Business

Marketing departments can be funny creatures. The breadth of the discipline means creative people comingle with data geeks and wordsmiths adjoin coders. The touchy-feely branding whisperers stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the email marketing specialists. Is there little wonder that members of this group may have difficulties relating to one another? That there may be walls separating the free flow of knowledge, discovery and innovation? This weekend I spent 12 hours camped out on unforgiving...

Have you ever considered whether No should be the new Yes?  Constructive heresy. It's what's working for innovative businesses. How many times (as an employee) did you: go along when a difficult boss shut down your well-researched idea to drive new traffic to the company web site? bite your tongue when a coworker lobbied hard for "the blue version" of fluffy creative served up by your agency, when you really wanted to challenge them to re-examine the brief so they might actually get to the crux...

You may be familiar with the customer decision journey, if only how the idea relates to your own process of  hunting, gathering, weighing and measuring.  There have been some really interesting posts over the past 6-12 months discussing the evolution of the traditional sales funnel into a new framework that reflects information accessibility, technology ubiquity, and the manner in which our culture has rapidly shifted to actively seek and consume bits of media through myriad of channels.  Facing...

Brand development is an important part of building a business, and often relegated to a few perfunctory tactics.  Have you stopped to consider the overall image your brand projects, and effect that image has on the aggregate long term? If you're with a start-up, chances are you've had your head down in financial projections and your back end seated in chairs at the bank and the accountant's.  Your ideas are gelling and long-laid plans are emerging into a reality.  Along the way, you may have...

Too often, the marketing department thinks about ways to get the attention of customers while the sales department thinks about how to get a little more spend out of them (or how to find the next one).  They don't think (develop) as a cohesive unit.  They don't think in terms of a natural, trust-deepening progression from awareness to affinity. While executive-level management books blather on about collaboration and informed decisions, recursive loops and such, the reality remains siloed.  Multiple...

"A principle isn’t a principle unless it costs you something".—Bob Goldstein, former P&G Vice President of Advertising Today is the first day of the work week and as usual we ended the day with our company meeting.  There's only a small number of us, so we can be efficient with the 45 minutes we've allotted. As usual, each team member spent a few minutes touching on the more complex, urgent, or higher-profile tasks facing them this week. Sometimes they relate those tasks to specific...

As an employee progressing through Newbie Acclimation 101, one of the topics I've given a lot of thought to lately is concept of Team. Being the newcomer sometimes allows me to see some "grandfathered" situations and dynamics in a way that more seasoned employees don't. I think this is the temporary "keen insight" baton that gets passed from one successive new hire to the next. I believe that Team implies a relationship. Team assumes two or more parties share interest in a common topic, understand...