I spend a lot of time telling people how to build credibility but I don’t think I’ve ever talked about how to destroy credibility. Fortunately, the National Association of Realtors created these ads (click on “Watch the TV Commercials”) to illustrate a quick and effective method for doing just that.
Whether deserved or not, Realtors […]

If your marketing strategy is inspired by observations of Madison Avenue, I can pretty much guarantee you’re making this mistake. Most Mad Ave strategies seem to be based on the above simple (and idiotic) equation. And because trust in advertising is at historic lows, we’re seeing a comparable increase in ridiculously inflated claims.
My favorite […]

Ever since marketing great Jack Trout wrote Differentiate or Die, businesses have fallen over themselves to adopt the religion of differentiation. They want to look different, sound different, act different, and generally push the creative envelope to chart new territories in search of difference.
The problem is, difference, in and of itself, counts for nothing.
“Yeah […]

The New York Times recently had a great article on the role of WOM in political campaigns.
Here’s the article: Loose Lips Win Elections
And here are some highlights:
“Public trust in all kinds of communication is eroding, with a notable exception: word of mouth. A Roper poll found the number of people who said they get […]

Some of you may recall a post I wrote a while back on this very same subject. Well, here’s more evidence that the marketer’s dream of mind control is alive and twitching.
Introducing the mutant love-child of Neuroscience and Marketing: Neuromarketing. (bet you didn’t see that coming).
Evidently the whole Creativity thing didn’t pan out as […]

Whoop, There it is!
Thank you Robert Stevens (founder of Geek Squad) for summing it all up.
The quote can be found in this article in Business Week. The article is so fundamentally, profoundly dead-on, there’s little need to add my own commentary.
I will, however, offer some highlights:
“The best stories of well-marketed businesses and brands […]

In response to the post, Does Your Newsletter SUCK?, Dennis Dilday and Dani Nordin brought up some excellent points about the nature of sucky versus great marketing. I think though, that it all centers around one of the great marketing fallacies afflicting businesses large and small: The Sock-Puppet Fallacy. I just made […]