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18Feb
I’m sitting on the patio of my hotel in Palm Desert, California. I’m in the sun this week (thankfully) to meet and talk with leading retailers at the Etail West conference – a gathering of around 2,000 professionals and their teams looking to transform their business and stay ahead of the inevitable guillotine that waiting […]
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14Feb
The alarm in my hotel pierced the pitch black. It was 3:38 am in Boston. I showered, packed my bags, double checked the room and made my way down to check out. The front desk was unattended at such an early hour. I stepped out into the cold and grabbed a cab. The streets covered […]
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20Jan
This list of 22 storytelling rules is apparently from Pixar, the world famous animation studio responsible for the Monsters, Inc. and Toy Story franchises. No matter what kind of work you do, you can benefit from telling a strong story. A story connects you with your audience and lets them understand why you do what […]
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16Dec
The Process…
Posted in: Design/Art Direction
To be clear, I’m not a designer…but I appreciate all types of design and “The Process” of creating things. Anything. And, one of my favorite designers is Aaron Draplin (creator of Field Notes) among other cool things. In this video from Lynda.com, Draplin shows the process of creating a logo, pretty much start-to-finish. “The Process” is something […]
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15Dec
In Defense of Airlines
Posted in: Markets & Industries
Certain industries, regardless of progress, get little respect and become easy targets for consumers and so-called “consumer advocates.” This thought came to me recently while waiting to board a flight, that was slightly delayed due to weather. Upon the announcement, there was a group groan as people realized they wouldn’t be departing as anticipated. Then […]
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13Oct
Social media can turn your latest product short coming or service failure into a meme, parody Twitter account, or blog. Charlene Li said in a HBR article in 2011 that: “In a world filled with real-time, tell-all social media, your ability to hide from your failures is, well, non-existent.” Even previously ‘untouchable’ brands aren’t immune. Obviously by now everyone is aware how inaccurate the new maps […]
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05Oct
Cheap? Probably not. Awesome? Hell yeah. Pfaff Porsche, in Toronto, took a car, parked in front of prospective customer’s homes and took a picture. Then they created a one-off direct mail piece and slipped it into recipients mailboxes. And…even better – this campaign has metrics! 32% visited a website to book a test drive.
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01Oct
Seth Godin recently wrote a blog post entitled “A hierarchy of business to business needs” – it struck me immediately as completely true and I printed it out and stuck it to my cork board. If you’ll notice, the list is in order of primary needs on down. ‘Avoiding Risk’ – […]
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25Sep
In the April issue of Inc. Magazine, they had a full page picture of Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures (they’ve invested in companies like Tumblr, Foursquare, Twilio, Etsy, Zynga, and others). The quote that appears next to Wilson jumped off the page at me. Try and read this and not agree. Impossible. This quote […]
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