Cielo Lutino

Cielo Lutino is a writer and producer for Econsultancy and other organizations. Her writing has been featured in Los Angeles Review, Portland Monthly, Artcards, and the L and Brooklyn magazines, among other publications. She has literary nonfiction forthcoming from Cold Mountain Review and was recently awarded writing residencies from Mustarinda and Signal Fire. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.

Pitney Bowes talks segmentation, trends, and data

Mailrooms are quickly becoming anachronistic features of corporate offices, but in their prime, they featured postage meters and beeping, blinking copy and fax machines bearing the Pitney Bowes logo. The company did very, very well.

But as physical communication methods became more digital, Pitney Bowes’ profits fell. Between 2008 and 2011, revenues slipped to $5.3 billion, a billion-dollar drop as US and European economies, its key markets, softened.

Competitors like Kodak went bust and Xerox nearly filed Chapter 11, but Pitney Bowes sought to evolve with the times by adding a robust suite of digital marketing products for B2B clientele intent on reaching audiences through email, social, and mobile channels.

by Cielo Lutino 16 January 2013 16:27pm 2 comments

Carnival Corporation sails away with social stats

Our weekly showcase of The Dachis Group's Social Business Index highlights brands in a range of verticals from publishing and retail to travel, with the Dacchis team focusing on National Geographic, Hollister, and the Carnival Corporation.

We also survey the top twenty listings of the Social Business Index, a real-time ranking of 30,000+ multinationals' performance in social.

by Cielo Lutino 14 January 2013 17:52pm 0 comments

The ghost of social networks past

Friendster, Bebo, Tribe, Vox—we’ve missed you of late. As today is supposed to mark the end of the world, the virtual social worlds of years past have been much on our mind.

Where have they gone? Why did they go? Do we even care?

It’s hard to answer those questions without first marveling at what now falls under “social.” A decade ago, blogs and sites like Friends Reunited or Classmates.com were peripheral to our daily digital lives. Today online sociability is the norm: We turn to Yelp reviews when deciding about a restaurant or, when that fails, post on our Facebook walls—“Hey, where can I find good Thai in Philly?” We laugh at cat videos all day long, and we add our IMHO to a long list of responses to ire-inducing blog posts.

by Cielo Lutino 21 December 2012 15:25pm 9 comments

Using numbers on numbers: Ad optimization meets math

Much of the talk about data is vague - a list of "cans," "wills" and "shoulds." Econsultancy offers a new report today - Increased ROI - A Statistical Examination of Ad Optimization - that deals in hard figures.

Does display ad optimization work? If it does, what volume is required to balance out the time and trouble? This report, from Digital Vision Winner Julia Nalven, answers those questions in detailed but straightforward language.

by Cielo Lutino 04 October 2012 16:28pm 1 comment

Growing pains: Pfizer tackles social media

The minute we’re born, we begin to age. This was apparently the number one concern occupying respondents of a 2011 Gallup survey commissioned by pharma giant Pfizer and the finding upon which the company has based its Get Old social media campaign.

In a press release announcing the multi-year initiative that began last month, Pfizer tied it to the company’s larger mission of improving the health of all people at every stage of life.

PR platitudes aside, the initiative also marks Pfizer’s lengthening social media shadow, cast, in part, by CEO Ian Read, who has criticized the industry for being “slow to adapt” to today’s more open society. Pharma’s hesitation no doubt informs Edelman’s 2011 Trust Barometer, which found public confidence in businesses, governments, and, in a new development, NGOs slipping at a noticeable rate.

When that focus was narrowed to Pfizer alone, the results were no better: About 45 percent of respondents described the drugmaker as unethical and not credible. Not acceptable, according to Read.

by Cielo Lutino 30 July 2012 15:30pm 0 comments

How social media is changing the patient-physician relationship

You’re in the doctor’s office as she tells you that she’s very sorry, but you have lymphoma. Later, before you walk out of her chilly exam room and into your changed life, when you ask how you can find out more about your disease, she says, “Whatever you do, don’t go looking on the Internet.”

Yet that’s precisely what you will do because guess what: Looking for health information is the third most popular activity online, according to a Pew report released last year.

That “human capacity to be online? That’s the most powerful tool any organization has,” said Dr. Farris Timimi, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic and keynote speaker at the annual Social Communications and Healthcare conference organized by the Business Development Institute in New York City last week.

Timimi has made his name in digital circles praising the benefit of social media for healthcare and, more importantly, for science.

by Cielo Lutino 23 July 2012 16:19pm 6 comments

A sea change for insurance marketing

Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling over the Affordable Care Act last week, the future of healthcare in America remains uncertain in this election year when a Romney victory could mean the act’s repeal.

Healthcare insurers aren’t waiting to see which way the wind blows, though. Some major players having already begun consumer-focused campaigns that signal a sea change for insurers who traditionally targeted their marketing to wholesale business accounts, not individuals.

by Cielo Lutino 03 July 2012 14:51pm 2 comments

Music and marketing: five tips for being heard in a noisy space

The other day I eavesdropped as a pretty girl faced the teenage boy seated across from her and sang, “Tonight / We are young / So let’s set the world on fire”.

Frustrated by his blank stare, she said, “Don’t you know the song? It’s from that Chevy commercial”.

If that example doesn’t convince you of the power of music and marketing, nothing will.

by Cielo Lutino 22 May 2012 15:57pm 2 comments

Because one size doesn't fit all: A Redken case study

At OMMA’s one-day summit for mobile marketing, Sarah Liang Kress, director of interactive marketing for L’Oreal USA, had the chutzpah to tell the crowd:

Technology, for us, comes very much last. It’s not about the shiny object. We look at the audience, and we look at our objectives and then come up with the right solution and the right execution.

She said this as a keynote speaker for the event, which took place on Monday as part of Internet Week NY, and anyone doubting Kress’s claim had only to follow the tidy case study she presented to know she meant business.

So, if L’Oreal is downplaying technology, what’s fueling the global company’s mobile marketing?

by Cielo Lutino 17 May 2012 15:29pm 3 comments

The decade of the entrepreneur is coming

The release of companies topping the Fortune 500 list proved a bright spot in today's still shaky global economy, but John Sviokla, a principal and US business leader for strategy and innovation at PricewaterhouseCoopers, believes there's much good still to anticipate.

He spoke last week at Guardian's Activate Summit in New York. The summit attracted professionals in the publishing industry and featured such heavy hitters as media giant Arianna Huffington and Jonah Peretti, co-founder of BuzzFeed, perhaps the first true social news organization.

by Cielo Lutino 09 May 2012 16:48pm 4 comments