One of our folks wrapped up a storied 4 year stint at the agency today, to pursue her dream of making a living doing what she’s really passionate about: baking. She and I had lunch a couple weeks back, and talked about where that passion came from. She told me a story, about how her…
I’m usually the guy defending the importance of Marketing. But the truth is, most marketing is worthless, and the same is true for an awful lot of the people who practice it. It doesn’t need to be that way. The way forward starts with a sober look at where we are, examines how we got…
When I was a fresh-faced young man, I went out into the world to find a job. Over the course of a couple years trying to break into advertising, I was a door-to-door salesman, then a bouncer, and eventually a bartender. Each of these was a job to pay the bills, en route to a…
Almost ten years ago I was sitting in a Starbucks pretending to read something when, in my devastatingly charming way, I inserted myself into a conversation taking place next to me. The man at the undersized table to my right was having a frustrating phone conversation about a hotel snafu that left him with a…
(NOTE: This is the second post in a series on the role of marketing and brands in this year’s Presidential election. For Part I, see Positioning A President: A Marketing Case Study.) Recap: Holland-Mark’s branding approach is based on the observation that people have a tendency to boil things down to One Simple Thing™ (“OST” for short.)…