Another great article in Harvard Business Publishing, this one about leadership. It’s a good read for any executive: “Don’t Let Your Strength Become Your Weakness.”
The article made me think in marketing terms, as I tend to do. Companies must be careful that their marketing strengths are not taken to the extreme—until they become weaknesses.
Here’s what [...]

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And it’s ethical … but only if you’re plagiarizing your company’s own content. Here’s what I mean: if you create good content, re-use it.

Split a white paper into a number of blog entries
Re-purpose a brochure as a web page
Take a video of a company executive speaking at an industry event and put it on your [...]

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I sound like a broken record (not that anyone still has records) when I endlessly implore companies to focus their marketing on a few core initiatives where they have the greatest chance of success.
For any manager having trouble focusing, I recommend this recent article in Harvard Business Publishing: “The Key to Effectiveness? Focus” — and [...]

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Today I saw two articles about that mentioned negotiating and made me think how important it is for marketers to be good negotiators.
In an interview with Larry King reported on CNN.com, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said about North Korea:
“They are some of the best, toughest negotiators I’ve ever dealt with,” Powell said. “And [...]

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Why is it that marketing is sometimes considered a secondary or discretionary discipline in some companies? It’s the first departmental budget to get cut when times get tough. Everyone has an opinion, often critical, about the latest creative for a marketing campaign.
Part of this is the fault of marketer’s themselves. If they want their business [...]

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I found yet another interesting article at Harvard Business Publishing, this one called, “In a Recession, Put Everyone in Marketing,” by Rosabeth Moss Kanter.
Her argument is that once you’ve cut everything you can, from budgets to people, everyone remaining should work in marketing.
“Motivated employees contribute to creative thinking that can help retain current customers and [...]

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Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) have a notoriously short lifespan. But some allegedly good news was just reported by John Quelch in Harvard Business Publishing:
Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are holding on to their jobs longer. Spencer Stuart’s annual survey of CMO tenure at the 100 most advertised brands in the USA reveals average time on the [...]

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Geoff Ramsey, CEO and Co-Founder of eMarketer, offers seven predictions for 2009. It’s an interesting article but hardly visionary when measured against the context of economic recession. Companies cutting back on advertising budgets, traditional media outlets taking the biggest hits, online advertising hanging in there . . . these predictions aren’t exactly going out on [...]

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Mad Men is AMC’s brilliant television series that revolves around the world of advertising executives in the early 1960s. It is rich with atmosphere, full of compelling story lines, stocked with complex characters who behave badly and sometimes admirably.
The main character is Don Draper (played by Jon Hamm), the thirtysomething executive who heads up the [...]

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