Alex Bogusky, of famed CP+B, tweeted that “Life conspires to beat, or buy the rebel out of you.” And then wrote a follow up post championing the old rebels. The ones that have kept their fighting spirit through the years of ups and downs. He was reminded of this conspiracy at a recent board meeting:
This [...]
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Embrace your inner rebel
March 6th, 2010
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Artisanal Marketing
February 27th, 2010
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My favorite type of marketing, by far, is artisanal marketing. Hand crafted, thoughtful, intelligent marketing. Not slick. Not aimed at the masses. Not average marketing for average consumers. But just the opposite. Thoughtful, insightful, honest, embracing complexity and celebrating the craft of the product or products themselves. This type of marketing eschews hype in favor [...]
Embracing complexity
February 21st, 2010
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As marketers we’re repeatedly exhorted to make our messages simpler. To cut words, cut nuance, cut anything that may clutter or occlude the core message. Cut the rest and let the simplicity of the message shine through. This, our business leaders tell us, is the only way to reach customers in a cacophonous marketplace. Simplicity. [...]
5 TED Talks Every Marketer Must Watch
February 8th, 2010
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If you’re a marketer and serious about improving not only your craft but how your profession impacts the world around you then you must watch these 5 TED talks and share them with fellow marketers and human beings around you. They will get you thinking, they will get you working harder and most importantly, they [...]
Hang in the Question
January 24th, 2010
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It’s amazing the number of “brainstorming” meetings I’m in that fail to inspire any truly creative solutions at their conclusion. And it’s a big problem. Brainstorming meetings are expensive. Take the hourly rate of the people packed into the meeting space multiplied by the amount of time spent, and you have yourself an expensive session [...]
What’s the problem?
January 20th, 2010
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As a marketer you always need to be asking yourself “What’s the problem my [product/service/company] is trying to solve for the customer?” This is the simplest, easiest way to figure out the best way to talk about what you do in terms of providing a solution for your customers. It’s easy to look at your product and say [...]
Are you high fidelity or high convenience?
January 18th, 2010
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In his book, Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don’t, (affiliate link) Kevin Maney examines the importance of being either exceptionally convenient or exceptionally high fidelity if you hope to resonate with consumers. If you’re somewhere in the middle, look out. You’ll get clobbered by one end or the other. As a marketer [...]
Rewarding Hard Work Rewards the Wrong Thing
January 17th, 2010
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Hard work and good work. Two things that should be rewarded and are. But sometimes I believe we place more reward on hard work then on good work. I think this is backwards, and it hurts companies more than they know.
It goes something like this. Stay late, get rewarded. Deliver a day [...]
The Problem with Minimum Viable Product
January 8th, 2010
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If you work in the online space long enough you run across the idea of “minimum viable product” (MVP). The MVP is the minimum product design/functionality that you can launch with that will give you the learning you need about your customers with the least amount of time and resources poured into the project. It’s [...]
