From the Mailbag: Volume Four

From the Mailbag: Volume Four

As Victor Frankenstein discovered, sometimes you don’t know you’re creating a monster until it’s been on its feet for a while. And, as young Vic also found out, once it’s up and around, getting rid of it might pose something of a...
Marketing: From Revolution to Convolution

Marketing: From Revolution to Convolution

We need to resurrect insult, kids. I don’t mean we should insult each other any more than we already do. I mean it’s time to be more cognizant of being insulted when we are. Exhibit A: “A Contrarian View on Innovation in Advertising & PR”:...
Pre-Crisis Public Relations

Pre-Crisis Public Relations

Kevin Donnellon, president of Macali Communications, published a list of seven tips for managing prospective public-relations disasters under this headline: “Preparing For Your Jared Fogle or Spokesperson Crisis”. Mr. Donnellon’s syntactical and...
Water Isn’t the Only Thing That Flows Downhill

Water Isn’t the Only Thing That Flows Downhill

In the course of our research for a book we once created as a specialty publishing project — Origin/Destination: 75 Years of the New England Water Environment Association — we learned that it took the residents of Uxbridge, Massachusetts, 50 years to figure out the...
Go With the Flow

Go With the Flow

I came across a book review in The Financial Times over the past weekend in which the author, Julian Baggini, finding a common thread running through the three books he reviewed, wrote something arresting — something that directly contradicts the popular and...