something to all of you as a gift (other than a fruitcake!). Thanks to your sharing behavior (as high as 600 shares), page views (over 6,000 for one presentation), and search terms that refer traffic (“path to purchase” is the biggie), I am able to see which of my blogs or presentations generate the most interest, obviously addressing what keeps you up at night or stimulating your thinking by challenging mythology with evidence.
The leaderboard:

#1—How do people spend time with your brand? Owned media usually dominates Facebook and Twitter regarding the engagement power of “time with brand” as few go back to the fan page or spend time with updates. 600 or so shares suggest that others must have discovered this…in conversations, I know they have.

#2—Shopper path to purchase; a new approach to media planning? This blog keeps getting page views because it is found via organic search. A shopper perspective is an action perspective and increasingly, media is becoming an action environment

#3—Sharing is more than fans, friends, and followers. The truth about sharing behavior analyzed from ShareThis data across hundreds of millions of users in partnership with SMG. The truth? The way people share depends on content. E-mail and bookmarking are still powerful for certain content types. More truth? There is little multigenerational virality. For marketers, sharing is more about scale so put sharing into everything you do.

#4—Effectiveness of TV advertising over time. Turns out as of 2009, when I analyzed 388 cases over time, TV advertising effectiveness had actually increased contrary to what I was hearing in the echo chamber. Poltrack (CBS Chief Research Officer) publicly called a leading analysts’ statements BS (Ad Age captured the audio) about the impending decline of TV based on this analysis.

#5—How to increase marketing ROI in a digital age. Based on conversations with Erwin Ephron, we realized that digital is inherently a recency medium. It delivers messages when it counts based on self-directed consumer action.

#6—What marketing research needs to learn from behavioral economics. Another term that refers a lot of traffic via search is behavioral economics…the “predicably irrational” stuff. Research needs to start studying how consumers decide, and align the survey to these processes, not just conducting purchase intentions in some monadic concept test tube environment

#7—It’s about mobile! Three key documents here: Tablets, Rise of the Planet of the Apps, The US App-Economy 2011-2015 (conducted on behalf of Appnation)
Thank you for allowing me to have a transformational impact on the industry this year.

Thank you for allowing me to have a transformational impact on the industry this year and I hope to serve you next year as well!

Happy holidays,

Joel