Teaching the market a lesson - Click To Read Article
Some book publishers don't like the Kindle. Either they're afraid of it or they've crunched the numbers and they don't like what they see. (Some days, 95% of the top selling Kindle titles are free... demonstrating that digital goods with zero marginal cost and plentiful substitutes tend to move to zero in price).

Ms. In-between - Click To Read Article
The either-or world continues to decay, confronted by a shifting economy and the tools of the net.

You get to choose - Click To Read Article
That's the cool thing about marketing. Unlike most other functions in the organization, you get to choose where and how you do what you do.

You're boring - Click To Read Article
Sorry, someone had to say it.

Who sets your agenda? - Click To Read Article
In the States, today is one of those weird pre-holiday days.

Who answers the phone? - Click To Read Article
The new rules mean that the most valuable marketing event is almost always an inbound phone call.

What should Digg do? - Click To Read Article
I\'ve been thinking a lot about Digg and the other social news services.

What to write - Click To Read Article
...when you don\'t know what to write.

When you are ready to stand up to speak - Click To Read Article
Perhaps you should consider sitting down.

'Where to' might not be as important as 'how loud' - Click To Read Article
Here's what they say to you when you graduate: "What are you going to do now?" And here's what they say to you when you're about to leave on vacation: "Where are you going?"

What marketers actually sell - Click To Read Article
Not powder or chemicals or rubber or steel or silicon or talk or installations or even sugary water. What marketers sell is hope.

What you say, what you do and who you are - Click To Read Article
We no longer care what you say. We care a great deal about what you do.

What are you hiring for? - Click To Read Article
If you're trying to hire someone who presents well to strangers, creates documents without typos, is good at seeking out interesting new opportunities, can think on her feet in an interview and can network with strangers in search of a goal, your current hiring system is probably perfect.

What brand is your mattress? - Click To Read Article
According to a Times interview with the head of Tempurpedic, you don't know.

What Dave just did - Click To Read Article
Dave Balter, an old friend and colleague, has written a new book. It costs $45 on Amazon. But, for my loyal readers...you can get a copy of the ebook (the entire book) for free here.

Two kinds of 'don't know' - Click To Read Article
I don't know French. I can't play the piano. I have no clue how to catch a bony spinefish. This is the first kind of don't know. Stuff you don't know because you haven't been taught it yet. Books are awfully good at solving this problem, so are good teachers.

Top 10 Secrets of the Marketing Process - Click To Read Article
If my previous post confused you, it\'s because of the difference between tactics and innovation. Try these 10 ideas to get you started down the path of scientific marketing tactics:

Two kinds of people in the world... - Click To Read Article
The folks that want (need!) an iPhone, and those that couldn't care less. And of course it's not just Apple and it's not just phones. It's every single industry in the world.

Trusted Ears - Click To Read Article
Do you ever ask for advice? Do you try out your new ideas on people before they are seen by the public? Probably.

Too small to fail - Click To Read Article
One secret of being a large financial institution is that you can take huge risks because you're too big to fail. If you hit craps and lose it all, don't worry, because you'll get bailed out.

The triumph of the banal - Click To Read Article
It\'s true: the vast majority of successful products are hardly remarkable.

The thing about coupons - Click To Read Article
Coupons are a surprisingly subtle invention. Now that anyone can offer them (because now anyone can have a store), it\'s worth a second to think about what they\'re for.

The two things that kill marketing creativity - Click To Read Article
The first is fear. The fear that you\'ll have to implement whatever you dream up. The fear that you will fail. The fear that you will do something stupid and be ridiculed by your peers for decades.

This must be hard - Click To Read Article
The reason it must be hard is that so few people do it.

Thinking about domains - Click To Read Article
Thirteen years ago, Josh Quittner wrote an article in Wired that almost made me richer than Donald Trump.

The spirit of the game - Click To Read Article
There are two ways to get ahead. You can work the system or you can beat the system.

The promiscuity paradox - Click To Read Article
Marketers of all stripes are discovering that acquiring a reputation and permission to market to people isn't as expandable as they might hope.

