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Recent Articles

• Let’s Not Call it Strategy.

  September 3, 2010 in Marketing

  (A self-absorbed poem about brand strategy.) My paper is power. My paper is freeing. My paper creates tension. My paper doesn’t need pictures. My paper is musical. My paper creates language. My paper is rose-colored. Always rose-colored. My paper creates feelings. My paper encourages doing. My paper is your paper. My paper quickens. If you [...]

• Burger King Futures.

  September 2, 2010 in Fast Food Marketing

  The Burger King Whopper is a great product. Many people, myself included, feel it is far superior to McDonald’s Big Mac.  The problem with BK has always been product consistency. One day a Whopper can be sublime – the perfect fast food burger.  Fresh, crunchy, a perfect combination of backyard BBQ, veg. and condiments (the [...]

• Under Armour. I wick. I mean, I will.

  September 1, 2010 in Brand Strategy

  I love Under Armour.  I do. It’s an amazing, important brand. If the company didn’t invent compression shorts, it certainly gets credit for it.  The story is great, the product meaningful, and the company with its Baltimore provenance has people rooting for it.  Sports apparel is a category alone in its ability to push through [...]

• Salesmanship vs. Packaging.

  August 31, 2010 in Advertising

  Albert Lasker, a seminal advertising figure and CEO of Lord and Thomas (a predecessor agency to FCB) and a copywriter by the name of John E. Kennedy had a discussion in 1905 about a Kennedy theory suggesting advertising is no more than “salesmanship in print.”  Smart dudes Kennedy and Lasker. If the goal of salesmanship [...]

• Snitkered by the FTC.

  August 27, 2010 in Marketing, pr

  Reverb Communications, a PR firm based in California that was writing fake product reviews on behalf of clients and publishing them on iTunes, became the first company “snitkered” by the Federal Trade Commission.  Tracie Snitker is an executive at Reverb and was the one person sanctioned for the practice, though no fine was levied. Hence [...]

• The Journalism Conundrum.

  August 26, 2010 in Marketing

    Here’s the problem with newspapers.  Ready?  Who is your favorite newspaper journalist?  Quick!  Okay, who is your second favorite?  Now, who is your favorite blogger?  Much easier, no?  There was a time when journalists and news reporters were heroes…a time when they were huge personalities.  They wrote with panache, shared ideas and commentary that [...]

• Nordstrom’s role in Worldwide Inventory.

  August 25, 2010 in Marketing

  The concept of worldwide inventory, where the web is searched for products and services across different stores and different countries is coming. So is the concept of worldwide pricing.  Need a knee replacement for under US$11,000.  There’s a doc for that.  Anyway, Norstrom’s is taking a step in this direction by allowing shoppers to access inventory from all [...]