New Marketing head at Volkswagen

Volkswagen of America has just hired Tim Ellis as the head of marketing.  Previously Tim ellis was the Global Advertising Director for Volvo.  

Volkswagen has a long tradition of fun and innovative marketing strategies.  We will see what flavor Tim Ellis will bring to this re-surfacing car company.

You can read more about Tim Ellis's new role at VW at this article from Brandweek.

Check out one of my favorite VW commercials.

Disney Taking a Bold Step in China

Disney is taking a bold step by starting a new cell-phone service in the tight Japenese Market. I recomend reading the story posted in Yahoo News Concerning the matter.

This seems like a very odd step for Disney...  Michael Eisner scares me.  I miss the good ole' days of Fantasia.  

Who Paid What for RadioHeads Album

On October 10th, 2007, Radiohead released its latest album.  The twist is that they decided to circumnavigate the standard process put in place by the big record labels.  They chose to only market and sell their album via their website.  Also, they designed the process so that the user pays whatever they wish....anything.... even $0.

So now a month later, how is Radiohead shaping out?  Ingram 2.0 reports "Who Paid What" for Radiohead's new album, In Rainbows.

People have paid everywhere 0 to 99 pounds (almost $200).  The average price people paid was around 3 pounds.   

At first glance, this may look like a small figure, but on average, if they sold the album through the traditional channels, they would have made about .5 pounds per album.  So the average 3 pounds per album is quite an increase in overall sales!  Genius!