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Inflation?
As a kid, I always wanted to have the best art supplies. Both my brother and I liked to draw, sketch, and paint. We would fight during the summer over school supplies because we always wanted to get the best colored pencils, the largest box of crayons, and the most expensive art stock. It was […]
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Push Me, Pull You
I had a long conversation with someone the other day about the differences between push and pull marketing. It was a little disappointing, though, because they had already invested a great deal of time and money developing their pull marketing strategies under the assumption that there was no difference between the two types. Not all […]
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Apple – Psystar
Long-time readers will know that I talk a lot about Apple and it’s marketing efforts. Yesterday, another ‘incident’ with Apple came to my attention, and it adds support to everything I’ve said in the past. Back in May, I made the argument that the only difference between an Apple computer and a PC was smart […]
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Brand YOU
When you’re looking for a job, the most important thing to understand is your personal brand. What reputation does your name carry? What is the first impression employers get from your resume? What tone do you use throughout your cover letter? These are just elements of the “first impression” your brand makes with potential employers. […]
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Ten Ways to Build a Stellar Blog
This blog is just a few days shy of being 1 year old. I thought I’d celebrate the occasion by sharing some of the things I’ve learned through blogging over the past year. Here are ten things, in no particular order, you can do to build a stellar blog: Post something every day: I realize […]
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Commodities
Yesterday, I was sitting in a coffee shop chatting when I ran into the most interesting issue. The woman at the table next to us was on the phone, and her conversation became a little heated. Since it was a personal call, she decided to excuse herself from the shop and finish the call outside. […]
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Brand Managers Anonymous
“My name’s Ralph, and no one knows my brand…” Unfortunately for us, there are quite a few Ralphs in the world. The problem is that they don’t have a Brand Managers Anonymous support group to attend – many are left to fend for themselves. In a market as harsh as today’s, that can be a […]
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Biscuits & Gravy
Biscuits and gravy, biscuits and gravy Get ’em all over your shirt! Biscuits and gravy, biscuits and gravy Eat ’em ’til it hurts! This is a song, well, more of a chant that we used to do at summer camp a few years ago. Every Wednesday for breakfast we would have biscuits and gravy. I […]
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Marketing to Disaster
One of my professors in business school utterly despised marketers. We were responsible, according to him, for every great disaster in business. Ironically, he ended up being one of my favorite professors in the program. Oddly enough, he might have even been right. Gas prices are higher today than any time in history. Sadly, they […]
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Logos and Avatars
Some time ago, I referred to logos as avatars. Since then, many people have asked me why a different term is necessary – isn’t “logo” descriptive enough? A logo, according to Wikipedia for one, “is a graphical element.” That’s it. A logo is just a graphic, a picture, nothing more. In reality, the “logos” we […]