Monthly Archives: August 2005

Six Feet Under is gone. The HBO series about an undertaking family is itself six feet under, alive now only on DVD. (Warning: plot spoiler ahead) Is your marketing message as lifeless as Nate? Life, energy, enthusiasm — your marketing collateral need these qualities. In addition, the closer your sales letters and brochures come to […]

Sometimes “free” is just too expensive. Take those free business cards you can order online. While their quality and appearance can be quite nice, they often gossip about you behind your back. They may be sending subtle, negative messages about your company and you, which can undermine your best efforts at marketing. Let me give […]

Wanna write a book? Wanna watch someone else do it? Marshall Brain has been an education and an inspiration to me and, I’m sure, many others. He’s best known for his website How Stuff Works and his essay/ slide show, How to Make a Million Dollars. (If you haven’t read the latter, do so immediately. […]

Lots of people, including PR firms, are wary and distrustful of reporters, producers, the media in general. If you’ve ever been misquoted, misled or simply mystified by what appears in print or on the air after an interview, you know what I mean. But as David Koretz remarks on his blog, “I met an editor […]

Is your boss a psychopath? Fast Company just published an 8-question quiz to help you decide. Of course, if you’ve got one, you probably don’t need a quiz to know it. Avoiding psycho bosses is yet another benefit of self-employment, which I think I’ve mentioned that I love. The self-employed simply don’t have to deal […]

Most of the time in this blog I write about marketing communications, copywriting, and the like. But your company “communicates” with customers in dozens of non-verbal ways as well. Yesterday, for example, I was in a small neighborhood pizza place waiting for some pizzas to go. They have great pizzas, but my wife hates the […]

Sounds like a great idea. Your laptop is stolen, you call a toll-free number, and the company tells you where to find it as soon as the bandits go online. Even police are cooperating to help you track down the perps. But Forbes writer David A. Andelman is rightfully concerned about privacy: “First, the software […]