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.
Shoot!
Here's the deal. Pick up that rubber band and shoot it across the room. I'll scamper after it like a lunatic, pick it up, and bring it back for you to shoot again. I will. Why are you looking at me like that? You don't think I'm a dog? Okay. Ask yourself: Do I have...
I’ll Be Back
The story you're about to read is more true than you might imagine. The names have been changed out of human decency. I’m IT Director for Megalosurance Worldwide Global International, a health insurer in Razor Bump, Arkansas (but we think big), writing coverage for...
Exchanging Ideas on Brand
I recently engaged in a discussion about branding on LinkedIn with a gentleman, Joseph Benson, who proved to be as patient as he is knowledgeable. I offer our exchange here, edited only for brevity and clarity, with Joseph's permission. Joseph is indicated by the...
That’s Faith
One of my posts elicited a comment from a wonderful lady, Lupe Eyde-Tucker, that reminded me of how meaningful our stories are — and how important it is to share them. Thank you, Lupe, for the reminder and for inspiring me to share this story. Some years ago, I took...
Follow the Money
It was a dark and stormy night. I was sitting in my office at the corner of Bleak and Bleaker when the phone rang. I'm no clairvoyant. But I knew something was wrong before I even answered. Maybe it was my female intuition. “O’Brien?” “Yeah.” “It’s Millwood from The...
Don’t Plan It. Create It.
I have a troubled relationship with planning. I see it as teetering on a scale between dubious advisability and abject futility. Nevertheless, I do recognize the need for it, even if the plan is nothing more than a map on which to plot course corrections. Nothing...
Thought Leadership Thoughts
Thinking is hard work, which is why so few people do it. (Henry Ford) I saw a profile on LinkedIn the other day describing the person who posted it as a thought and people leader. I'm certain the gentleman who posted it is many things, most of which are likely good,...
It’s Not What You Think
Don't be hasty. We know what it looks like. We do. Really. It looks like we're on the couch, huh? If we were you, we'd think so, too. We would. But we know you've told us a million times to stay off the couch. So, why would you think we'd be on it? Seriously. We were...
Can We Talk?
I recently listened as an experienced salesman, employed by a software and professional-services company, bemoaned the fact that his prospects don't seem to answer the phone anymore. He wondered if the phone had outlived its usefulness, if Alexander Graham Bell turned...
Be Bold
Perhaps the only thing more difficult for a company to derive than its elevator pitch is a list — even a short list — of its principal differentiators. In October of this year, The Chautauqua Center for Meaningful Distinction surveyed 647 of the companies in the...
The Common Sense of Affordable Value
If you publish an article like this, complicating otherwise simple, intuitive logic, you should expect some push-back. Here it is: The article's subtitle is "All Value is Subjective". Of course it is. If it weren't, no one would pay for The War of the Worlds when they...
No More Lists, Please
I recently read an article called, "Just How Sick of Leadership Posts Are We?" It's unabashed in its disdain for leadership posts that are trite at best, deliberately deceitful at worst. (That's a paraphrase and an understatement.) I have a similar bugaboo about...
Up Here!
Hey! It's me, Sammy! No! Up here! I'm watching you, ya know. And while we're on the subject, do you have any treats? I could go for some treats right about now. Got any treats? How 'bout treats? Some treats would sure hit the spot. Any treats around? There's never a...
Hyperinformationalism
THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU'LL EVER READ! WE DON'T KNOW IF IT'S GOOD OR BAD! BUT IT'S REALLY, REALLY IMPORTANT! THAT'S WHY IT'S IN BOLD-FACED CAPITAL LETTERS SO YOU'LL KNOW IT'S IMPORTANT! SEE ALL THE EXCLAMATION POINTS? NO?! THEN YOU'RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION!...
Blow It Up
When I launched O'Brien Communications Group (OCG) almost 11 years ago, I wondered: "When and how will I blow this thing up?" I had no intentions of destroying my fledgling business. Rather, I was determined to obviate the stultifying effects of familiarity, habit,...
