Well, since I had been so pre-occupied with my mom's illness last month I decided I had better go ask my clients how I was doing. Unfortunately I didn't get all positives. But sometimes that's why we don't want to ask, right? The deal with...
Boy did I learn about poor communications this month. My mom went into the hospital for routine surgery, and 5 weeks later, after complications, another surgery, and lots of proof why I NEVER want to be a gastroenterologist, she is out. Needless to say I...
I'm still thinking about the personalities I've used here in the Twin Cities to help brand some of my clients. I've got a bad example and a good example. First the bad - one of my clients had a promotion going on with a retail...
Most of us don't have the tens of thousands of dollars needed to acquire a celebrity to help boost our brand. I was fortunate enough to work with a small ski shop years ago that brought in Bode Miller and a few other U.S. ski...
For a small business it can be hard to understand where branding can help you. Face it, we don't have a ton of money to place carefully positioned advertisements straight into the heart of our target customers. And public relations doesn't seem to have a...
Since I seem to be on a branding rant these days I thought I would answer some questions I get on a regular basis about the "personal brand." It was really interesting to me last year when Emmett Smith mentioned on Dancing with the Stars...
In the big corporate world marketers have all the tools at their disposal - focus groups, surveys, store information, polling, distribution informations, etc. But a smaller business doesn't have the luxury of a team of people constantly developing and testing messages. And what often happens...
Every so often I encounter company owners that have taken the words "brand management" and translated that into something that ultimately hurts a brand, particularly for a younger company. I can't tell you how many times someone has told me they need to "protect the...
I got a call from an advertising sales rep this week and we were talking about a media buyer that we both know. Media buyers are notorious for beating up sales reps to beat down the price of advertising so it often becomes an adversarial...
Joey Fatone wore the Barefoot Bunny Slippers on live TV at the Academy Awards. AND he played footsie with his co-host, Lisa Guerrero (also in the slippers) and we got a close-up shot. GREAT product placement. But guess what ? Brilliant and fun though...
