At major corporations, product names are the result of exhaustive research and testing, right?  Not always.  Back in 1968, when the marketing team at Procter & Gamble  needed a name for a new kind of snack, they started leafing through the Cincinnati phone book, looking at street names.  Sure enough, in the suburb of Finneytown,…

Everyone knows the population is getting more diverse.  But how quickly is it changing?  In ten years, a third of all Americans will be minorities.  Hispanics are leading the charge, and as they approach one fourth of the population, marketers will no longer be able to see them as a niche market placated by a…

“Marketing is a discipline, and it’s more complicated and confusing and harder to learn than legal or medical or any other discipline.  And I think there’s not too much recognition on the part of CEOs or management people today that marketing is a discipline.  They tend to override the advice of their marketing people all…

Here’s a challenge that’s not for the faint of heart.  Try writing a single descriptive sentence that clearly tells how you’re a better choice than your competitors.  Wait – there’s a catch.  Do it without using any of the following words: quality, service, expertise, excellent, selection or value.  Now, take a brutally close look at…

Scarcity is the marketing strategy of the future.  For proof, check out the athletic shoe industry, where limited production runs from as small as a few dozen to a thousand shoes are helping sneakers fetch record prices.  A frenzied collector’s market has sprung up with magazines (Sole Collector), websites (kix-files.com) and even a traveling exhibit…

For years, the U.S. population has looked like a python after Thanksgiving dinner, with the baby boomers making up that huge mass in the middle.  But that’s all about to change.  The millennial generation or “echo boomers” are already poised to rival their boomer counterparts in sheer numbers, creating a sort of hourglass population with…

As you ponder your prices, consider advice from Rafi Mohammed, author of “The Art of Pricing.”  The value the customer places on the product or service is probably more important than your cost.  Case in point: while baby back ribs are the same meat as regular ribs and taste no different, customers routinely pay more…

Nine centuries ago, Cistercian monks were making their own ink and paper to copy religious manuscripts.  Today, Father Bernard McCoy and his brethren at the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Spring Bank operate – and we’re not making this up – LaserMonks.com, a for-profit subsidiary which sells printer cartridges and office supplies to the…

To tap into the power of viral marketing via video, there are a couple of things you have to do.  First, the content has to be seen by your audience as either funny or edgy or both.  Not mildly funny, but truly funny.  Not a little edgy, but really edgy.  Next, you have to have…

Are the products or services offered by your industry seen as a commodity by the end user?  In other words, is there little difference between your product or service and your competitors’?  Author Harry Beckwith, in “Selling the Invisible,”  reminds marketers that people need a reason to justify their purchase.  That means that, in businesses…