Endeavorance
The point of our blog isn’t to show you how up to date we are with buzzwords and jargon. It isn’t to instruct you with how-to guides, tips, tricks, and hacks. It isn’t to encourage, endorse, or engage in conformity. The point of our blog is to provoke, to counter popular notions, to question the status quo, to prompt your imagination, and to challenge you to think and achieve more than you might otherwise. Whatever happens, it’s worth the endeavor.
Endeavorance
The point of our blog isn’t to show you how up to date we are with buzzwords and jargon. It isn’t to instruct you with how-to guides, tips, tricks, and hacks. It isn’t to encourage, endorse, or engage in conformity. The point of our blog is to provoke, to counter popular notions, to question the status quo, to prompt your imagination, and to challenge you to think and achieve more than you might otherwise. Whatever happens, it’s worth the endeavor.
The Solutions Solution
While surfing the web the other day, I came across a company, the website of which said this, in part: [We provide] world-class solutions for tools-based modernization solutions. No. I'm not making that up for the purpose of making a point. Like innovation, solutions...
Facts vs. Fabrications
Anybody who notices unpleasant facts in the have-a-nice-day world we live in is going to be designated a curmudgeon. (Paul Fussell, 1924-2012) I live in fear of becoming a curmudgeon. I think it's because I prefer facts to fabrications. In that regard, I consider...
A Red Heron
I know of only one person like Norm Crosby. That would be Norm Crosby, who's also the only person I know who could make a career out of malaprops. The rest of us typically have to make careers out of avoiding them. In fact, Christina Desmarais recently wrote an...
Smile When You Say That
Since missing boats seems to be the story of my life, I shouldn't be surprised that yet another one apparently sailed without me. To be more specific, I'm having trouble understanding what the big deal is about Harvard Business Review. ("Oh, my Gawd, Edna! Do you see...
Get Your PII Under GRC PDQ
Don't look now, kids, but we have two more abbreviations to worry about: PII (personally identifiable information) and GRC (governance, risk management, and compliance). I don't mean to suggest we should be worried about what they denote. Rather, I mean the quotient...
Out of Bounds
This post, which I offered with tongue firmly in cheek, reminded me of an article I read almost two years ago, in which: Graphic designer and artist Johnny [Kid Tartan] Plaid ... envisioned a drastic update for the iPhone 6. The iPhone 6 hadn't yet become available at...
The Gatsby Syndrome
I've identified a new psychological phenomenon. I've called it The Gatsby Syndrome. Because we just can't get enough abbreviations, I refer to it as TGS. I've created a foundation through which to study it. I'm going to try to get it listed in the Diagnostic and...
Flying Pigs
The only thing more amazing than the things for which we fall is the length of time for which we continue to fall for them. Given the popularity of inbound marketing and marketing automation, I'd have imaged them to be relatively new phenomena. I'd have been wrong....
What’s the Difference?
Is any tired rhetorical trope more trite and trivial than making a difference? "We're making a difference." "Let's make a difference." "One person can make a difference." "Our company is making a difference." Please. In the early '90s, I worked for The Travelers...
After the Revolution
More than 13 years ago, I wrote this piece for Tech Decisions magazine (now Property Casualty 360). I found it while searching the Web for something else entirely, was surprised to find it still out there, to find it still relevant, and to find its relevance still...
Instant Karma
In the past, we'd have said the younger of my two younger brothers, Ben (to protect his privacy, this is not his real name), is mentally retarded. In these enlightened times, we’re more likely to say he’s intellectually disadvantaged, synaptically challenged, or...
The Nose Knows
Ask a roomful of people (I’ve done it), “What’s your brand?” and most of them will quickly respond, “My logo.” It’s not a bad answer. It’s just incomplete. It lacks context. Your logo is, at most, an aspect of your brand. Especially in your advertising or on your...
The Case of the Frozen Feet: Part Two
Since it was clear I was more surprised than Biff was, I spoke up first; although, it was more a reflexive exclamation than a considered inquiry: "Is something wrong ...?" "No," Biff replied calmly. "What makes you ask?" "One of Mulchahy's flatfoots from the 5th...
