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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A couple of items in the past few days point to some hope for the US auto manufacturers.
First, it looks like the Congress (along with President Bush…yes he still is president) has come up with a compromise bailout package that will throw at least a temporary lifeline to the Big Three. The main impetus here [...]

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Of all the things that add up to John McCain’s legacy from his failed run against Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, the two that probably have the most “legs” (literally and figuratively) are the pair of brands he helped to create: “The Hockey Mom Sarah Palin” and “Joe the Plumber.”
Now, I have not always agreed [...]

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If there is one thing we get asked all the time by clients, it’s: “How do we get started in social media?” Very often, companies are not even sure why they should get involved in the social media revolution, but they still don’t want the parade to pass them by. After all, everyone’s talking about it!
Update: [...]

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That would be the three major US auto manufacturers and their unbelievably lame attempts to convince the government to bail them out. This has truly been a PR failure of historic proportions. More on that in a moment.
First, in my previous post, I talked about the pros and cons of a public bailout of the formerly [...]

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