Have you seen any websites for marketing or advertising firms lately? Go ahead. Open another tab and search for some. Look at a few of them. Notice anything? They all look the same. They all have a short section about the firm, a quick list of their “core values” or “goals,” they list samples of [...]

Business is NOT war. No matter how tough your office is, or no matter how kick-ass-and-take-names your work environment might be, it’s not combat. Today, a great business has more in common with the Linux community or Wikipedia than the 101st Airborne.

If a miscommunication is a wrong message, than a malcommunication is a bad message. Use these conversational tips to avoid them in the future. – Write to be said not read – This is pretty simple. When you read something, you’re basically saying it in your head. So write things that sound good, not just [...]

Imagine all you have is a highway billboard. Can you be attention-grabbing, witty, and informative all in one sentence? What would you write about you/your business?

As marketers (and we’re all marketers, some of us just get paid for it*), how do you feel about other marketing? Sometimes I see really good marketing (anything iPod, Geico cavemen, Southwest’s ding) and get excited because I realize it’s also good from a technical standpoint. Other times I see “good marketing” (Abercrombie stores/ads, Dove’s [...]

It looks as though Bob Phillips and California Tortilla found the answer to the questions in my last post – the right people. In response to me, Bob writes “In our experience the vast majority of customers and employees want to do the right thing.” (check out the rest of his comments here) And that’s [...]

I’ve been known to play devil’s advocate from time to time, and this post it no different. Let me say up front that I largley agree with Seth Godin on the Rock, Paper, Scissors promotion and Andrew Barbaccia makes a good point too, but there’s a big part of human nature that neither of these [...]

I was in a leather shop in Florence a little over a week ago. Soon after one of the salespeople discovered that I was a recent graduate (and therefore didn’t have much money) he leaned in, and as if sharing a little secret between us said, “Well, I’ll tell you what, I can give you [...]