Buyology, Purchasing Habits of Humans

I just finished an interesting book: Buyology.

Good reading. It dissects the effect that commercials and kinds of advertising has on us. For American Idol, for instance, three companies each spend ~24 million a year to be the sponsors. Coke has their color in the "green" room and hallway, curved chairs, the judges drinking Coke during the show, and the occasional comment about the product, not to mention the ads. Cingular/ATT support the only phones that you can vote from and are constantly referenced for voting and have ad. Ford, pays the same amount and only has ads. Cingular/ATT does good. Coke does phenomenally. They do so well, that they crush the others. Ford is paying to be forgotten in the glory that is Coke advertising. Ouch. ~$24 million to be so completely overshadowed that people cannot even recall you as a sponsor if they are asked.

I have found myself reading more and more about the marketing space. I am building quite a passion for how to turn your customers and/or prospects and/or users into evangalists. What makes someone stick with your product or service? What does it take to get them to leave? Why are they leaving? How much is it worth to keep them? I have also been spending a lot of time thinking about the best ways to monitor, track, filter, and process the inbound lead flow that many companies are understaffed to handle. It is the critical lifeblood of many organizations but I feel, it is woefully misunderstood and undervalued.

Jacob