The Scarcity Shortage - Click To Read Article
From four years ago: What's worth more: a pile of gold or a pile of salt? Throughout history, many people have chosen the salt. Gold is pretty, but you can't live without salt, and when it was more scarce than gold, it became valuable enough to use as a currency itself. (The word "salary" is even related to the Latin for "salt.")

The problem with perfect - Click To Read Article
When was the last time you excitedly told someone about Fedex?

The secret of the web (hint: it's a virtue) - Click To Read Article
Patience. Google was a very good search engine for two years before you started using it. The iPod was a dud.

The same cigarette as me - Click To Read Article
"He can't be a man because he doesn't smoke [syncopated pause] the same cigarette as me."

The scientific method - Click To Read Article
In most interactions, we take a defensive posture. We try to defend the brand, or our turf or our job. The problem with defense is that it's static. The best way to get smarter, to embrace and to cause change and to triumph in times of market turmoil is to adopt the scientific method.

The most important rule - Click To Read Article
Have you ever recommended a doctor? On what basis?

The marine iguana - Click To Read Article
Marine iguanas swim. They eat stuff in shallow water, which is surprising behavior for an iguana.

The New York Times Bestseller List - Click To Read Article
Cumulative advantage is a powerful side effect of story telling. Get out front, even a little, and you sell more because many people like to invest in a winner. We like to read what other people are reading.

The intuition vs. analysis conundrum - Click To Read Article
Let\'s say you\'ve got a really good idea. And you\'ve had good ideas before.

The death of the sales call? - Click To Read Article
I wonder if the sales call has a lot of life left in it.

The chicken and the egg - Click To Read Article
I was riffing with someone about an idea last week and I told him he had the, "chicken and an egg problem." It seemed like he knew what I meant, and I thought I knew what I meant, but I've since decided it's worth a few paragraphs.

The Galapagos Post Office - Click To Read Article
Not sure what you can do with this story, but here you go:

The $8 billion story/scam - Click To Read Article
In case you had any doubt that human beings are irrational creatures, driven by stories, consider the case of the gift card.

The forces of mediocrity - Click To Read Article
Maybe it should be, "the forces for mediocrity"...

The bad table - Click To Read Article
I saw a marketing dilemma at the hot new restaurant I went to the other night.

The confusion - Click To Read Article
We frequently confuse internal biochemistry (caused by habits and genetics) with external events. If we didn't, marketing wouldn't work nearly as well.

Successful? - Click To Read Article
Are you successful? Is your brand or your organization? How do you know?

Starting over with customer service - Click To Read Article
I've been writing a lot about this topic lately and thinking about it more. I have a radical proposal for you, but it takes a few paragraphs, so I hope you'll bear with me.

States rights - Click To Read Article
If you own a web page, you really owe it to yourself and to your users to pay attention to state.

Sorting out - Click To Read Article
Gavin Potter says, “The 20th century was about sorting out supply, the 21st is going to be about sorting out demand.”

Sloppy naming - Click To Read Article
If you've got more than one product or service, you have a problem. You need to decide if there's going to be an architecture to the way you name things. General Motors has a division, Chevrolet. Chevrolet makes cars, and each car has a name (Corvette, Impala). They have an architecture in place that makes some things clear very quickly.

Shortcuts that aren't so short - Click To Read Article
The cab drivers in my little village are an angry and bored lot.

Should you fire the voice mail guy? - Click To Read Article
Let's say the person in charge of your retail operations does the following every single day:

Should small businesses whine? - Click To Read Article
I bought some clothes from a merchant via Amazon. The company that I ordered from shipped the wrong item. I sent it back and was told it will take three or four weeks to process my return. A month!

Sheepwalking - Click To Read Article
I define "sheepwalking" as the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them a braindead job and enough fear to keep them in line.

Security Theatre - Click To Read Article
Almost everything that happens before you fly on a plane is not as it seems. In order to deal with anxiety, the airlines put on a show. They've been doing it for a long, long time, and it's starting to show signs of wear and tear. The show is getting old and the lies are starting to show. Here's some snips from an Economist article (hat tip to the Freaknomics blog):

Shipping and handling - Click To Read Article
Here's a product sold by a merchant via Amazon that costs about $2.50. Except that the shipping and handling are more than $8. And the item weighs about two ounces.

