by Mark O'Brien | Feb 3, 2015
In the late ’90s, I was invited to pitch the annual report business of the now-defunct Outpost.com. While there, I asked the Communications Director about the results of their recent television spot. She said, “Oh! The spot won all kinds of awards! The...
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...
by Mark O'Brien | Jan 30, 2015
I once had a conversation with the founder and CEO of a software company, an affable and unassuming gentleman. He’d inadvertently walked into a marketing meeting I was conducting with his senior leadership team. The conversation transpired like this, verbatim....
by Mark O'Brien | Jan 29, 2015
At any time, in any medium, we can find any number of articles, reports, opinion pieces, and more decrying a lack of leadership in everything from politics to industry. Au contraire. We don’t suffer from a lack of leadership: We suffer from an inability or an...
by Mark O'Brien | Jan 28, 2015
Few brands retain their iconic status through takeovers by public companies, buybacks by employees, ownership by investment capitalists, debt, disillusionment, and dilution-unto-absurdity of its product portfolio. But Fender Musical Instruments has survived all that...
by Mark O'Brien | Jan 27, 2015
When our clients tell us about their products or services, we invariably ask two questions: (1) Is there a market for it? (2) If we hand you a check right now, can we buy it? The latter is to prevent putting carts before horses. The former is to prevent the...
