Read the book!
I’ve written a book for financial people and other folks who advise companies. It’s called VALUE: 16 ways to break through performance barriers when cost-cutting, streamlining and other operational efficiencies have reached their natural limits. You can get a printed copy on Amazon. Or a Kindle copy here. Let me know what you think. If you’d like to review it for this site or on your...
Read More
R-F Pasta.
When a regional noodle maker wanted to cook up some buzz, our sweepstakes promotion was Unsurpasta! R•F Pasta wanted to make a splash in the Midwest with a major sales-promotion effort. We suggested running a sweepstakes with a very high-profile prize: not just a new kitchen, but the Kitchen Unsurpasta, with very high-end equipment and a nationally known kitchen designer. Pulling off the...
Read More
Frontenac Racquet Club.
In a tough time – and town – for tennis, one spot just keeps getting sweeter. Since 2000, at least three indoor tennis clubs in the St. Louis metro area have closed. Even if they were nominally profitable, they sat on real estate so valuable it was hard to justify the use of that land for such a seemingly frivolous, low-margin purpose on almost any basis. Yet the land sitting under Frontenac...
Read More
Ultra Play.
When we showed athletic directors how Ultra Play could get them to the dance, they made the company’s sales numbers sing. Ultra Play had a great product — a highly engineered, professional-quality backstop that was also portable, designed for use in multipurpose gyms. (It’s now a Gared product.) Previous trade ads and catalogue pages had spelled out the details. But to turn this great...
Read More
Artesys.
When a boutique brokerage firm started marketing its investment approach as a branded product, the world beat a path to its door. Since 2008, Artesys has been a featured investment option in the qualified retirement plans you can get from OneAmerica Insurance, a Fortune 1000 company based in Indiana. In other words, it’s a nationally branded product. A number of products in the world of mutual funds...
Read More
Maritz Automotive Research.
When the nation’s leading automotive-research firm needed to package its flagship product, we put the program on wheels. For years the Syndicated Studies from Maritz Automotive Research were the Bible of the new-car industry. A complete, totally unbiased survey of U.S. and Canadian car buyers in the first two quarters of the model year, the Studies asked respondents almost everything: What models...
Read More
Jack Goldenberg.
A veteran of big ad agencies in Chicago and New York, Jack launched the Happy Meal and then the Cabbage Patch Kids. In this century, Jack has helped cure diseases for Bristol-Myers – but more important, has established both his own brand and those of clients across the social-media space longer than just about anyone who isn’t named Scoble or Kawasaki. He blogs at 10minutesofbrilliance.com. In...
Read More
Harry Webber.
A giant of the advertising business, Harry Webber created some of the most famous campaigns of the late 20th century, including "Stuck on Band-Aid Brand," "Quality Is Job 1" and "A mind is a terrible thing to waste." Harry also has credits in reality television,and the movies. His think tank, iapia.org, laid the theoretical groundwork to bring marketing into...
Read More
Recent From
Most Recent Articles
Identity packages.
What’s in a contemporary identity system? To establish yourself or your company as a credible source in your market, you need to produce certain pieces at a minimally acceptable level of quality. The absolute...
Read More
Here’s a business card that works so hard …
…It could pull a Hemi®. I have a great printer that does a thousand business cards for under $30, delivered, in full color on both sides. For about $100, they’ll do a fold-over — a little...
Read More
Web video.
Make your website a TV channel . . . And your company, your people and products...
Read More
Almost Heaven . . .?
With apologies to John Denver for that headline, I just realized the world...
Read More
Sew It Seams.
When a fashion-fabrics retailer decided to dress up her brand, her website got...
Read More