On the one hand, it’s amazing that 2011 is 50% over… On the other hand, we’ve just begun an extraordinary month: Not just because of what I prefer to call “Interdependence Day”, but because every 823 years, the days line up in the month so as to have 5 full weekends. July 2011 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri [...]
When I was President of the local chapter of the Institute of Management Consultants a couple years back, I would regularly hear individuals introduce themselves as a “financial consultant”. A few people down the row, there would be another “financial consultant”. Now at first glance, these people naturally got their hackles up about competitors — [...]
More and more these days, we see companies engaging with customers 1:1 via blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Many companies understand the opportunity and potential with “customer engagement” — whether or not they are now doing so! I stumbled upon this great example today demonstrating thought leadership and felt compelled to highlight it. Sharing a lesson [...]
It often amazes me that we humans can lose past lessons… whether it’s the Iraq/Afghan wars looking increasingly like the failed Vietnam conflict, or Western civilization recreating technologies that previous civilizations had already invented, or even World Wide Web site designers overlooking all the research that IBM et al did in the 90′s on standardization [...]
If you’ve never been in or around the private aircraft community, the headline may not make sense. But the same can be said for the mariner community: Relative to Cars, Boats Hold Their Value. Hopefully one of these examples clicks for you. Presuming it does, ask yourself: Why? I suggest that it has to do [...]
Many (I would even say “most”) of my clients are looking for ways to drop their prices to beat their competitors. But time after time, I seek out ways to communiate “D&B” (different and better) and build the value — rather than reduce. This is not just theory. For the record, my career record — [...]
Twenty-five years ago, I had the good fortune to join a little company in between the cornfields of downstate Illinois. A couple of other programmers (software engineers) had “dibs” on more exciting new computers such as the Atari 68k and the Amiga — both awesome color graphics computers in their day — to develop flight [...]
If you don’t believe that social media is changing the way people perceive brand messages and vet them through their peers… If you don’t see how social media is creating entire new businesses based around user-generated content (a huge piece of the Web 2.0 step forward)… If you haven’t used a social network to discover [...]
Today I received a notice that Washington Senator Patti Murray, up for re-election, is following me on Twitter… When I clicked through to inspect the degree to which the campaign (more precisely, her social media manager) was paddling in the social media waters, I was impressed to find “they” are doing swimmingly! It’s not just [...]
What does a phone service have to do with gas pumps? The answer is “nothing” if you believe you’re in the fuel business. But it’s “everything” if you’re in the great car ride business. The 76 brand is clearly speaking to its “parent segment” by creating the “Why Stopper” phone service — designed for mom [...]
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