THINKing

Steal With Style

Writers “steal with style” all the time – that is they may borrow a phrase from some other writer but somehow make it their own. Thst’s one thing, out-and-out plagiarism is another. Just received a note from Jonathan Kay at Grasshopper about an apparent idea heist. I’ll let Jonathan tell the story,

D.A.N.C.E. With Me

Recently, a client asked what he could do to help my business, but I wasn’t ready with the answer. A lot of us probably miss these opportunities because we don’t think through what we need and how to respond when someone offers to help promote us.

Aligning Metrics

Years ago, I worked with a Fortune 500 company on an integrated marketing communications program. It was integrated everywhere except with sales. And therein lies the rub. Our marketing metrics were highly successful, but our sales metrics weren’t. Let me explain.

Calling All Carbon-Based Lifeforms

Many businesses want to market to all carbon-based life forms. They won’t take the time to really understand their audiences from geographic, demographic and psychographic perspectives.

Marketers waste a lot of time and money when they consider everyone a prospect. It requires research and a lot of thought, but for my money one of the most important elements to marketing success is clearly defining your audiences.

What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate

Today’s successful organizations are the ones which carry on open and honest communications with their employees. If employees know and understand the mission, they will help communicate it to customers.

Here are some employee communication methods and the pros and cons of each. As in marketing communications, a multi-media approach will be most effective when delivering honest and open communication.

Links 7/20/2009

A detached retina has kept me sidelined for about a week, but the eyesight is getting better. So, here are a few things I’m trying to read with fuzzy vision:

Links – 7/10/2009

Here are a few things we’re reading today:

AP Works Toward Universal Online News Format -  The Associated Press, along with fellow non-profit The Media Standards Trust, unveiled a digital news “microformat” to effectively encapsulate the content and key meta-data of every news story online.

Dusty Archives – July 2009

I’ve been poking around in the archives again and have come across a few articles that need to be highlighted. Most of the featured posts are in the branding category this month. Enjoy:

Has The News Media Disappeared?

The free press of my early career was a thing of beauty. It was truly a watchdog over big everything, including government. It provided non-biased coverage of issues and kept its editorials on the op-ed pages.