Responsibility - Click To Read Article
Marketing works. Advertising and promotion and lobbying cost money. And organizations pay for it because, by and large, it works. Not all the time, and rarely as big as people hope, but sure, you can influence the public by spending money.

Reorganizing for profit - Click To Read Article
Here's what most retailers do: They organize by brand/designer or label Within that, they organize by type of item and within that, by style and finally, by size

Q What sort of bonuses should we pay - Click To Read Article
A. \"It\'s not about the money.\" Usually, when people say this, they are lying. Except, it turns out, at work.

Q How can we get our company funded - Click To Read Article
Q: How can we get our company funded

Reflexology - Click To Read Article
Ask Anna Wintour what makes a good article for Vogue, and she\'ll answer you in a heartbeat. She won\'t think about it or consider the question carefully... she just knows, by reflex.

Really Bad Powerpoint - Click To Read Article
I wrote this about four years ago, originally as an ebook. I figured the idea might spread and then the problem would go away--we'd no longer see thousands of hours wasted, every single day, by boring PowerPoint presentations filled with bullets. Not only has it not gone away, it's gotten a lot worse. Last week I got a template from a conference organizer. It seems they want every single presenter to not only use bullets for their presentations, but for all of us to use the same format! Shudder. So, for posterity, and in the vain hope it might work, here we go again:

Reaching the unreachable - Click To Read Article
Marketing, I think, can be divided into two eras.

Profligate - Click To Read Article
When I walked into my hotel room the other night, I was amazed to discover that no less than 18 lights were on (all traditional bulbs) and that the heat was set on three different thermostats to a toasty 75 degrees in honor of winter.

Please go away (angry) - Click To Read Article
If you\'ve got more than one person in your organization, you probably have a policy or two. And those policies have certainly made someone angry. Now what?

Probably not stupid - Click To Read Article
Your difficult boss, customer, prospect, voter, student... probably not stupid, probably just uninformed. There's a huge difference.

Overnight success? - Click To Read Article
What\'s the opposite of that? An Overnight failure?

"No" to average - Click To Read Article
Say no to being average.

One, a few, most or all - Click To Read Article
There are four kinds of marketing situations, and the approach to each is radically different. Yet most of the time, we lump them together as just plain 'marketing'.

Out of the corner of your eye - Click To Read Article
Juxtaposition matters. And so does surprise.

No user servicable parts inside - Click To Read Article
That's what it says on countless electronic and mechanical devices. "Don't touch this," it says, "you're way too dumb to open it... you'll get hurt"

Nearly infinite - Click To Read Article
Infinite isn’t what it used to be. There used to be an infinite number of stars, and probably an infinite number of kids in high school who didn’t like you very much, but that was about it when it came to a typical human being’s interaction with the uncountable.

Measure THAT - Click To Read Article
One of the secrets of the Yellow Pages was that the phone company would give you a second line when you bought a big ad.

Meetings - Click To Read Article
I had breakfast today with a senior executive who estimates she spends more than 30% of her time in internal meetings.

Memo to the very small - Click To Read Article
What should my local chiropractor do? Or the acupuncturist? Or the pet store? What about that small church or mosque?

Marketing Morality - Click To Read Article
Is that an oxymoron? Is it possible to hold a marketer morally responsible?

Marketing time - Click To Read Article
Smart marketers already know that marketing is more than advertising. Here's one tactic that might be overlooked: time.

Making your customers uncomfortable - Click To Read Article
Tomorrow is the ridiculous Black Friday ritual, gaining in steam every year, in which large American retailers run big sales that start at 6 am. People line up even earlier to get in first. Kids are stampeded. Muscles are pulled. Friendships frayed. Credit cards exhausted.

Marilyn Monroe, the Mona Lisa and Jackson Pollock - Click To Read Article
Markets love icons. We seek them out. Placeholders, shorthand for a bigger idea or a shortcut to a good enough solution.

Make something happen - Click To Read Article
If I had to pick one piece of marketing advice to give you, that would be it.

