Since the most “gadget conscious” cellphone users buy a new device every 9 months, use of recyled materials for these products makes perfect sense. Nokia has announced a prototype (not yet in the market) called Remade. The company is sending environmental signals in advance of the product launch. Blue no longer dominates Nokia’s website. The carefully selected image of a woman, [...]
Do you like dining out on Italian food? The restaurant business has a reputation for high failure rates. I’m not sure whom to believe on the statistics, but I believe cabbies who recommend Italian eateries.
And they’re never chains.
Which brings me to Cafe Luna in San Diego. You’d think a quaint place in a shopping center [...]
If you work in marketing, PR or journalism, you’re reading constantly. Email. Websites. Text messages. Blogs. Project briefs. Ad copy. Scripts. Court filings. Government documents. Speeches. Talking points. Press releases. White papers. Case studies.
Time permitting, you probably read books and magazines. Possibly you groom your screenplay or novel (the most ambitious of you out there).
Words come at us through pixels, [...]
Marketers talk a lot about engaging conversations with customers. But short of focus groups and customer satisfaction surveys, do many marketers talk (in the same room) with customers? I mean themselves (not a hired firm) spending time one-on-one and face-to-face to hear and see customers’ likes and dislikes? There’s nothing like being criticism in person.
Here’s where Pareto’s principle of 80/20 comes in. When I’m in the [...]
If you drive a Corvette and play TaylorMade Tour Preferred (TP) golf clubs you may have a deja vu moment when popping the back lid of your sports car.
It’s the brand badges. They have similarities.
Fast cars and golf clubs. What do they share in common?
Although the TaylorMade TP logo is much closer to the original [...]
At first glance, this post on the Google blog would appear to be high-brow coming from a writer whose title is Chief Economist. But its premise is simple: Google does well because it has been “learning by doing” the past decade.
Makes good sense.
So does the timing of the post and its 7 generic references to ”competition” or alternative search engines. That’s no [...]
Starbucks knows we have homes and most of us work, so I assume that the ‘third place’ in some of our lives is, well, at Starbucks, standing in line before that morning commute, zipping into a drive-through on a summer road trip, or just hanging out with friends and family.
Tomorrow night as the coffee giant holds its training for associates in [...]
The first time I saw Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps I was shucking fresh produce at a farmer’s market (Windmill Farms) during college. I’m older and no longer stack bananas to pay the bills, but I still use Dr. Bronner’s. Why? Is it the original packaging? The organic angle? Veganism? Fair trade beliefs?
I like the product mostly because it’s good [...]
Whose website is best? Hillary or Barack? It’s important. This presidential election cycle is more interesting than any previous one, having been shaped by the web and the online marketing of candidates. It will be studied by strategists long after November, along with analyses of competing campaigns’ tactics on advertising, press, door-to-door-get-out-the-vote, direct mail, phone banks, debates, and continuous PR.
Set [...]
If you don’t subscribe to Smashing Magazine RSS feed, I recommend it. I’m not a designer, but appreciate seeing fresh material. Here’s a link to 45 excellent blog designs that Smashing featured a few days ago. Beautiful.
The website provides tips, how-to section, fonts, graphics and tutorials. I need to learn HTML to start customizing my [...]
