Not long ago, I was helping to scout for a once-in-a-lifetime venue for a client’s VIP customer event in San Diego, ideally using a theme about heroes. After much exploration and effort, we were successful in securing Miramar for the event – yes, the famous “Top Gun” school for naval aviators, now called Marine Corps […]

In his 1879 commencement address to the graduating class of the Michigan Military Academy, Civil War Union General William Tecumseh Sherman famously proclaimed, “War is hell.”  A century later, Nike CEO Phil Knight, an Army veteran himself, compared the two, saying “Business is war without bullets.” Though you cannot seriously equate the horrors of war […]

One of the perks of being ambivocational – working either as an embedded marketing consultant, or jumping in with both feet as an on-staff CMO – is that you get to see a lot of different marketing teams in action.  As with any team sport, a few are dazzling to watch, while most are just […]

In the 1865 Lewis Carroll novel, Alice in Wonderland, there is an exchange between Alice and The Cheshire Cat that sounds a lot like the conversation many marketers are still having with their prospective customers more than 150 years later: Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?The Cheshire […]

I’ve never met a salesperson – or a sales executive – who, when pressed why he or she isn’t hitting their number, won’t list “Our Marketing Sucks” somewhere in the top three causes.   Sometimes, it’s legitimate criticism; it’s frighteningly easy for the Marketing department to become an Ivory Tower… disconnected from the street-level issues […]

There is a classic Dilbert cartoon in which, as part of a rotational assignment, Dilbert gets transferred to Marketing.  When he arrives at the Marketing Department, its entrance is framed by massive Doric columns; inside everyone is wearing togas, laughing, and drinking wine from huge, overflowing goblets. Over the entryway is a large banner that […]