by Mark O'Brien | Nov 19, 2014
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...
by Mark O'Brien | Nov 18, 2014
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...
by Mark O'Brien | Nov 17, 2014
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...
by Mark O'Brien | Nov 14, 2014
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...
by Mark O'Brien | Nov 13, 2014
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...
by Mark O'Brien | Nov 11, 2014
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...
