Sarah Haskins is part of InfoMania’s line up of commentators that pokes fun at mainstream media. Sarah’s biggest contribution is her recurring segment “Target Women.”

“Target Women” is a video commentary that takes a satirical look at television adverts that target women. As we can see above Sarah doesn’t hold back when discussing the rather broad generalizations that these commercials assume.

Watching a satirical commentary on television adverts exposes one of the major contrasts with broadcast media and the internet. Broadcast media is riddled with assumptions while the internet by its very nature is void of assumptions. Take for example the ads discussed above, they are completely based on the assumptions of the ad executives that created them, and as a result they fall victim to the risk of being irrelevant, ineffective, and annoying. Now, don’t get me wrong, mainstream ad agencies spend millions of dollars on market research...

I just spent a week and a half in southern China visiting a range of manufacturing facilities and meeting with senior executives, and the learnings were significant, some of which I want to share with you today. This is the kind of information that is really challenging to get from analysts and journalists simply because analysts and journalists tend to hang out in Shanghai or Hong Kong and get their information in filtered form and they focus on large multi-national companies that are not affected by the same dynamics that smaller companies in the area are.

Here’s the setup: Guangdong Province is the industrial heartland of China, responsible for the single largest slice of GDP for all of China. In fact the GDP of Guangdong alone is greater than the entire country of Taiwan (the word “country” in reference to Taiwan being subject to definition if you are Chinese!). The reasons for Guangdong’s economic prominence are really pretty easy to understand...

Having a presence on the mobile Internet is increasingly vital for a local business.  Millions of consumers now search on their iPhones, Blackberes and other mobile devices to find what they need.  In its first year, for example, local business searches through the DexKnows.com mobile app have skyrocketed.

But standard websites don’t convert well to tiny mobile phone screens – they are slow, hard to read and hard to load.  To gain traction with mobile consumers you need a streamlined site designed specifically for the mobile web – a costly and time-consuming step most local businesses have delayed taking.

One way to get a powerful and effective mobile presence instantly and cheaply is to register and set up a .tel domain for your business or brand.  This is not like other domains or websites.  The .tel domain is completely standardized. Everyone’s site looks essentially the same, listing phone contacts, store of office locations, email addresses, websites, social networking pages, map location link, special deal information and – importantly – keywords.

Get full details on .tel domains and where to register at Telnic...

I had an amazing day at the Dachis Social Business Summit. I have so much to write about it might take me a few weeks to catch up. Especially after surprise guest John Hagel presented. That was the most insightful 15 minutes I’ve heard in a long time.

I’ve been thinking about out loud on this blog is what the future of the marketing org will look like inside companies.This has lead me to wonder about the total reconstruction of corporate organization. I’ve researched a lot of different models but there is one area I never looked to: The Middle Ages.

Douglas Rushkoff, who I wasn’t familiar with but if I was a normal PR/Marketing person I probably would have been, as he is an award winning writer, documentary film maker, media critic and accomplished author. He recently published a new book called Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back (Amazon Link) which we got for free at the summit (see disclosures at the bottom of the post for full FTC disclosure).

Doug, Dachis’ own Lee Bryant and several others referenced the pre-twentieth century corporate driven economies of Western Europe. While this may sound...