by Mark O'Brien | Nov 23, 2015
I’m noticing what seems to be a proliferation of a phenomenon called use cases. These seem to constitute vignettes or scenarios in which sellers of products or services illustrate various applications of said products or services — having already elucidated the...
by Mark O'Brien | Nov 20, 2015
There’s an old expression in the graphic arts that says this: If you’re not creating an effective presentation of a message, it’s not design. It’s art. So it is with content: If you’re not creating an effectively persuasive message for an...
by Mark O'Brien | Nov 3, 2015
My colleague and LinkedIn connection, Derrick Martins, posted what he had to have known would be irresistible bait for a word-shark like me. More specifically, he angled for trouble when he published this piece — “Analytics and Big Data: The Skeptics vs. the...
by Mark O'Brien | Nov 2, 2015
I love dots. And I obsess about connecting them. That’s why I wonder when people obsess about other things, like this — “Leading CMOs Will Excel at Customer Obsession in 2016” — without connecting them to other things, like this: “5 Questions...
by Mark O'Brien | Oct 15, 2015
In addition to the fact that I love marketing — and in case it’s not already apparent — I love language. I was reminded of that love, yet again, when I read an article from our language-loving friends at Gartner. It’s called, “The Arrival of...
by Mark O'Brien | Oct 14, 2015
I was right on the verge of doing something drastic. And I wasn’t taking chances: I had a full can of Drano, five cyanide capsules, two guns, five razor blades, a noose, and a Barry Manilow DVD. A client — a provider of enterprise software and services — had...