by Mark O'Brien | Dec 4, 2014
When I launched O’Brien Communications Group (OCG) almost 11 years ago, I wondered: “When and how will I blow this thing up?” I had no intentions of destroying my fledgling business. Rather, I was determined to obviate the stultifying effects of...
by Mark O'Brien | Dec 1, 2014
You walk into a doctor’s office with a week-old hangnail. It’s still painful and showing signs of infection. The doctor asks no questions, hands you a bottle, tells you to put two drops in each ear twice daily, and call him in a week if you’re not feeling...
by Mark O'Brien | Nov 21, 2014
Inbound marketing is a dangerous concept. There. I’ve said it. Combining pie in the sky, fantasy, delusion, and something like reckless lunacy, it panders to the misbegotten fantasies of every organization that thinks SEO and social media are latter-day...
by Mark O'Brien | Nov 20, 2014
Human psychology doesn’t play nice with the relationships between price, cost, and value. To illustrate the point, I offer this letter to a hypothetical client, a company with no brand recognition in its target market. The company is reluctant to commit to an...
by Mark O'Brien | Nov 17, 2014
If you’ve been keeping up with the experts (ahem), you’re like to have noticed many of them writing obituaries for branding (case in point). There’s a short list of reasons for which people write such things: They want to be controversial, in which...
