Categories
Recommendations

Five things I’m excited about right now

1. Swift (and everything else from WWDC 2014) I’m not going to lie — I haven’t been more excited about an Apple keynote in years. It’s as if Apple has spent years quietly laying the groundwork for massive changes, enduring endless criticism from its biggest fans, only to unleash all of the improvements in one, […]

Categories
Microsoft

Perceptions and the “Mojave Experiment”

Quick – What do you think of Windows Vista? Next question – Have you ever used Windows Vista?

Categories
Business

MailChimp is a Case Study in Consistent Branding

We do the occasional email campaign to our current customers at my day job, and in interest of doing things right, I went with the absolutely awesome MailChimp service after looking at it and a number of alternatives. I’ve been very happy with their web app and their customer service, and highly recommend them if […]

Categories
Insights

Thief by Default

Seth Godin put up an insightful new post today titled Punishing the Outliers which relates to something I’ve been thinking about for awhile. In business, you run across a very small majority of people who do their best to cheat the system and/or do everything they can to get your product or service for free. […]

Categories
Business

BP Making Things “A Little Better”

It seems that oil industry juggernaut BP launched a new advertising campaign for its gas stations early this month, called “Helios Power“. The goal is “to make things ‘a little better’” for customers of its BP Stations. In their own words: The theory behind ‘gas stations, a little better’ came from the insight that consumers […]

Categories
Music

Nine Inch Nails, Buzz Marketing, and Lost

I’m not a huge fan of Nine Inch Nails, but I think their gorilla marketing campaign for their upcoming album Year Zero is awesome. The band gave its first clue on the back of a tour t-shirt, which lead to a cryptic website. This, in turn, led to more sites being discovered, which unraveled a […]

Categories
Marketing

This Pretty Much Sums Up Advertising

I believe there are very few things less effective than spending $2 million + on one 30 second Super Bowl advertisement. They are a complete waste of time and energy that could be better spent a thousand different ways – like actually making products and services worth talking about or improving customer service. That’s why […]

Categories
Fun

NBC is Missing a Marketing Opportunity with The Office

If you saw last week’s episode of The Office (you do watch The Office, right?), you’ll remember that one of the plot points revolves around a homemade “Rockin’ Robin” ringtone created by one of the characters. It’s extremely funny, so if you missed it, I recommend downloading it from iTunes. Anyway, I think NBC is […]

Categories
Marketing

On Writing Good Copy (Or, Why it’s Important to be a Good Writer)

All throughout school I was a pretty good writer, although I didn’t appreciate it at the time. I won several essay writing contests in elementary school and often had my short stories read in front of the class by my English teacher in high school – an absolutely fabulous way to encourage a self-conscience teenager. […]

Categories
Books

Quick Look: Citizen Marketers – When People are the Message

A couple of weeks ago I received a free advance review copy of Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba’s new business book, Citizen Marketers: When People Are the Message. I’m a couple of chapters into it, and so far it looks to be at least as good as their now classic (in my opinion) Creating Customer […]