I don’t watch television. At all. This is not a moralistic tale of voluntary cultural deprivation to better myself as an individual. I watch plenty of TV. I just don’t watch television. I watch everything I’m interested in on my laptop, on my couch, on my schedule.
Until today, there was only one time this wasn’t the case: Saturdays. You see, I’m a transplant from the South. While the rest of the state is working itself into a frenzy over the Cornhuskers, Read More

There’s no question the traditional newspaper business model is facing profound challenges. The number of those willing to pay for home delivery is shrinking and advertising revenues are shifting as a result of increased options for local advertising… meanwhile costs are going up. Daily metro newspapers simply can’t make enough money to support their old traditions and they didn’t embrace or leverage change to their benefit.  Instead they “sold” web advertising as an add on, which diminished the value (plus most newspaper web sites stink).  Read More

Hello, sir or madam. Today, you took simultaneous actions in regards to my rewards account with you. You charged me the card’s annual membership fee, thus making me psychologically committed to keeping my account for another twelve months lest I “waste” that fifty bucks. At the same time, you significantly increased the card’s APR. This makes my psychological commitment an even sweeter revenue stream for you over the next year (by which time I’m sure you suspect I will have forgotten about these concurrent feats of fee-based genius). Read More

So I was mindlessly fidgeting with a screwdriver last night while sitting on the couch. I won’t try to explain how that happened. But there I was, turning a Phillips head over and over in my hand while re-re-re-watching the first season of The Wire on DVD.
It was a cheap screwdriver. Cost me a buck at Target earlier in the day. There were two pieces of information stamped onto it. The first was a brand: Durabuilt. Read More

It’s very easy to think that your company or your clients would cease to exist without you. Without your sweat. Without your long hours. Without your passion. Without your intelligence. Without you oiling the machine.
You’re wrong.
Not that you don’t matter. You do (unless you don’t, but that’s another rant altogether). While you’re oiling the machine, though, you can’t lose sight of the fact that it’s a machine. The inner workings of any business never rest on one person. Read More

So I was flipping through Ad Age and came across an article titles “Dear Fast Feeders, Please Keep Your Meat Away From the Ladies”.  Naturally I had to read on.
It really amazes me how sexualized the fast food industry has become over the years.  What happened to the good ole’ characters like Ronald McDonald, Hamburglar and Grimace?  Now B-list celebs are the main characters in barely there outfits on top of cars eating burgers.  I get the whole “play to your audience” Read More

In this day and age of eco and green awareness…we have some interesting things going on. Farmers Markets are becoming more and more popular, doubling and tripling in size, organic sections of regular grocery stores are becoming the norm, and even though mega super-stores such as Whole Foods exist, there still seems to be a LOT of room for more of the same.
One of my favorite producers and dear friends, Alan Siegel of November Films: http://www.novemberfilms.com/, Read More

“Ford leaving Chrysler, GM in its rearview” is the lead headline in this week’s AdAge. They go on to analyze this phenomenon. Is it a “halo” or because they are “building image while others flog incentives”? How about this Sherlock – the American consumer has come to the surprisingly logical and intelligent conclusion that the boys in Detroit may not be overly focused on product quality if their financials are in the crapper.

IDEO, a global design consultancy creating impact through design, took their experiment known as Free Time to the streets in San Francisco. They created a “free time” ticket dispenser that hands out 10-minute increments of free time in the form of printed tickets. This is a study of basic prototyping and why it is so important to test out products or services on the real world before taking them out into the market, if at all possible. Read More

We’ve create a practical how-to seminar series on a variety of marketing topics because we’ve seen first hand the need for a “preventative medicine” type of approach when it comes to effective marketing techniques being used today.