Marketing Magic

We lost three celebrities last week in Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson, but none of those hit me as hard as the death of someone I had never even heard of. My friend Gradon Tripp tweeted the death......

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Warning: The rant you are about to read will be accompanied by the grating sound of axes being ground. I received a call from a friend and sometime client, a very savvy, creative advertising dude who runs an agency renowned......

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It's time to stop freaking out about stuff we cannot control, and assert control of the things that we can. It's time to STOP worrying about whether the stock market is up, down, flat or frenetic, and start worrying about......

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I have been overwhelmed with focus groups recently, but have been keeping up with my reading. Here are a couple of excellent, short reads that are well worth the time spent. Fantastic marketing lesson from Chris Brogan. (Disclosure: if you......

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Everyone who loves advertising and marketing has GOT to love the Super Bowl. The advertisements are always as much fun as the game, and frequently much more creative and entertaining. The problem becomes: WHEN do you make a refrigerator run?......

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Here are three things you can do right now to jump start your marketing for 2009: 1. Pick FIVE of your best customers: Call all of them, thank them for their business and ask three questions: a. Thinking of your......

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What are you going to do differently in 2009? If you don't have a plan for standing out from the crowd of people who take money for the same stuff that you do, you had better put one together. Too......

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Jeff Oster sent me an email last night to say "thanks" for the mention in yesterday's blogpost. I have been a devoted fan since I discovered "Released" in 2005, and getting an email from Jeff was enormously uplifting - and......

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And may wish you didn't! My good friend Amber Naslund tagged me to write Seven Things that are interesting or different about me, and because I love her I am going to play. I guess if you're reading my blogs,......

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I am blessed and cursed with noticing all forms of marketing, and even though I've been in the business 28 years, I have fewer answers now than I did in 1980 when I started. There is SO much mediocrity and......

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So much has been written recently about personal brands recently, that I hesitated to add to the pile. Tom Peters wrote an article called The Brand Called You in Fast Company. His call to action: Regardless of age, regardless of......

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Motrin has stepped in a great big pile of Twitter Mom Wrath. And it is ugly. Someone at their agency is going to have a very bad day tomorrow. Check out this video on YouTube. The video was added today,......

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I asked the question two days ago - what is marketing? So many people define marketing so generally and broadly it covers nearly everything in an organization. But to narrow the definition doesn't seem right either; it is certainly more......

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Having just left the Marketing Profs conference in Arizona after a fantastic couple of days of fellowship and learning with fellow marketers, my wife Pam and I were having a spirited discussion the other day on marketing - like, what......

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Steve Woodruff had a fantastic blog post on Wordslaughter in the First Degree, and the hilarious thing is that the perpetrators usually have NO idea they are doing it. They think it makes them sound smart. And that's VERY scary......

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What are you doing with your marketing now? Pulling back? Cutting your budget? Deferring until next year so you can see what happens, or see what the economy does? What you should be doing is spending. Remember, it is when......

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Microsoft's $300 million ad campaign underscores Apple's marketing message So I just saw the new Microsoft "I'm a PC" ad. For a direct response to Apple's insanely famous "I'm a Mac" campaign, it scores some points. The main point, of......

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Here is a short video of Seth Godin stating what should be obvious, but apparently to many it is not. Networking is not about how many friends you have on Facebook, how many followers on Twitter or Plurk, or how......

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Hello, I'm a Mac. I used to be a PC, but now I'm a Mac, and I love Apple. I have the ipod, the iphone, and have all of the religious fervor of the recently converted. That disclosed, I am......

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Now it is getting a little, not much, but a little more interesting. The latest ad shows buddies Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld living with a "normal" family in an attempt to get back in touch with "real people". As......

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Wow - it could not have been timed better! I have been writing about advertising, about what makes it good or bad, and Microsoft decides to provide us with a real-time case study! Let's take a look. Following is a......

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So what is good advertising? Think you know? You're not alone; everybody else does too! I posed the question today on Plurk, and received the following responses: So the adjectives that were used to describe these "good" ads were "terrific",......

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There are a few lucky souls out there who have a unique gift for creating great advertising relying totally on gut instinct. Chances are, you probably are one of them. NOT. But you may THINK that you are (especially if......

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So much of what we do in marketing involves communication. And communication involves assumptions regarding your target audience, and their ability to "get" what you are trying to say. Sometimes, the attempts fall flat. Is your audience hearing what you......

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OK, you have seen a commercial and you HATE it. So much so that you vow never again to purchase that product, or at least as long as the commercial is running. All of your friends hate it too. You......

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For those of you who have not yet succumbed to the siren call of social media in the form of Plurk and Twitter, a "Plurkshop" is a pretty neat way to collect the thoughts, ideas and whimsical creativity of some......

