The Medium is the (Errant) Message

The Medium is the (Errant) Message

If Marshall McLuhan was correct in his assertion that the medium is the message (I believe he was), then this article from Britain’s Marketing, is much ado about nothing: According to some industry people, there is a resemblance between Coke’s ad, created...
Crazy for Gluten

Crazy for Gluten

As readers of Chautauqua know, I’ve been acquiring a heightened awareness of gluten sensitivity. Linked to disorders as disparate and seemingly unrelated as Bonkus of the Konkus and chronic valetudinarianism, gluten also can be traced to innumerable behavioral...
We’re Not Giving Back Anything

We’re Not Giving Back Anything

I saw a post the other day the very title of which froze me in my proverbial tracks. The title was this — “It’s Simple: Giving Back Must Be a Part of Doing Business” — and it’s rubbish. Start here: The more profitable we are as a company, the...
Trust Me On This One

Trust Me On This One

I saw an update on LinkedIn the other day from a woman who described herself as a serial entrepreneur. I don’t know the woman. I have no earthly reason to doubt her. But her self-description caused me pangs of skepticism nevertheless. A professor of English with...
Attorn For the Better

Attorn For the Better

Thanks to a client, with whom I was working through the terms of a new agreement (amicably, or so I thought), I learned a new word the other day. It presented itself in a sentence of otherwise unremarkable, albeit characteristically tortured (syntactically speaking)...
What a Kroc

What a Kroc

In a recent post, I posited the notion that disruption is the new change. As if on cue, two articles appeared in my sundry feeds almost immediately thereafter: “Big Food’s Big Problem: Consumers Don’t Trust Brands” and “The...