Casual Fridays

OK, so bloggers like Andrea Learned and Jory Des Jardins have me thinking I’ve ignored women too much in my marketing. But that wasn’t enough, CNN had to tell me that I’ve ignored them in web design as well.
This cnn.com article reports that 94% of websites show a masculine orientation while only 2% show [...]

People’s core beliefs form their religion of buying. Seth calls this a worldview, but that word has been difficult for me to sink my teeth into. This maybe a potayto/potahto exercise, but it helped me crystallize my thinking.

Continuing with “Celebrity Day” on Casual Fridays…
There’s a lot of criticism and curiosity swirling around Tom Cruise and his abrupt change in public image. I’m no armchair publicist, so I won’t try to give my advice on what Tom should/should not be doing. Who knows, maybe teenny-bopper love and couch jumping are celebrity [...]

OK, I’ll admit that I’m an Apple fan. Having a background in graphics, I have been hooked on Apple products since I was introduced to them in college. I’m used to hearing how the sky is falling and Apple is hanging on by a thread. That’s why I’m so happy to see [...]

My wife called me the other day and, as I occasionally do, I answered her call as I would one from a customer. “Hello, this is Dustin.” I said. I have caller ID, so I usually know it is her before I answer and I will just greet her with “Hey.” [...]

In reading Creating Customer Evangelists by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, I came across a statement with which I agreed and disagreed.
Marketers often refer to “increasing brand loyalty” as a factor in increasing sales. But does this terminology really make sense? A company and its logo are inanimate. The notion that people [...]

A lot of smaller companies like to position themselves as being in a David vs. Goliath conflict with their larger competitors. We like to think that people want to root for the little guy. We also like to imply that in the end, we will stand over the fallen giant as we relish [...]

R. Todd Stephens, Ph.D. made a comment concerning the 5 Es of branding. Don’t you love a doctor who makes house calls? He was curious how the 5 Es would apply to your personal brand, and whether all of them actually would.
I think they all still apply.
You must establish your personal [...]

I had a presentation this week and wanted to have nice color prints made as handouts. I decided to run over to Fed-Ex/Kinko’s and have them print out the presentation for me. I walk in the door and stand at the counter for a few minutes. One of the employees is working [...]

I was talking with my brother-in-law a while back and we were talking shop. He is a manager within a large software corporation. Somehow the conversation lead him to discuss how their consumer software has changed over the last few years.
Over the course of time we just kept adding more and [...]