Why Marketers Struggle to Reach Customers: Ad Campaign Targeting Is WAY Off The other day as I was scrolling through LinkedIn, I got served an ad to apply to be an electrician. Although it sounds really fun, I’m a bit busy running a marketing agency. And truthfully, I’d probably burn your house down on accident […]
Why Your Copy Should Be Like a Playground Slide When I was about 10 years old, the church my family attended growing up installed a new playground. “New” is relative – it was a lot of old metal parts re-purposed into a playground I’m pretty sure this whole playground was invented before there were things […]
Scrolling through LinkedIn last week, I saw an AdWeek article that piqued my interest. It highlighted a recent winner of an award called “Brand Genius” given by one of the major advertising publications. One of the finalists was responsible for branding and marketing for one of the major fast-food chains. The article talks about his […]
No one can deny that the current cultural trend is all about customization. From iPhones to Nike shoes to the personalization of millions of other products, tailoring design to fit an individual or small group is the new norm. Consumers want to know they matter and that they’re being heard, and it’s no different in […]
In high school, we had a family friend who was on the police force in the town where I grew up. He was the K9 officer – so his partner was a 90 pound, sharp-fanged, lethal weapon. Seriously…that German Shepherd was intense. My friend told us that when he first got the dog, you couldn’t […]
This past weekend I spent some time in NYC. Among all the other tourist-y things there, my wife and I caught Disney’s Aladdin on Broadway. If you get it a chance to see it, do it! It’s quite good. The original story of Aladdin is actually from a collection of Middle Eastern literature called One […]
The other day I was surfing LinkedIn when I was presented with an ad. It was for an ebook that was extremely relevant to a topic (hiring) that I was looking into at the moment. The company sponsoring the ad is a major player in the Enterprise software market. It’s a name that you would […]
Lately, I’ve been digging deep into the past century of advertising. When you research some of the best ads from the past 100+ years, you quickly find some common themes. And perhaps the most impactful one is this: Ads don’t have to look like ads. Have you ever noticed that people spend hours every day […]
In the age of digital, where we can (supposedly) track everything, does brand still matter? Do exposure, impressions, eyeballs, and visibility matter? Or should we just focus on conversion? This is a question that I face internally, and I face with all my clients. Five years ago, I would’ve said that brand was less relevant […]
I grew up in the country in Indiana. Our neighbor had a large open field behind his house. It was in this field I learned trap shooting. For those of you unfamiliar with this Olympic sport, you are given a shotgun and clay frisbees (known as “clay pigeons”) are tossed up on the air by […]