The Case of the Frozen Feet: Part One
Regular readers might remember the first case I reported in these pages. Hardcore masochists might even recall the second one. If not, don't let it get to you. I beat the pavement as a private brand detective. The lion's share of my cases have to do with bad decisions...
Rhetoric vs. Results
According to a study recently concluded by The Chautauqua Center for Forensic Linguistics, two sentences occur together more frequently than any others in business contexts. The first is a simple declaratory: We need a plan. The second is a perplexed...
People First
We tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization. (Charlton Ogburn, 1911-1998) I once helped a company establish its brand in a new...
Experience Marketing
Here it comes, kids. I'd just about gotten my stomach settled after the nausea-inducing wave of inbound marketing, marketing automation, and ad tech ... then the next wave hit. That wave, of course, is experience marketing. That's right. Since feeling has replaced...
The Advertising Hokey Pokey
I hope I don't disillusion, disappoint, or disaffect anyone. But this needs to be stated overtly: Advertising is not a dance. That's not to say every business needs to advertise. There are many businesses with strategic, managed growth plans that can do quite nicely...
The Naked Truth
ZEPHYR COVE, Nev. — A 53-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of being naked near a high school on Lake Tahoe’s east shore ... after three Whittell High School students reported spotting him tied to a rock and lying face down behind the school. When the students...
Research: A Eulogy
Dearly Beloved, We are gathered here on this solemn occasion to mark the untimely and unfortunate passing of something long held in the highest esteem by those who conducted it and by those who benefitted from it, be they in the hallowed halls of academia or in the...
You Talkin’ to Me?
For living in a world obsessed with communication, we don't seem to be paying much attention to language. Think about the language of marketing: First, we speak impersonally. We talk about industries, markets, verticals, and accounts. Those referents aren't people....
It’s About Time
I wonder if all of us think more about time as we grow older. I’m sure we’re aware of its passing. I want to know if we share a preoccupation with what we’re doing with our time. We have such a perverse relationship with it. When we’re young, there seems to be too...
Fries With That Shake?
Brands, like websites, are most effective when they're not allowed to be static. Brands — and their graphic marks, in particular — shouldn't be as dynamic as websites, of course; that is, unlike the constantly evolving content of websites, graphic marks need time to...
Whither the CMO?
On LinkedIn alone there are so many apparent obituaries being written for the CMO, I pulled my black suit out of mothballs for the funeral. But when it occurred to me that none of the pieces I'd been reading had given a cause of death, I decided to do a little...
Face the Pain
We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment. (Jim Rohn) In 2013, I had four surgeries, none serious, all requiring sedentary recovery time. The results of the subsequent inactivity were weight gain and a loss of...
Opposites Attract
According to this article in Inc., "9 Things You Should Never Ask Employees To Do", two things are absolute no-nos: Ask employees to evaluate themselves. Ask employees to evaluate their peers. When you're as bureaucracy-averse as I am, advice like that goes down...
Send it Back
I frequently receive unsolicited spam. But I repeat myself. Among the most frequent spammers is something calling itself the Reverse Logistics Association (RLA). Until I went on its website to find out what it was and what it did, my only recourse was to guess at what...
All Wet
Banking on the veracity of the old wives' tale that cats hate water, Salem thought he was pretty slick hiding in the shower. Turns out he was all wet.
My Litigious Horoscope
COLOMBO (AFP) — Sri Lankan police arrested an astrologer after he predicted a planetary change this month will be inauspicious for parliament and the government may not be able to arrest rising living costs – a prediction already made by private economists … Sri...
As If
Empiricism is a dying art. We've lost faith in our senses, in the evidence — any evidence — before us. We've lost the conviction that what looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck must be a duck. We've jettisoned the epistemological underpinnings...
Beautiful Dreamer
A friend, who knows I'm a registered Glutton for Punishment, recently dredged up two articles from two years ago (hoard much?) and sent them to me with the spartan query: "Dude, did you ever see these?" Both bore relevance to the insurance industry. With the exception...
