Long Live the Experts

Long Live the Experts

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...
Deep Thoughts

Deep Thoughts

Matilda: Do you think Bigfoot is real? Sammy: Some guy in Texas says he has pictures of him. Matilda: Those turned out to be Photoshopped. Sammy: How do you know? Matilda: I studied photo re-touching in Obedience School. Sammy:  I thought that was just for sitting and...
Sales vs. Marketing

Sales vs. Marketing

If you want to make yourself instantly unpopular, say this in a sales meeting: “Marketing is not a sales-support function. Sales is a marketing-fulfillment function.” But make sure the door is unlocked, the hallways are clear, and the elevator is held...
Hype Dreams

Hype Dreams

Dow Jones hasn’t updated its list of the top gobbledygook terms since 2008. But the world hasn’t changed all that much over the past few years. The business lexicon has changed even less. Buzzwords are like Pit Bulls with ankles: Once their jaws are clenched, it...
Design vs. Fashion

Design vs. Fashion

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...