The Official Blog of Gavin Ballas

While the New England Patriots didn't win the Super Bowl this year, their success over the last decade is still remarkable. They've managed to make it to five of the last 11 Super Bowls. This fact is especially amazing considering that the NFL rules have been changed over the last 20 years precisely to manufacture "parity" among its teams. As the architect behind their success, Patriots' coach Bill Belichick's philosophy of coaching has some applications for leaders of integrated marketing strategies. The growth of digital media distribution makes integrated marketing a necessity. As formerly "traditional" media channels like TV, radio, and magazines are increasingly distributed via digital means marketers need to recognize that integration is a reality… today . As a great puppet master, Coach Belichick's genius is in putting the right pieces together and pulling the right strings to achieve the team's goals. It's that kind of leadershi...

From Wi-Fi-connected baby scales to a robot bunny that zooms around your house announcing your social media newsfeeds...all electronic devices are coming to the connected era! With this year's CES coming to a close, it's a good time to think about how the connected world will impact integrated marketing. I won't expound on the marketing virtues of a robotic rabbit in this column (though I'm sure there are many). But I can give some thoughts on how connectivity on another consumer electronic device, television, will impact marketing strategy. Recently, I watched influential VC Mark Suster's presentation regarding the future of the TV business. Suster points out that some major developments have happened since the early dot-com days that will allow for this new connected TV world to take off. He argues that the combination of the decreasing production costs, a realistic content distribution model for online video, and the rapid increase in connected TV sets puts t...