Stranded in Airports and Other Blessings
Despite my Irish luck, and for the first time in my charmed life, I was recently stranded overnight in Toronto Pearson International Airport. I'd flown from Bradley International in Hartford, Connecticut, at 7:00 a.m., with a return flight scheduled at 8:55 that same...
The Fast-Starting Billionaire
I was a slow starter. I did my best thinking and writing in the morning. But my body needed time to adjust from supine and senseless to vertical and viable. Everything changed when I found this article. It targets three areas: body, mind, and spirit. Since the body...
Dr. Feelgood
You walk into a doctor’s office with a week-old hangnail. It's still painful and showing signs of infection. The doctor asks no questions, hands you a bottle, tells you to put two drops in each ear twice daily, and call him in a week if you're not feeling better. You...
Ponzi Dreams
For reasons best left to the imagination, Investigation Discovery still offers programming about Bernie Madoff. Bernie will be 221 years old when he gets out of jail. That seems a tad unfair, since Charles Ponzi, the originator of the scheme Bernie perfected, only...
Technically Speaking
Here are Immutable Communication Rules 1 through 3: We are not the target audience. We are not the target audience. We are not the target audience. Here are Immutable Communication Rules 4 through 6: If technical people could communicate with non-technical people, God...
The Magic Formula
We’ve been hearing about the trite notion of personal brand for longer than I thought. In fact, I recently found a column from 2011. It said this, part: Your personal value proposition (PVP) is at the heart of your career strategy. It's the foundation for everything...
Gypped Again
Okay. Lemme see if I got this straight: You made a special trip in here to see me. You expected me to be happy about that. I'm supposed to lavish all kinds of affection on you. And you brought no treats? Are you kidding?
Click Your Heels
Inbound marketing is a dangerous concept. There. I've said it. Combining pie in the sky, fantasy, delusion, and something like reckless lunacy, it panders to the misbegotten fantasies of every organization that thinks SEO and social media are latter-day substitutes...
Dear Client
Human psychology doesn't play nice with the relationships between price, cost, and value. To illustrate the point, I offer this letter to a hypothetical client, a company with no brand recognition in its target market. The company is reluctant to commit to an annual...
Don’t Be an ARSE
If you've witnessed the fate of successful brands (little fish) after they've been devoured by larger corporate entities (bigger fish), you're aware that, regardless of what they eat, bigger fish excrete the same thing, all the time. Why the consistent waste? Bigger...
The Cult of Personality
Cults of personality are defined as arising from the use of mass media to create idealized images. But that definition is incomplete because it neglects our agency in the process of idealization; that is, without our consumption of mass media — and without our...
Long Live the Experts
If you've been keeping up with the experts (ahem), you're like to have noticed many of them writing obituaries for branding (case in point). There's a short list of reasons for which people write such things: They want to be controversial, in which case they've...
Deep Thoughts
Matilda: Do you think Bigfoot is real? Sammy: Some guy in Texas says he has pictures of him. Matilda: Those turned out to be Photoshopped. Sammy: How do you know? Matilda: I studied photo re-touching in Obedience School. Sammy: I thought that was just for sitting and...
Sales vs. Marketing
If you want to make yourself instantly unpopular, say this in a sales meeting: "Marketing is not a sales-support function. Sales is a marketing-fulfillment function." But make sure the door is unlocked, the hallways are clear, and the elevator is held open. Since they...
Hype Dreams
Dow Jones hasn't updated its list of the top gobbledygook terms since 2008. But the world hasn’t changed all that much over the past few years. The business lexicon has changed even less. Buzzwords are like Pit Bulls with ankles: Once their jaws are clenched, it...
Design vs. Fashion
On a staff call one morning, Jonathan Spiliotopoulos, our Magnificent Maven of Multi-Media Machinations, said this: Helping people make important decisions is the very definition of design. Because I'm a writer, as opposed to one proficient in visual or graphic media,...
