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The Element of Surprise!

Surprise, Surprise, Surprise! For years word of mouth has been touted as the world’s most powerful form of marketing. However, word of mouth has traditionally been little more than an afterthought for many businesses because it suffered from two fatal flaws – it was very hard to measure and very challenging to scale.  Now the […]

Dead Cat Marketing

Suppose your business sells something to a customer.  Following the sale, you gather no information about them.  Instead you send the customer out the door and off into the universe, hoping they will come back again someday.  In the time that follows, you make no direct or indirect attempt to determine if the customer is […]

Trick or Treat

With Halloween just one day away, Trick or Treat is definitely on the brain.  So in the spirit of the season ask yourself this question.  Metaphorically speaking, what are you giving your customers these days? Tricks or Treats?  If you are offering treats, are they like those old, stale, home-made popcorn balls or are they […]

Synergize

Habit 6: Synergize Synergy is where all of the previous habits come together.  It is the payoff.  To quote Stephen Covey “Synergy is the highest activity in all of life.”  “The essence of synergy is to value the differences.”  By doing so, the human gift of creativity can be levered to produce new and exciting […]

Seek First to Understand

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood Habit 5, Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood, is a continuation of Habit 4, Think Win/Win.  It is the idea that to truly think win/win, one must start with listening.  Thus the idea that one should seek first to understand, then to be […]

What’s Next in Marketing?

Check out this great slide show from Paul Isakson on the Future of Marketing and Advertising. In this series of slides, Paul captures the essence of where I believe marketing is headed. It is about listening, using insight to solve problems, and finding ways to create the remarkable. The hard part is not in identifying […]