by Mark O'Brien | Feb 27, 2015
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...
by Mark O'Brien | Feb 26, 2015
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...
by Mark O'Brien | Feb 18, 2015
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...
by Mark O'Brien | Feb 16, 2015
Why does marketing inspire anxiety? I don’t know. But I have two theories. The first is that we possess a fundamental distrust of brevity and simplicity. The second is that we don’t recognize effective marketing is simple storytelling. Most of us think the...
by Mark O'Brien | Feb 4, 2015
When writing any type of copy or content for any purpose, my philosophy is to give readers credit for the acuity of their readership. To put it another way, my writing style is the compositional equivalent of my personal style: People get the benefit of every doubt...
by Mark O'Brien | Feb 2, 2015
I recently read a blog post, “Lead Behaviors not Lead Scores”, by Josh Hill, and a book, Great Sky River, by Gregory Benford. The latter opened my eyes to the former. In Great Sky River, the last of humanity fights to survive on Snowglade, pursued by...
