Edison Awards and Innovation

August 30, 2011

I had the very cool opportunity this year to participate as a judge in the Edison Awards.  If you’re not familiar with this award, targeted at people, brands, and products which exemplify innovation, I urge you to do so http://www.edisonawards.com/. As I made my selections well over a month ago, I was struck by how innovative [...]

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Jason Mraz on gratitude

August 28, 2011

this could be as simple as “express gratitude, its a good thing” Or it could be as complex as the all important question – what is the brand you are responsible for (your own, of course, so we all have at least one, then maybe the one you work for, then the soccer team…yeah, you [...]

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Different is, well, different, in a good way!

August 25, 2011

This book was great fun. Youngme Moon teaches at Harvard, and has written a lot of HBR marketing cases I’ve been reading over the summer. I liked her style and her ideas, and found this book which is just about to come out in paperback (so it saves you money). Youngme challenges our currrent mania [...]

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Whole Foods Branding & Service mess

August 23, 2011

Here I am, parked at my local Whole Foods.                       Yes, there are parking meters at Whole Foods. But there are also meters at this orange thingy, which pops me out on the street to run a quick errand before my spend-fest at Whole Foods. [...]

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Coca-Cola in Vancouver – Hybrid Trucks

August 21, 2011

This is smart marketing   We all too often as marketers forget the basics of communication – things like the sides of trucks, the sides of the cars we drive (horrors, we might consider our personal space selling space!), the sides of buildings, everything! I love what Coke has done with this truck.  Please note [...]

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Customer Service & Branding is sometimes being part of your community

August 18, 2011

The New York Times recently published a compelling article by the name of “Good Will to all, with a Side of Soft Serve“.   I love this story.  My hat is off to the author Dan Barry, and the New York Times for publishing it.  There isn’t anything here but acceptance, community, an ice cream [...]

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Make sure your personal positioning isn’t personal

August 18, 2011

I got an email the other day from someone who is selling their services as a marketing consultant.  It included this quote:  I drove five consecutive years of sales growth, something that more conventional CMOs in that role had never done.  People ask me how I did it.  Simple.  I brought forth my passion, built [...]

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Maybe logos are meant to be playful

August 16, 2011

We all learn as marketers that logos are a serious business.  Colors, usages – you name it, we “manage the brand experience”. And as I’ve written before, I’m a huge advocate of that approach. That said…how to you account for this? This violates every rule we’ve learned. These are not Google colors, and this is [...]

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Smart Marketing

August 4, 2011

My friend KC sent me this, he’s the head of Kory-Chris Productions  This is smart marketing!

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Marketing in a .05 alcohol world

August 3, 2011

Tough times create very interesting and fun marketing! BC has inacted some of the strictest DUI limits in the world – .05 is the limit.  This has spawned a huge dive in retail alcohol sales, according to this report a 21% decrease in sales of alcohol in the 4 months after the law was enacted. What [...]

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Infographics Rule

August 2, 2011

The ability to take important, often quantitative information, and put it into one simple graphic is one of the most important communication skills to focus on in today’s world.  I have found my new favorite infographic, from The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=42815&tid=441&cid=5632&ct=61&article=2493 This graphic is a perfect training moment for us all.  It shares unexpected but [...]

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Captain Asoh & Accountability

July 31, 2011

I am reviewing files as I prepare for another school year, and have once again run across Chapter 5 in Dr. Jerry Harvey’s The Abilene Defense.  In this chapter, Dr. Harvey recounts the tale of Japan Airlines Flight 2, a flight Captain Asoh was piloting. The airplane touched down on a flight from Japan to [...]

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What is wrong with Customer Service

July 27, 2011

I have a new theory on customer service, and its tied to brand delivery. The headline for the speed readers is this:  silos in terms of branded product offerings are wrong.  This includes “well its IT, which doesn’t have anything to do with the brand”. If IT touches billing, HR practices, web site maintenance or [...]

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Culture is about storytelling

July 9, 2011

Whenever I teach a class in marketing I talk about storytelling.  Brands must tell stories to make themselves real and relevant in the eyes of the guest/customer/end user.  Its why we like local businesses, they are stories we know because they’re usually run by someone we know – or someone is a friend of someone [...]

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Raising strong young women

June 29, 2011

Everything Communicates Those are my favorite two words in my teaching life, my favorite two words in my marketing life.  Thank you Sergio Zyman for making those two words a cultural touchstone during your time at The Coca-Cola Company. When I teach the idea of everything communicates, it is intuitively obvious and sometimes not the [...]

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Tired of stupid toys

June 10, 2011

North Americans take note – this is an embarrasment. Advocating a fix for boredom by spending the weekend spewing diesel fumes wasting irreplaceable fossil fuels so you can deface the natural beauty of our world is irresponsible and offensive. If you’re bored, sit with the elderly. Serve the homeless. Teach our children. Plant the land [...]

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