by Mark O'Brien | Jan 9, 2015
If you do a Google search for dreaded words in business, you’ll get millions of hits. That’s a lot of dread. And it’s a reminder that dread is contextual. Edward G. Brown thinks the most dreaded words in business are Got a minute? Shell Haffner...
by Mark O'Brien | Jan 6, 2015
I left my last corporate job 20 years ago. Even then, I was aware of a phenomenon that continues to become more prevalent: Kleptus vocabularus — the stealing of a lexicon germane to one context for the purpose of deliberately misleading in another context. More...
by Mark O'Brien | Dec 30, 2014
My friend and partner, Jonathan Spiliotopoulos, shared an article entitled, “What Startups Need to Know About Ad Tech”. As Jonathan suggested to me, the article’s most salient point might be this: Advertising is essentially divided into two worlds:...
by Mark O'Brien | Dec 29, 2014
There are many reasons to be skeptical of the claims made by inbound marketing (or marketing automation — the terms are virtually synonymous). Here’s one. Here’s another. And here’s a third: Inbound marketing seems to be adopted by B2B companies that...
by Mark O'Brien | Dec 19, 2014
The story you’re about to read is more true than you might imagine. The names have been changed out of human decency. I’m IT Director for Megalosurance Worldwide Global International, a health insurer in Razor Bump, Arkansas (but we think big), writing coverage...
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...