Hello and welcome to my blog!

My name is Patrick Di Chiro, and I am the founder and CEO of THUNDER FACTORY, an integrated marketing firm headquartered in San Francisco. In this blog, I examine the convergence of marketing with technology, culture, politics and the global economy. If you like what you see, please spread [...]

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I certainly believe ideas are the coin of the realm in marketing — and in many other areas of life as well (politics, culture, literature, etc.). In this Part 2 of our continuing exploration of good and bad ideas, we offer examples that hold many lessons for the marketers among us.
GOOD IDEA — Web 2.0: [...]

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As its title suggests, this blog is about how ideas drive marketing. In this post (and others in the future), I will zero in on some real world examples of great ideas at work in marketing. We’ll also examine other marketing scenarios where one just has to scratch his/her head and ask, "what were they thinking?"
The first marketing category that we’ll examine [...]

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There is much talk these days that the new Web 2.0-fueled tech economy is getting dangerously close to bubble territory. The bubble believers see particular evidence of this in San Francisco, the city that was left for dead after the implosion of Web 1.0, formerly known as the Dot Com era.
My company, THUNDER FACTORY, is based in San [...]

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My colleague Jessie Kernan sent me an interesting story last week about CBS’ acquisition of a London-based start-up called Last.fm. Claiming to have a user base of 15M, Last.fm blends social networking with music. It certainly looks like a good fit for CBS. Given all the Web 2.0 acquisitions of late, CBS was a little [...]

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