Your Video Says A Lot About You

If you’ve seen some of my tweets from the weekend, you know I was in Las Vegas for a tradeshow. Normally, I would have flown Southwest. This time, however, US Airways provided my transportation.

There were no major issues. We successfully took off and landed without incident in both places. Always a [...]

Underdoing It at Overstock

I wonder if the good people at Overstock.com really have a message about who they are and what they represent. Their initial ads focused on a women sexually describing that it was all about “the O”.

Now, they apparently have some state of the art delivery system so that nothing gets between you and your [...]

Great Service Leads to Success

My family is in the midst of a move to Phoenix. Through this process, we have worked with a number of different people providing various services. Some much better than others. It’s easy to see, based on the quality of service received, who will be successful and who won’t.

First, let me start [...]

Some Ads Miss the Mark

National advertising campaigns don’t come cheap. The concept, production, placement and associated commissions add up quickly. Even a pure cable TV run will end up costing in the hundreds of thousands. So, if you are going to make that kind of investment, you want an ad that makes sense, gets the message [...]

Should GE Sell or Partner Appliance Unit?

GE announced last week that it is considering selling, spinning off or partnering its appliance unit. My first thought went to why they would want to dump it at all. GE has a long history of dumping underperformers (units and people). In December they put their finance unit (or at least some [...]

Balancing Consistency with Innovation and Creativity

When you have a brand, the one thing customers look for is consistency. Even if it’s bad, the fact that it is consistent gives them comfort. Yet, too much consistency can feel like a rut. It can bring on a mean case of boredom.

You work with it day in and day out, [...]

Human Rights and the Internet

Today, I’m taking a break from my normal brand management posts and joining Bloggers Unite in discussing human rights.
Growing up, I used to believe that we should not impose our own cultural biases on others’. To me, the issue was simple and straightforward: That’s what their world is like. If they don’t like [...]

A Brand’s Life Cycle

Every brand has a life cycle. It starts as an idea, gets developed and is born. It then grows, matures and dies. That process may last as little as a few months or as long as multiple centuries. Occasionally, brands will be on the brink of death before suddenly resurging. [...]

Being Lazy

I’ve been pretty active lately on Facebook and LinkedIn, hooking up with old friends and making some new ones. While I may not be rocking the world with the number of connections I’ve made, I’m doing pretty well. But here’s the thing, I’ve been counting on the connections I am making for the [...]

Establishing Priority Markets and Putting Them to Work

Yesterday, I discussed how you should prioritize your markets or segments with 12 different levels, each with some combination of volume, profit and potential. You could easily consider these as A, B, C and D targets such that:

A includes high profit and high potential accounts or customers
Bs are low profit but high potential markets
C [...]