by Mark O'Brien | Oct 22, 2014
Here are two direct quotes from real companies, spoken to me in face-to-face conversations: Company #1: We have to suspend marketing because revenues are tight, and we have to cut expenses. Company #2: We’re not going to continue marketing because all of the...
by Mark O'Brien | Oct 16, 2014
I have a theory. It goes like this: If I remain naïve enough, I’ll never get old. If that’s so, then I just found the Fountain of Youth. The German writer, Thomas Mann, once said: “It is impossible for ideas to compete in the marketplace if no forum...
by Mark O'Brien | Oct 6, 2014
What’s the most valuable attribute of successful people? We can find lots of answers to the question from lots of sources: Courage. Vision. Imagination. Persistence. Willingness to fail. Iconoclasm. Lunacy. Every one of those attributes is a factor in the...
by Mark O'Brien | Oct 2, 2014
Prevailing wisdom contends that the most important aspect of direct-email marketing is the subject line. I hadn’t given the notion all that much thought until I started receiving a blizzard of such emails, all with this attention-grabbing subject line: Burial...
by Mark O'Brien | Oct 1, 2014
A statement finding its way more frequently and annoyingly into the vernacular of business and politics is this: Hope is not a strategy. Yeah. The statement is true. But enough already. Its corollary statement is this: A tactic is not a strategy. Yeah. That’s...