Lessons learned from Columbus - Click To Read Article
Cristóbal Colón, marketer.

Logos - Click To Read Article
About thirty years ago, three companies dreamed up logos that have become so powerful, I don't even have to show you the images to get them to pop up in your head. A sneaker company paid a few hundred dollars for an abstract, upside down wave, a coffee company picked a half-naked mermaid (is there any other kind) that cost them nothing, and a computer company picked [hired a PR firm that picked] a piece of fruit with a bite out of it.

Like a dream come true - Click To Read Article
That's the way Derek Sivers (founder of CDBaby) described his mission statement in building the company. "What could I build that would be a like a dream come true for independent musicians?"

J.A.M. (Just another meeting) - Click To Read Article
It was so typical. Eight people, the regular bunch. New client kick-off, business as usual. And it showed.

It's good to be king - Click To Read Article
The Times and other outlets have been running a spate of stories about executive pay. CEOs who walked away with $100,000 a day paychecks, CEOs making millions of dollars at companies in trouble, CEOs with jets and houses and limos... It\'s like being a king, instead of having a job.

It seemed important at the time - Click To Read Article
Last week, I was running from one meeting to another in the city when I passed an old friend on the street. \"No time to talk, sorry!\" I said as I hustled off.

Inventory and Risk - Click To Read Article
Google made some waves by expanding their PPA program. Here's the way I think about online ads:

Is hiding a growth strategy? - Click To Read Article
Wendy's is using a legal loophole to avoid posting the calorie content of its food on the menus in their New York stores. Perhaps they're hoping that people won't realize that eating every meal there is going to make them fat.

In search of better - Click To Read Article
Every day, in almost every office of almost every organization, people are going to get together to make something better.

I'd be a lousy pilot - Click To Read Article
Sitting behind the pilot on a tiny plane today, I was reminded how important, difficult and tedious this job is.

I'm just not that kind of person... - Click To Read Article
Craig writes in with a story about a Dyson vacuum.

Hungry - Click To Read Article
I had lunch (a big lunch) with a college student last week. An hour later, she got up and announced she was going to get a snack. Apparently, she was hungry.

If you could change your life - Click To Read Article
...would you? Getting into Stanford Business School changed my life. In college, I trained to be a mediocre engineer (I didn't set out to be mediocre at it, but I sure was). I was on track to become Dilbert.

Ignore your critics - Click To Read Article
If you find 100 comments on a blog post or 100 reviews of a new book or 100 tweets about you...

Ignore sunk costs - Click To Read Article
The most important decision-making rule you learn in business school is still largely misunderstood.

How to organize the room - Click To Read Article
One more post about conferences. (Except it's really about any meeting).

How to Deal with an Angry Customer - Click To Read Article
Every business encounters angry people. Not disappointed or confused, but actually angry. Here are a few steps you might want to try:

How to get referrals - Click To Read Article
There's been thousands of pages written about this topic, but still, no luck. It's too hard.

How to be a millionaire - Click To Read Article
First step, make a million dollars.

How to be remarkable - Click To Read Article
From this week's Guardian: 1. Understand the urgency of the situation. Half-measures simply won't do. The only way to grow is to abandon your strategy of doing what you did yesterday, but better. Commit.

How to create a great website - Click To Read Article
Here are principles I think you can’t avoid:

How far away is your emergency? - Click To Read Article
It's amazing that people have so much time to fret about today's emergency but almost no time at all to avoid tomorrow's.

High resolution mistakes - Click To Read Article
The other day, I burned 602.4 calories during my workout. Of course, I didn't really. That's just what the display said. No one can determine exactly (to the tenth of a calorie) what I burned, certainly not this machine.

Hiring the right people - Click To Read Article
Bought some stuff at the Container Store yesterday (this is a true story, btw).

Henry Ford and the source of our fear - Click To Read Article
Henry Ford left us much more than cars and the highway system we built for them. He changed the world’s expectations for work. While Ford gets credit for “inventing the assembly line,” his great insight was that he understood the power of productivity.

