Excuse me for being direct, but so many creative briefs are not worth the price of the paper on which they are printed. Andy Langer, Executive Creative Director at BBDO Worldwide, said, “The creative brief is the most important piece of paper at the agency.” It provides direction for him and his creative team in […]
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Attractive and growing margins are signs of a healthy brand, as long as they are not compromising sales and market share performance. They help bolster profit. Moreover, attractive and growing margins—mainly when they are larger than the competition—enable the marketer to reinvest more into the business than competitors whose margins are not as robust. However, […]
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The following is an excerpt from my new book, AVOIDING CRITICAL MARKETING ERRORS: Ho to Go from Dumb to Smart Marketing. It’s taken from Chapter 10: Overstating Your Capabilities and Underestimating the Competition. Learn more here: https://bdn-intl.com/avoiding-critical-marketing-errors Failure may very well come from “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.” Success seems certain. When doesn’t it […]
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While the current coronavirus pandemic and social upheaval are producing massive change, change is a constant variable. As the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, stated more than two-thousand years ago, “You can never step into the same river twice.” Not only do the waters flow ever-changing, but we, too, change moment to moment. Most often, we are […]
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Uncertainty is like a plague. No one wants to get near it. It is uncomfortable to the point of being terribly disturbing, wrecking-havoc on one’s confidence in decision making. Uncertainty makes planning difficult, if not impossible. It disrupts the ability to move forward or move anywhere at all. The coronavirus is an excellent example of […]
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It’s been an eventful weekend. My eldest daughter and her husband arrived from Chicago to visit. Saturday marked the start of summer 2020. On Sunday, we celebrated Father’s Day. Happy Father’s Day to your Dads and to you, our readers, who are Dads. As the summer has started, we’re taking a break from publishing DISPATCHES […]
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Hi all. I’m not publishing a new Marketing Matters article. Instead, I’m urging you to read Monday’s DISPATCHES’ article, ESTABLISH A BRAND PERFORMANCE DASHBOARD FOR MARKETING SUCCESS, if you haven’t done so already. It’s critically important to making your marketing matter more. It shares an instrument panel to create a dashboard to track brand health […]
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Welcome to the “new normal,” whatever it means. One thing we might agree upon is that this term, which is appearing in all manner of media, heralds significant change. We can’t ignore it because the new normal has altered our lives. Unlike the changes we typically experience, which evolve slowly, this is, might we say, […]
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My wife and I are in the process of remodeling our new home in Pensacola. It’s a long and arduous process. We—mostly she—has to answer a ton of questions from the builder, landscaper, and assorted subs. It is all very time consuming, stressful, and expensive. Interestingly, my wife is far better equipped to answer these […]
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The data, the data, the data, the data … We need the data. We crave the data. We bow to the data. Why not? The data helps generate hypotheses, make decisions, assess performance, and provide evidence of productivity. However, there is more to the data than the numbers—the stats. There’s context. Then, there’s even more […]
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