What are your customers and prospects doing, saying, and thinking? More importantly, how is this influencing their buying decisions? Increasingly, the answer to that question is hidden in the sea of data that is the World Wide Web. It is buried in Web pages, blogs, forum posts, and plenty of other accessible content. In theory, it’s an enormous opportunity for those who can leverage it. It’s also an enormous potential threat to those who can’t. Fortunately, a new generation of tools, tactics, and strategies is emerging that is making exploitation of this resource meaningful, if not necessarily easy. We’ll examine the threats, opportunities, methods, and implications that managers, consumers, and investors need to understand.

Every marketer is well aware of the implications of optimized “product placement” in media. Ever since Reese’s Pieces candy was featured in the 1982 blockbuster E.T., advertisers have dreamed of scoring a comparable product placement win. However, most of us are far less familiar with the carefully orchestrated embedding of cues and behaviors in television programs, movies, books, and CDs that are intended to subtly shape a broader set of behaviors, attitudes, and values. We’ll explore the latest thinking about these effective, but controversial techniques.

Research into the mysteries of the brain continues to transform every aspect of business. That's especially true of marketing. Any firm that hopes to remain in business in the coming decades will have to develop a comprehensive understanding of how decision makers respond to their products physically and emotionally. What are some of the most important recent discoveries, and what are their implications for marketers and consumers? We'll show you.