Casual Fridays

Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba point out that most of what defines today’s conventional marketing wisdom is derived from E. Jerome McCarthy’s introduction of the 4 P’s in 1960. Product, Placement, Price, and Promotion. That’s a 45 year old model created during the early years of television and decades before the “Information Superhighway” [...]

I’m a superhero. Don’t let the bald head and soft waistline fool you. I may not look like a superhero, but I am one.
I’ve been a superhero since I was a kid, though they were humble beginnings. When I was six years old we couldn’t afford a cape, so I just clothespinned [...]

An actor looks for events in the scene he/she is playing. Events are changes. Could be a revelation of knowledge, a burst of anger because of careless words, or a number of other elements.
I was directing two actresses this week in a training exercise. The scene began with one sitting on the [...]

Here’s a great example of marketing mystery. The box below was sent to owners of ISPs.

Inside was a fortune cookie with the URL “whatsmyfortune.com” imprinted on its slip of paper.
No salesheet.
No business card.
No fancy graphics (yikes! designers).
How mysterious.
By the time you go to the website, you’re committed to find out the rest of [...]

Relationship
In his book Audition, Michael Shurtleff gives twelve guideposts for actors to follow in order to “get the part.” The first guidepost mentioned is relationship. Shurtleff stresses the importance of understanding your character’s relationship with the other characters in the scene. He encourages actors to ask themselves “feeling questions” about their emotional [...]

I’m sitting at my desk with a stack of industry pubs intimidating my lineup of project folders. I have a perennial backlog of marketing advice and business tip emails clogging my inbox. There seems to be an endless sea of blogs devoted to marketing and branding, some better than others (ahem). I [...]

Ever feel theatrical as you conceptualize a 4×6 postcard? Like the Denzel of direct mail or the Kidman of campaigns? Maybe you should because, whether you know it or not, you’re using some of the very same principals for your marketing as Hollywood uses in acting. That may sound silly to you, [...]

Grrr for Honda
Peeing Baby for Mark’s Work
Pac Man for Saturn
Cashmere Cow for L.A. Country
Crash Text for Toyota
No, this isn’t some sort of crazy Internet swap list. It’s the titles of last week’s most popular ads on adforum.com. I receive an email each week from adforum with a listing of screenshots with similar [...]

In our last article, we discussed the longevity of a product affecting how that product is promoted and sold. Art Kleiner wrote an interesting article for Strategy&Business concerning a product’s death cycle. Kleiner laments the decline of product quality since the 1980s. As quality declined, so did durability, and so did expectations. [...]

We don’t mind subscribing to services (phone services, Internet access, cable TV) or publications. These have become traditional subscription items. So, an even greater obstacle than the aversion to subscriptions is the established traditions. And as Seth Godin states, traditions rarely change quickly just because the alternatives are better. This is the hurdle that Napster-like services have to overcome.