Take a look at the new releases in a local bookstore (we still have a few, don’t we?).  Which is set in larger type: the title or the author’s name?  If it’s the latter, that author is a strong brand, and the publisher knows that the name (J.K. Rowling, Stephen King) will sell more books…

You’d never know it from the profits raked in by big pharma, but it’s estimated that 20% of prescriptions go unfilled and a whopping 70% of the rest go unused.  Enter text messaging.  Your doctor (or someone in the doctor’s office) sends you a text message asking if you’re taking your prescription or checking to…

A TV spot promoting RID-X Septic Treatment offers a unique twist.  Instead of making a trip to the store to stock up, or remembering to buy the product every month (who does that?), customers can sign up online and “subscribe” to the stuff.  Each month, RID-X ships you a packet for that month automatically.  By…

In his day, Benjamin Franklin was a bestselling author.  And the hallmarks of his writing can guide anyone who wants to connect with an audience in a memorable way.  Franklin kept things short and simple.  He liked to use humor – and his audience liked it, too.  He tended not to write about current events,…

If you’re on the fence about building an active social media presence, consider this.  A quarter of Americans’ time online is spent with social media and blogs.  When people try to learn more about a product or company, over half use the company’s social media pages to find out about them.  And nearly half of…

Building a brand is really hard.  In a world where competitors all promise (and may even deliver) the same exact things, separating yourself can seem impossible.  Which brings us to Superman and Batman.  Reasonable people look at Superman and understand that they can never do what he does.  He’s from another planet, and he has…

Years ago, the late Sam Cooke offered fellow soul singer Bobby Womack some advice that applies to brands as well as songs.  Cooke said that if people could sing along with a song, it stood a much better chance of becoming a hit.  A song with a lot of vocal acrobatics might be appreciated, Cooke…

One of the biggest reasons companies become disenchanted with advertising is that their ad messages fall into the wrong – but enormous – category of “we’re here, too.”  Rather than presenting themselves as a unique solution to a problem or a unique advantage to be enjoyed, they simply announce their presence.  Here’s what we do;…

In sales, there’s a mistaken notion that staying in front of the prospect is always a good thing.  It isn’t.  Pointless contact with prospects (or even customers) simply for the sake of the contact itself, wastes their valuable time.  Likewise, dropping in to show them something you have to sell is a time waster.  But…

A lot of business challenges are process problems.  And typically, those problems are tackled with logic, which certainly is important.  But if logic could solve every challenge a company faces, there wouldn’t be any problems left by now.  Since business involves people, problems are fluid, messy things.  Designers have to deal with this every day. …