Land of Confucian*
First I would straighten out the language. (Confucius, asked how he would restore order to the world) I’ve worked for three of America’s major insurance and financial services organizations. Those are the terms by which those companies chose to describe themselves,...
No Treats?
The Bennett Boys, Crush (front) and Tar (back), are looking skeptically suspicious, even though they're rockin' their cool black hoodies. It seems they heard a rumor that there are no more treats. While the rumor is, so far, unsubstantiated, it's being thoroughly...
Opportunity Cost
This blog, you may recall, has a theme, which states, in part: "Everything of value has a price. The price must cover the cost." Accordingly, let's take a moment to contemplate the value of our goods and services. Let's take into consideration derivative value beyond...
Cool Stuff
We recently conducted a survey of 1,500 companies from the Fortune 1000 to determine what those companies would like their new websites to feature if they could have new websites just by snapping their fingers. These are the top five responses: Cool stuff More stuff...
Happy Meal
I recently stopped in a coffee shop for lunch. As I was paying for my repast, the earnest young man behind the counter told me all the food was prepared on the premises and said proudly, "It's all food you can feel good about eating." Uh oh. Had I been neglecting to...
I Wonder
Years ago, returning from a Sunday afternoon outing with some friends in their station wagon, I said I couldn't believe the weekend was ending — the next day would be Monday already. The three-year-old daughter of my friends called to her father from the wayback,...
How Badly Do You Want It?
"I'd walk a mile over hot coals to [fill in the blank]." "I'd crawl a mile over broken glass to [fill in the blank]." How many times have you heard statements like that? Certainly there's a proliferation of love-related songs and sentiments that echo such lofty,...
Breaking Even?
We sent Abby to the groomer's this week. The bad news is she came back with a broken leg. The good news is they didn't charge us extra for it.* If you have any scary pet stories for this Halloween, please share them with us in the Comment box below. *No. This story is...
Lightning Rod
We once consulted with a company that had developed a new software application for revenue-cycle management. Their initial target market was large hospitals and medical centers. Justifiably jazzed, the company got its sales team revved up. It hired a telemarketing...
Number, Please
Jonathan Spiliotopoulos, one of my O'Brien Communications Group partners, a friend, and an estimable thinker, wrote this note to me one day after he'd read a blog post in which the author was beefing about web-based ad blockers: Companies complain about the...
Tell the Truth: Part Two
In an earlier post, I wrote about the important necessity — and the effective simplicity — of telling the truth. It was a lesson I learned, of course, from children. Since then, I found this: In an article called, "High-School Students Respect First Amendment More...
The Science of Best Practices
Though we've written about best practices before, we still hear references to them and read articles about them with disarming frequency. That frequency is disarming because it reflects stasis — a kind of settling for inactivity or unimaginativeness, rather than a...
Super Size It
This handsome fella is young Crush, the newest member of the OCG Pet Family. In case you hadn't noticed, he's a Great Dane. He's a big, gentle boy; and everything about him is modest ... except his appetite. To make your pledge to the Crush Food Fund, please visit...
A Thought
Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it. (Henry Ford) A friend froze me in my tracks the other day. In the midst of a conversation we were having, he said: "I have a thought." I couldn't believe it. I wouldn't have...
Dracula’s Choice
Here are two direct quotes from real companies, spoken to me in face-to-face conversations: Company #1: We have to suspend marketing because revenues are tight, and we have to cut expenses. Company #2: We're not going to continue marketing because all of the marketing...
In the Minority
I saw a LinkedIn update the other day notifying me that the enterprise of one of my professional connections had just qualified as a woman-owned minority business (WOMB). Needless to say, the acronym struck me as apt, since it's hard to imagine anything more...
Awaiting Proof
Salem reported hearing consistent rumors to the effect that there's more to life than a nap in the sun. He's therefore determined to nap in the sun until such rumors are confirmed or refuted. If you need to get ahold of him in the meantime, please have your people...