Buying a martial arts black belt from Amazon does not bestow the skills of a martial artist on the buyer. Hiring someone unqualified and giving them the title of CMO does not confer any skills the candidate didn’t already have. Misnaming something to defy reality or take shortcuts never creates the results we want. Take the…
We use the term marketing often, but we rarely talk about markets, the groups of people we market to. What does our market look like? Who’s in our market? If we don’t know who our market is, we’ll spend hours and dollars in vain, failing to generate results. On the other hand, if we know exactly…
Ishmael asked, … I see people with no experience get jobs at the top agencies whereas I am struggling. For example, recently I got denied a job due to the fact that I wore a suit and the agency didn’t like that. Do you have an advice as to how I should approach interviews and…
We often hear management consultants reference the phrase, “People, Process, Technology” as a way of explaining the critical success factors for organizational change. How does this framework apply? How does it integrate with strategy? Definition of Strategy Before we leap into the model, let’s set some fundamentals. What is strategy? I’ve written about this many…
Most business and marketing people, when asked, couldn’t tell you what a strategy looks like. They couldn’t tell you what a strategy even was. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing or somehow their fault; it’s just a fact that businesses do a poor job of teaching strategy. The answer to this question of what strategy…
What is Valuable in the Age of Generative AI? One of the most persistent questions in business, and in life, remains: “what is valuable?” In 2017, we explored this question and concluded that value is often tied to scarcity and necessity. This foundational principle still holds true, but the business landscape has shifted dramatically, especially…
At this time of year – meaning year’s end – I often see marketers in search of “new ideas” and “fresh ideas”, especially when looking for new agencies or employees. Knowing what kind of organization we’re dealing with determines what kinds of new ideas we should be bringing to the table. Three Kinds of New…
As is customary at the start of each quarter, I like to look at macroeconomic indicators to see how things are going. What’s the market like? For B2B marketers, what will the impact be to our budgets? For B2C marketers, how is the consumer that powers our businesses faring? Let’s dig in. Economic Indicators As…
Transparency is a popular term in business these days. Let’s examine why, what transparency is, and how to create more of it in our organizations. Why Transparency Matters Trust is the foundation of a relationship. The more trust we have, the better our businesses function. Transparency builds or restores trust of stakeholders (employees, investors, partners,…
One of the banes of travel for me has traditionally been the garment bag, which has been a royal pain in the butt. It’s large and unwieldy, it fits poorly in overhead compartments, and it gets jostled and crushed so much in the travel process that the garments inside don’t arrive any less wrinkled. I…