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Invest a few minutes to take a look at this hilarious video depicting what might happen if corporate America were tasked with helping people stop at intersections. Whoops - somebody deleted the video! Must've hit too close to home, or......

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Remember the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld? The one whose soup was so good that people waited in line every day just for a bowl of his Split Pea with Bacon or Turkey Chili? But these intrepid souls had to follow......

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I just spent two glorious weeks with my wife in Cortona, Italy, away from the everyday demands of writing blog posts, conducting focus groups, and generally obsessing about how to make people buy more of my clients' products. I had......

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Last night Mack Collier posed a question on Plurk, and in no time there was a lively discussion that included bright, energetic social media newbs, and industry veterans such as Mack and Connie Reece. The very cool thing is that......

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Well, it had to happen. We have all seen those college advertisements that paint an unrealistic picture of what life is like on campus. They are scrupulously inclusive, taking great care to have representation from every conceivable ethnic and/or interest......

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What is it about great advertising that terrifies C Suite types? The same people who are quick to fire the CMO and offer unsolicited opinions concerning what works in marketing are made to quake in their wingtips with truly breakthrough......

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Marketing is all about being noticed, isn't it? Well, no, it's more than that. It's about positioning your company in a positive way. It's about being noticed, making a good impression and being remembered in a world that has an......

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Twitter has been twacked lately - in twubble - whatever one wants to term it. It has grown by serious leaps and bounds over the past few months, and seems to be reaching the point, as my Grandma used to......

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Common Focus Group Mistakes By People Who Don’t know Better, and by those who do, but make them anyway. Because sometime doing great work is first an understanding and preventing the ways it can go wrong. 1. Bringing qualitative tools......

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My wife, young son and I took this afternoon off to visit the neighborhood Carmike Cinema to see the latest Indiana Jones movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It promised to be, as one reviewer said,......

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Too often in marketing, we stop short. We do enough to get the basic job done, but before we have created something remarkable. The goal of this blog post is to make you take a look at every thing you......

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David Meerman Scott has written an excellent E-book entitled "The New Rules of Viral Marketing." It's available in PDF format. Download it, read it and live it. Pass it on to your friends and clients who may be interested. Unleash......

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Remember the old adage that a happy customer will tell one person; an unhappy one will tell 10? Change that to "A happy customer will tell one person - an unhappy one will tell 1000." And then it will get......

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Take a look at this video that suddenly has vaulted to the top of YouTube's "most viewed", snagging 1.4 million viewers last week - all of whom... Clicked on the "play" button themselves- and forwarded it to friends. This was......

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We have a saying in marketing research that "Perception is Reality". This means that in the world of marketing, perception is everything, even if it is wrong. People make purchase decisions everyday based upon what they "think" or what they......

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As far as I know, this was the first time in recorded history anyone used the words, marketing research" and "cool" in the same sentence. There apparently is a move afoot to make marketing research "cool" within the agency world,......

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Marketing Research is simple, really. I did my first marketing research project when I was in the 7th grade. You probably did too. There was this terminally cute new chick named Rebecca in my class, and I knew nothing about......

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Jacquelyn Ottman is another one of my marketing heroes. When she first started preaching "Green Marketing", everyone thought she was a little touched. Now, I believe we understand better the importance of her vision of sustainability and responsible ecological practices......

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Why Marketing is Like Sex - and Vice Versa Sex. And marketing. Two areas in which everyone pretty much believes they are expert. Think about it. Both areas have fairly low barriers to entry. Both areas have a plethora of......

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Marketing starts by listening to customers. Take a look at these questions, then check out the YouTube video posted below. Can you quote your latest customer satisfaction numbers? Do you know what percentage of your customers would recommend you to......

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Seth Godin is one of my marketing heroes. He’s a thoughtful marketer and frequently on the vanguard of various new media applications. I read all of his books, and never fail to learn something from them. I subscribe to his......

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Ah, the plight of the CMO. We have all heard heard the statistics. They’re lasting in their jobs now about as long as Ashley Alexandra Dupre’s singing career. Following are the latest statistics from the Executive Search firm, Spencer Stuart.......

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Check out this terrific compilation from Fortune Magazine. It highlights some of the hilarious, pissy, alarming, audacious, bigoted, ridiculous, avaricious and infuriating idiocy committed by businesses in 2007. You're read many of them, but others will surprise you - to......

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Andy Sernovitz is a good writer and and a very creative thinker. He wrote the book "Word of Mouth Marketing", and he has a blog that I enjoy immensely entitled "Damn, I wish I'd thought of that!" Thanks Andy, for......

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