Casual Fridays

Mike Wagner has yet another fascinating post pondering the wisdom of incomplete brands. I love his thoughts and wonder why we don’t acknowledge how often the customer is wielding the paint brush, let alone encourage them to do it more.

Here are a few tidbits from my presentation yesterday. I spent most of my blog time (and more) preparing to speak at Entrepreneur’s Day, so this might be my only post this week.
The Marketing Proverb

If this is a marketing proverb, what is the moral?

or, some ad agencies prefer to

…simply entertain.
Do you ask this […]

Management Impact
Wednesday, Feb 28th 2007
BMA Tulsa Luncheon (11:30 -1:00)

Jack Hayhow of Opus Communications
Focusing on the four key activities of all great managers, Jack will show how great managers provide employees what they need to increase productivity and profit.
Jack and his book, Wisdom of the Flying Pig, were featured on Brand Autopsy exactly one year ago […]

We’re on the lookout for wolves.
You know… back-stabbers, saboteurs, spies and just plain evil-doers.
We suspect they’re among us. The wolf in sheep’s clothing.
But there’s something much more dangerous in our midst, also masquerading as sheep.
This “silent killer” of companies is much harder to find than the wolf. He wears the disguise well, even […]

If I asked you to name a brand you might mention Coca-Cola, Nike, Apple, or Starbucks.
But what is a brand? It’s not just a logo.
I could create a logo just like Apple’s. But it doesn’t mean my company will instantly be successful.
The brand isn’t just the product. The annals of business are […]

I’ll be honest.  This scares the bejeebers out of me:
Wannaspell.com is a live whiteboard in which anyone can move magnetic letters around to spell out words, etc. Lets see how many times the word “Digg” can be spelled out in a room! This is the coolest site I’ve seen all day.
The live whiteboard doesn’t scare […]

Some business owners say they don’t “buy into” marketing. They characterize their business as nuts and bolts. Providing a high quality product to the customer is the path to success.
By educating the public about the superior features of your product, people will see the truth and buy your brand.
The problem is most people […]

My wife and I attended a piano concert this week. Before the pianist would play a piece, he would give some background on the composer and the meaning behind the composition.
It was amazing how knowing the background of Debussy’s General Lavine made it more meaningful. Otherwise, I would have simply considered it a […]

The race for Lieutenant Governor in Oklahoma was an interesting race. It was especially interesting for me because the Republican candidate Todd Hiett hails from my original hometown of Kellyville, OK. Todd is a little bit older than me, but in a town that size (population of about 1,000) you can’t help but […]

Earlier this week I mentioned this was possibly Seth’s most important post.
Why do I say that?  Because as a society, we allow others to define success.  So we end up striving hard and sacrificing much in order to acheive someone else’s definition of success.  Living for too little a goal.
My take on life is we […]