Late last month the business world suffered a tremendous loss with the passing of C.K. Prahalad. Harvard Business Review is not exaggerating when it calls Prahalad, one of the world’s “wisest and most influential management thinkers.” I “discovered” Prahalad during my time at Sony, when my primary responsibilities transitioned from working on discrete projects and […]
Jeanne Bliss, author of two groundbreaking books, Chief Customer Officer : Getting Past Lip Service to Passionate Action and “I Love You More Than My Dog”: Five Decisions That Drive Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad, took a few moments to speak with me about beloved companies — what are they, why are […]
I’ve finally made it through all of the hours of Olympics coverage which I DVR’d because I had been unable to watch most of the Games live. Since I already knew the result of many of the competitions, I was interested in watching mostly for the profiles of the athletes and stories behind and nuances […]
I’ve been working with a major retail brand and my engagement has included an audit and assessment of retail best practices. Although most of my work is proprietary, I wanted to share some of my findings here because I’ve found some really interesting patterns. […]
Ben McConnell, one of the most influential online marketers, spoke with me about employees as brand evangelists and other developments in today’s participatory culture. […]
If you’ve been in the business long enough, you come to understand there are some basic rules to follow when running an ad on the Super Bowl. Humor works best. Use animals or big-breasted women – or both. Wow people with extraordinary settings and production values. Many of the advertisers on last night’s big game […]
Companies need to make money – I get it. And as a capitalist at heart, I generally subscribe to the business practice of charging what the market will bear. But as I’ve learned about the recent pricing decisions of two high-profile institutions of American culture – Starbucks and The New York Times – I’ve wondered […]
I just finished listening to Chris Anderson’s latest book, Free, and I was particularly fascinated by the portion which discussed the changes in music distribution in China. I’ve been thinking a lot about how the book publishing business is experiencing some dramatic challenges and I believe there may be some important takeaways for book publishers […]
Last week’s Ad Age featured an article called “Why It’s Time to Do Away With the Brand Manager.” The piece, and the Forrester research report which inspired it, argues for “changing the name ‘brand manager‘ to ‘brand advocate,’ and fundamentally changing marketer organizations in response to the onset of the digital age.” It reminded me […]
The folks at BLACKCOFFEE have been inviting folks to complete the thought, “A Brand Is…” I was so fascinated to read the range of responses that I decided to take a closer look. I wanted to see what common themes emerged among people’s definitions of “Brand” and what we could learn from them. […]