July 16, 2010

Ben & Jerry's, thank you for surrendering

Brand OverextensionI read with great interest about another company forsaking email marketing - this time, ice cream maker Ben & Jerry's. Good. Thank you very much!

July 15, 2010

More customers doesn't make you a better company

MarketingProfs AudienceI've been shopping around the past few days for a terrific lead automation system for the day job, looking at all of the different vendors out there. One thread that's been common among all of the comparison discussions on LinkedIn, on blogs, etc. that baffles me is this argument:

July 14, 2010

My upcoming webinar: email marketing for the 21st century

New England XPOI'll be doing a webinar on July 23 at 2 PM Eastern on 21st century email marketing, put on by my employer, Blue Sky Factory. In the webinar, I'll be going over the 5 things every email marketer wants:

July 13, 2010

Throwing mattresses and social media

DoorOne of my favorite learning and teaching metaphors comes by way of both the martial arts and Quantum Teaching (Amazon link). Imagine for a moment that the knowledge you have to impart to students is in the shape of a mattress. Imagine that it's immutable, meaning you can't magically shrink it or carve it up.

July 7, 2010

Marketing lessons from the kitchen

SashimiAs a marketer, half of our job is analytical - figuring out what works and optimizing our methods for better results.

July 1, 2010

Does your company care? Do you?

While in the airport yesterday perusing a variety of marketing materials (aka billboards as I walked to my gate), I saw a bunch of different advertisements by companies about how much they care, from facility maintenance to oil to the airlines themselves. This inspired a late afternoon tweet:

June 28, 2010

Small wins

In an early morning chat from Las Vegas, I was talking with Mr. Waldow about gambling - specifically, blackjack, and how I approach the table. My methodology is fairly simple: I set an amount I'm willing to play with, be it $5 or $100. When I step up to the tables, that's exactly the amount I intend to play with and I will keep it in play as long as I can. When I win, I take the winnings and put them in my pocket, never to see the light of day again. The original bet, whatever size it is, remains in play.

June 22, 2010

4 books for fresh thinking

Julien wrote a great blog post the other day about putting better stuff in your brain, stuff that will feed your brain and take it in new directions. Here are a few suggestions for things you can add to your virtual or real bookshelf, should you be so inclined.

June 19, 2010

The sale is better because the sign is bigger

At the grocery store, a husband and wife were arguing over a $3 bag of crackers while I tried to vanish in plain sight.

June 18, 2010

The trouble with innovation

Take a look at the Zapthrottle Mote Extractor!