Marketers have always understood how difficult it is to change behavior. People aren’t motivated by facts; they’re motivated by emotion. I would also dare to say that most marketers, for all our talk about data science and the quantification of everything, are also guided by...
Is purpose-driven marketing still relevant in a post-truth, highly polarized world? The Drum ran an interesting piece recently quoting Procter & Gamble’s Chief Brand Officer, Mark Pritchard, stating “that some companies are over-leveraging purpose marketing at the expense of brand growth – and that it will...
My work over the years with global companies across a wide range of categories, along with a good deal of reading on marketing and branding, has exposed me to countless versions of the creative brief. From my perspective as a marketing strategist and educator, I...
I love golf because it’s a great metaphor for life. If you’re curious and willing to put in the work, you never stop learning. Every time you peel a layer back, each time you think that you “finally have it,” you discover that there’s so...
After a long hiatus from writing, I’m back. While additional new blogs will appear shortly, I thought nothing would be more appropriate for my first of 2022 than the sorry, sad state of life in the U.S.A. and what means for us as professional marketers...
What’s better, qualitative or quantitative research? This shouldn’t be a question we ever ask. Both are critical in gathering the insights we need to create successful marketing plans and executions when the right tool is matched to the research objectives. Yet many marketing professionals, sometimes aided and...
In addition to the ads mentioned in my last blog, The Magical Healing Power of Tom Brady, here are some of my additional favorites, along with my candidates for worst ad, from the game. As always, an important component of my ratings is if the...
Super Bowl LV ended with the improbable yet inevitable result of Tom Brady leading the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to victory over the favored Kansas City Chiefs and wunderkind Patrick Mahomes. It was one of those situations where the rational side of my brain predicted that...
[caption id="attachment_12357" align="alignleft" width="461"] Michelle Phillips: Beautiful Then & Now[/caption] I received a surprising amount of feedback from people of all ages on my recent post, Hire the Experienced: Observations on Advertising and Ageism. Rebecca Chen, who I worked with when she was at Anheuser-Busch/InBev and is...
I can’t say I wasn’t warned. When I was 21 years old, starting the Adverting Graduate Program at Northwestern University, I was told by people from business and academia that advertising was a "young man's game." (Despite the fact that my class was half-female.) While I...