Companies very often pivot at some point during their existence. Many start-ups even pivot to a completely different type of company (Groupon was famously a cause-rallying site in its inception.) Where the transition gets hard for companies when they change their basic business model, is possibly giving up built-up market share and clientele. How a […]
We’ve covered a lot of companies who have started up amidst change, and this week’s story is about what happens when that change is too much for a company, as it was originally formed, isn’t enough to be sustainable. I recently spoke with Mike Townsend, previously of Flowtab (more on their story here) about what […]
Permalink We are drowning in the written word. The downside of being able to find out just about anything on any topic on a given day is that we have to naturally tune out some of the information that comes at us or we’d never get anything else done. It’s important, then, as brands […]
Permalink When social media disrupted marketing in the mid-2000s, it was seen as a revelation. Gone were the days of broadcast-style marketing whereby companies with the biggest bullhorn had their carefully selected talking points communicated to the largest number of consumers. In its place, marketers could have real conversations with real people who had […]
Permalink Freelancing isn’t easy: you’re the only person around to do all the administration, finance, and the actual work you’re contracted to do. It can be very daunting when you start out wearing so many hats. It’s very tempting to make decisions that are short term – like recording your hours by hand in […]
Permalink Skittles does it. Oreo does it. Everyone on Earth knows Old Spice does it. Could your brand successfully harness the power of humor? There’s a reason that marketers refer to real-time marketing success as an “Oreo moment.” When Oreo posted their blackout image during the Superbowl, they were using humor to defuse a […]
Permalink In the last five years, “cause marketing” has been a hot trend to help raise the profile of brands without touting the brand’s core value proposition, but adding a charity to your brand is not a magic bullet for garnering positive brand association. Your charity could be polarizing in some way, off-brand, or […]
Permalink Traditional wisdom says that anything worth having is worth working for. However, we live in a world where more and more items are available to us free or at low cost in a digital format, so much so that consumers are spoiled by having easy access to too many choices. Welcome to the […]
Permalink For many, the first they heard of Tumblr was either when they were bought by Yahoo! last year or through one of Tumblr’s many hilarious one-topic blogs like “Texts from Hillary,” “Dog Shaming,” or “Reasons My Son is Crying.” But did you know that the seemingly frivolous platform is host to more than […]
Permalink Reverse engineering is a phrase that often evokes a cloak-and-dagger operation of a person taking another person’s invention apart piece by piece and figuring out the magic behind it. The reality of reverse engineering is that it’s often done by companies to their own products with the objective of finding a better way […]