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...
Blowing My Marketing Stack

Blowing My Marketing Stack

I don’t know that it was officially declared. But this may have been Marketing Week. After I wrote this post on Wednesday — “Marketing Should Be Simple: Part Deux” — this one popped into my queue: “What’s in Your Marketing Stack?”...
The Promise of Promise

The Promise of Promise

promise (noun): a declaration that something will or will not be done, given, etc.; e.g., unkept political promises Just when you thought it was safe to hypothesize that human nature might have evolved emotionally and psychologically to a point at which the...
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...
Do Your Homework

Do Your Homework

In my line of work, you have to say a lot of things that most folks find distasteful. This one elicits sneers, jeers, fears, and tears every time: Marketing is not a sales-support function. Sales is a marketing-fulfillment function. Salesperson: What do you mean...