At the dawn of 2011, too many of my friends and colleagues are still unemployed or underemployed. And many are stuck in jobs they hate because the job market seems frozen. In the spirit of making next year better, consider Kim Bishop’s new book, Get Down to Business and You’ll Get the Job, as a [...]

Is that a computer in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

Cheap smart phones, 4G, zillions of apps, the ascendance of Android, the coming proliferation of tablets and the general ease and utility of being always connected are transforming consumer behavior.

For many, especially Zuckerberg and his minions, Facebook is becoming the Internet. [...]

In this video I interview Bryan Elliott, founder of Linked OC. The “OC” stands for Orange County and Linked OC is a local organization servicing the local Orange County area.

Bryan shares how he built a 5,000 strong local community organically thanks to social media. You’ll also discover how Bryan uses a mix of live events, [...]

Tony Robbins, please accept my apology.

About 15 years ago, when I was a budding manager in charge of my first strategic business unit, I dissed you pretty badly.

I’m sorry. I take it back.

My team and I were in a strategy meeting, trying to get something done—something really big that would literally change our fortunes and [...]

I recently heard this advice from an experienced business consultant: instead of loving your clients and being tough on your vendors, it’s time to love your vendors and get tough on your clients. His rule-of-thumb is contrary to conventional wisdom; I was intrigued and asked him to elaborate.

It is the conventional wisdom for us to [...]

As business owners, we often make decisions that at first blush serve the business well.  But, as things roll out, there are consequences that we didn’t anticipate and don’t want.

The airlines are living this out as we speak.  A while ago, to boost themselves out of the red, most major airlines instituted bag fees.  A [...]

Andy Grove taught us all to be professionally paranoid; to understand that continuously changing technology and relentless innovation will dislocate, disrupt and dethrone the patterns, pathways and players we know and love. Nothing in the agency business is a sure thing. We dance on the high wire, usually without a net, every day.

For most of [...]

"Traditional marketing has changed, period. Anyone who doesn’t understand that or believe it shouldn’t be in marketing."

– Elizabeth Hailer, VP Client Development & Marketing, Caturano & Company

Dogfooding , or, “eating your own dog food” is typically what happens when a company uses the products that it makes. Dogfooding in the context of marketing and communications, [...]

New kinds of data collection and analysis about consumers’ online activities will dramatically increase the productivity of the Web and social media as brand communication channels. But marketers need an open attitude toward privacy plus widely available and easy-to-use mechanisms for opting out.

Ownership of your online behavior is a fundamental human right. So is the [...]

Lead generation best practices are universally desirable, but, too often, elusive.

With this post, I’m introducing a series of blogs that identify common lead generation challenges and describe seven best practices to address them.

First—to promote common ground—I offer this definition of best practices from the Government Accounting Office:

“Best practices are the processes, practices, and systems identified [...]