Great writing, unfiltered - Click To Read Article
Here's what used to happen: A publisher had a magazine, or a big pile of stamps and a mailing list. She'd hire a copywriter or a stable of them. Sometimes the combination worked out and end up with the New Yorker or LL Bean. But other times (most of the time) it's just a waste. Either the stuff that goes out is lousy or the great writers don't get heard. (More than 70,000 books got published in the US last year... how many have you read?)

Getting vs. Taking - Click To Read Article
Most people spend a lot of time to get an education. They wait for the teacher (hopefully a great one) to give them something of value.

Four words - Click To Read Article
Make big promises; overdeliver.

Fall into the Gap - Click To Read Article
Today, I visited a Gap store for the first time in a while. We all know that they've been having trouble, and it was interesting to see how they're responding.

Empathy - Click To Read Article
A flurry of unsolicited questions came in on Friday, including two "please review my blog" letters, and a "please review my book" package. (For the record, I'm totally useless at reviewing your blog, sorry.)

Elephant Math - Click To Read Article
Darwin pointed out that if you take one pair of breeding elephants and make some conservative estimates about their fertility, you would have more than 15 million elephants in less than 500 years (if none of them died an early death.)

Don't make a bad deal - Click To Read Article
Here's what entrepreneurs and bizdev folks ought to remember before they do a deal:

Different kinds of traffic - Click To Read Article
So, here\'s your choice: You can have a billboard in Times Square (seen by 2 million people a day), or you can be the keynote speaker at the Allen & Co. annual millionaire media mogul retreat, listened to by about 150 people for an hour.

Customers that care - Click To Read Article
I visited the new Apple store in NYC on 14th Street yesterday. This one isn't as flashy as the one in midtown, and it has a fairly annoying design flaw. The two front doors don't close. Push them open, walk away and the door stays open.

Crowded at the top - Click To Read Article
In the 260 weeks from 1966 to 1970, there were only thirteen musical acts responsible for every #1 album on the Billboard charts.

Coloring inside the lines - Click To Read Article
People who want to do a good job are more likely to follow instructions that they know they can successfully accomplish, while they\'ll often ignore the \'softer\' tasks if they can.

Confusing activity with action - Click To Read Article
Thing is, most of the stuff you do online doesn't cost money.

Competing with the singleminded - Click To Read Article
I was talking with a few executives from one of the biggest technology companies in Europe, and they were explaining how their hands were tied in moving forward on the internet. They were doing the best they could under the circumstances, of course, but there were units in their organization that needed to be protected, prices that needed to be supported, sacred cows that couldn't be touched. After all, they argued, how could they wipe out their current business just to succeed online?

Careful Consideration and Analysis - Click To Read Article
Most organizations view business development opportunities as a threat.

Cheaper - Click To Read Article
I just got an angry note from Anna in the Midwest. She read one of my books, got the coupon for unlimited free consulting by email and decided to cash it in. She sent me a note asking me to persuade her bosses that the best way to grow their resort was to lower prices.

Changing the future - Click To Read Article
That's what marketers do, after all. We spend time and money to change the role of our products and services sometime in the future (whereas salespeople try to change the now).

Brand as mythology - Click To Read Article
Just under the wire, L. Frank Baum's heirs have no copyright protection on The Wizard of Oz. As a result, there are Broadway musicals, concordances, prequels, sequels and more. All of which creates a rich, emotional universe (and makes the copyrighted movie even more valuable).

Business development - Click To Read Article
A friend of mine wears only Armani eye glasses. Of course, the glasses aren't actually made by Armani. Or, if you think about it, designed by him. Perhaps they're sold by Armani stores, but I'd guess most of them are sold in stores that are totally unrelated to the company.

A lesson learned at the mall - Click To Read Article
Retailers that spend on real estate, win.

Always on (everybody markets) - Click To Read Article
I walked past a private dinner being given at a restaurant in New York last night. Perhaps forty people, listening to an after-dinner speaker.

All storms are perfect - Click To Read Article
That's what makes them storms.

Achievable avalanche opportunities - Click To Read Article
That's what your team wants. Your employees, your investors, your boss. They're willing to put in the time and the energy and the work if they think:


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