A few of you have been dying for today to arrive (cough, Courtney Dial and Valerie Simon, cough) and it’s finally here! Spin Sucks relaunches with a new design, look, and feel! But that’s not all…check out what’s to come!

As a recap, what you can expect to see every day:

* More content under communication, advertising, marketing, social media, SEO, and business growth

* Guest bloggers every day

* Expert Q&As

* Industry innovations

* Comment of the week

* Giveaways and contest

All of this will remain free, but be watching later this year for a subscription-based, behind-the-scenes Spin Sucks that will garner you access to more content, discussion groups, brainstorming, and access to experts.

Tell us what you think, what you’d like to see more (or less) of, if you know experts you’d like to see interviewed, if you’d like to guest blog, and if you’ve seen an industry innovation you’d like to see highlighted. This blog is evolving to help you do your jobs in the above six categories so tell us what you need from us.

And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter…we’re Spin Sucks!

Guest blog post by Nick Harrison

The question lately has been if KFC’s new double decker sandwich will kill you. So will it? Of course not! But Nick, you’re likely saying, with the calories and fat content it is surely a cardiac arrest wrapped in paper…right? Nope!

Let me explain. It won’t kill you because only a small percentage of you will actually eat it. If you look between the lines, the point of launching the new sandwich was not to sell the sandwich itself.

Okay, okay, more explanation. Continue Reading »

A few weeks ago, my friend Steve McKee wrote in his BusinessWeek column about companies doing their growth a big disservice in a down economy when they cut their advertising and PR budgets. You can read the article and comments here.

Then, when I asked each of you what you’d like to read about in future blog posts, my friend John emailed me and asked, “Why is it that during tough economic times, most companies reduce marketing budgets? If marketing is of real value to a company and if marketing works for that company, wouldn’t you increase spending in tough times?”

This brings me to one of my favorite case studies: How Kellogg won the cereal wars of the Great Depression. Forbes, The New Yorker, and several other national media highlighted this story earlier this year, when it looked like the economy wasn’t likely to get better anytime soon. Following is an expert I refer to a lot when people ask me the same question John asked.

In the late nineteen-twenties, two companies—Kellogg and Post—dominated the market for packaged cereal. It was still a relatively new market: Ready-to-eat cereal had been around for decades, but Americans didn’t see it as a real alternative to oatmeal or cream of wheat until the twenties. So, when the Depression hit, no one knew what would happen to consumer demand. Post did the predictable thing: It reined in expenses and cut back on advertising. But Kellogg doubled its ad budget, moved aggressively into radio advertising, and heavily pushed its new cereal, Rice Krispies. (Snap, Crackle, and Pop first appeared in the 1930s.) By 1933, even as the economy cratered, Kellogg’s profits had risen almost 30 percent and it had become what it remains today: The industry’s dominant player.

With social media you can now heavily push your brand, your company, your service, or your product at half the cost of traditional methods. If you listen, build your communities, let your brand ambassadors spread the word, and provide value, your business will come out of the Great Recession as a dominant player, no matter your size.

So my question for you is: If you decrease your spending and no one knows you’re still in business, which creates a drop in revenue and profits, doesn’t it make sense to spend money and time on the new forms of marketing, advertising, and PR?