That Sound You Hear is the Crash of Advertising

May 2, 2009

I remember the days when ad people looked down at PR types.  They had the big bucks budgets while the PR people toiled away on the leftovers writing press releases, arranging company events and the like.

Advertising sells!  Well, maybe not so much anymore.  Even the American Association of Advertising Agencies acknowledges the new power of public relations.  At its recent annual meeting, the group rebranded itself the 4A’s, for one reason because so many of their agencies are discovering that PR pays. Read more

Why CEOs Think Differently Than We Do

March 25, 2009

Marketing and communications executives are being challenged by their CEOs to help chart the future of their organizations. It is their skills as conceptual thinkers that enable these communicators to envision the possibilities for supporting the organization’s goals.  If this is the case, then why do so many chief executives resist the recommendations of the very people they have selected to help drive change throughout the organization? Read more

Juicing Up the Annual Report

March 11, 2009

Spring is coming and so is the avalanche of annual reports that public companies send to their shareholders.  And, as usual, most of them will be as dull as dishwater.  Think about it.  When was the last time someone told you he had curled up in bed with a good annual report to read?  Not likely, unless sleep was the primary motivation. Annual reports can be real dullards. Read more

• Try Different — Seth Godin

  The usual mantra is to 'try harder'. Trying harder is impossible when you're already trying as hard as you can.

  But you can always try different.

  Years ago, I was creating trivia questions for a product we built for Prodigy. We had a 99% accuracy rate in doing the questions. Which was great, except there were 1800 questions in a batch, which meant 18 wrong each time, which was totally and completely unacceptable. These were honest mistakes, made by smart people working as hard as they could.

  No matter how hard we tried, we couldn't do better than 99%. So we switched our system completely and did it in a totally different way. Same number of people, same number of hours, 100% accuracy.

  If it's not working, harder might not be the answer.

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