As you think about the allocation of your marketing budget, consider the immense ROI (return-on-investment) of a piece earned media coverage. I have been helping companies, including major global corporations, businesses headquartered abroad and countless U.S.-based companies of all sizes, earn great media coverage for more than 30 years. The ROI is tough to beat. [ Read More ]
Marketing Communications
SpaceX Wants Us to Become an Interplanetary Species
Over the weekend, I watched all five episodes of “Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space” on Netflix. If you haven’t heard by now, it is a series on the recent SpaceX “Inspiration4” spaceflight which carried four non-astronaut civilians and no one else. I enjoyed the series mainly for the insights it gave me, however varnished, of SpaceX. It was also great to see 27-year-old women in high roles within the company including leading training of the civilians, mission communications with the capsule and quality control immediately prior to the flight. [ Read More ]
Why Marketing is Like Sailboat Racing
Sailboat racing is all about continuously optimizing. So is marketing. In sailboat racing, you don’t just point the sailboat in the direction of the finish line and hope for the best. You keep checking the wind, the currents, the other boats on the course. Sometimes you tack to better catch the wind. You adjust the sails accordingly, and frequently, while on the course. At times you even pull out a different sail depending on the wind and its direction. [ Read More ]
Brief Report on the GeekWire Summit
I recently attended the two-day GeekWire Summit in Seattle. It was well worth my time and great to hear what some of the biggest names in the Seattle tech industry had to say. For full coverage of the speeches, go to GeekWire. One thing that was said multiple times throughout the conference was to take risks and don’t be afraid to fail. Cheers to that! Below (and above) are some photos I took. There were many more speakers, but this will give you a feel for it. [ Read More ]
Reinventing Marketing: My Musings
I love the hot summer months and all the daylight. It gives me time to think aimlessly about life, my business and the industry I am in. There is a lot of talk these days about the evolution of marketing and I started to ponder it at random times. Below is a collection of my thoughts, both about what changed over the last several years and what to expect in the future. [ Read More ]
How to Maximize the ROI of Media Coverage
Here’s hoping your year is off to a great and prosperous start! As you think about how to allocate your marketing budget this year, consider the immense ROI (return-on-investment) of a piece earned media coverage. [ Read More ]
Hello Amsterdam
I recently returned from a 10-day trip to Amsterdam. What a lovely city! I mainly went there for work – to check out the design influences, understand their impressive city rebranding campaign, talk to a robotics company and a variety of other business-related pursuits. I saw Banksy and Icy & Sot at Moco, their modern art museum, and Fukase at Foam, their main photography museum. And I saw the big “I Amsterdam” sign (more on that later) in front of the famous Rijksmuseum. [ Read More ]
Are You Smarter than a Chimpanzee on Basic World Facts?
I recently finished reading a great book called Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think written by the late Hans Rosling. I knew it would be good when Bill Gates called it one of his favorite books of 2018 and “one of the most important” he has ever read. It is all about our perceptions of the world, how wrong they are and why our instincts are so off. The book is also strangely uplifting. [ Read More ]
Fabulous Portugal, Disappointing Airlines
One of many gorgeous beaches near the southwest corner of Portugal. So many people have been asking about my recent Portugal trip, I decided to write about the highlights as well as some travel issues I encountered so you might learn from them. Portugal itself was lovely, but the journey was a lesson in resilience. As someone who has been to more than 40 countries and traveled more than 99.9% of the people I meet, I can say with some authority that customer service levels of the airlines and rental car companies (in this case Icelandair, TAP Air Portugal and Hertz) have gone way down. [ Read More ]
From World Travel to Nuance in Communications
I am an avid world traveler, 40 plus countries and counting. All of it for fun. I was reading some of my travel journals recently and came across a gem that I wrote. More on that in a bit, but first some context. [ Read More ]