Make the Sentence True
Two things have me thinking about interpretation. The first is the set of responses I continue to get to Martin the Marlin, about which I wrote here. The second is the experience we recently had selecting an image for an email marketing piece. Let's start with the...
Public Hair
The Dumbing of America preceded television programs like Jerry Springer, Oprah, The View, Real Housewives, and every other broadcast and popular-culture offering that indicates the decline of Western Civilization and reduces the public discourse to the level of...
Bin There, Done That
After noticing Sammy was conspicuously absent from his usual haunts, we launched an all-out cat-hunt. We found him casually sitting in the recycling bin, wondering what all the fuss was about. And people wonder why we call him Sammy the Goof.
What Price Respect?
As he got older, Grandpa O'Brien was increasingly bemused by things he couldn't understand. Whether those things were familial, commercial, cultural, or political, they'd elicit the same reaction: a wry smile, a shake of the head both mystified and mirthful, followed...
Reverse Marketing
Floyd and Boyd are not real people. But they play them on TV. They recently engaged in this discussion during an episode of Unreal People on UPC (the Unreal People Channel). Floyd: Why don’t companies market to vendors? Boyd: What? Floyd: If companies need the...
The Point
If you read enough, and long enough, you're bound to come across something worth your time — the proverbial diamond in the rough; the product of a keen intellect; a thoughtful treatise, rationally conceived, soundly argued, and engagingly persuasive. The finding is as...
WTF (Watch The Forensics)
The following program contains graphic situations and dramatizations. It may not be suitable for children, especially those who are extremely impressionable and may be profoundly disillusioned at the realization that the behavior of ostensible adults can range from...
Facing Up to Facebook
As of this writing, there are 12 groups on LinkedIn dedicated to social media in insurance. Those groups have 41,837 members. Yet a client who sells software to insurance companies told me she wasn’t devoting resources to a Facebook page because it wasn't worth the...
Topsy Turvy
Tar had a nightmare in which the entire world had turned upside down. When he woke up like this, he REALLY freaked out. Poor little guy.
LA (LinkedIn Anonymous)
I was reading a book the other day about mysteries of the universe. There were chapters about — and alleged photographs of — UFOs, crop circles, Bigfoot, the Bermuda Triangle, the Loch Ness Monster, and honest politicians. Then there was this: LinkedIn member This...
I Want to be Seduced
According to dictionary.com, hype is a derivation of hyperbole: Origin: 1925–30, Americanism; in sense “to trick, swindle,” of uncertain origin; subsequent senses perhaps by reanalysis as a shortening of hyperbole That’s easy enough to imagine. A hyperbolic pitch...
Marketing is Patient Money
In a beautiful little book called, The Zen Path Through Depression, Philip Martin offers advice for easing the pain of depression that could just as easily apply to the practice of marketing: When we are lost, frightened, or facing something new or unknown, our first...
Circling the Funnel
One of the joys of my life is being compelled to conduct Internet searches to determine the ostensible meanings of the latest abbreviations, acronyms, or jargon. Here's the item that got my attention most recently: At the most basic level — even for companies with...
Networking, Conversing, and Writing
I read an article in Inc., "It's Official: Networking Makes People Feel Sleazy", over breakfast the other morning. Its psychological premise engaged me fully, especially this: Just the thought of saying "find me on LinkedIn" is enough to send some people reeling,...
Gonzo But Not Forgotten
Hunter Thompson died by his own hand nine years ago today. I found out at about 10:00 the next morning. Despite my brute incomprehension of what I was reading, it struck me as a rather Thompsonesque moment: It was snowing — bleak, cold. I'd gone to my browser's home...
Preventive Medicine
About three or 47 times a week, I get email from a sender who identifies as Reverse Your Diabetes. The body of the email says: WARNING! You will be SHOCKED by this video, Mark! Viewer Discretion is Advised While I've never clicked through to view the video, I do it...
Let’s Get Physical
I received a notification from a trade association that reminded me precisely how linguistically bereft, if not spiritually desiccated, we've become. With offending identifiers deleted to keep my sorry keister out of the hoosegow, it said this: Submissions can be made...