Good, Fast, and Cheap

Just last month, a colleague shared an old saw commonly cited by manufacturers. “I like to tell customers,” she said, “we can make it good, we can make it fast, and we can make it cheap – pick any two.”

Aphorisms, like this one, are memorable partly because they are pithy, partly because they are delightfully clever, and partly because they are true – or in this case, they were true when they were coined. Read more

Promoting Facebook Posts

A client recently asked us, “Are there really any good reasons to consider a Facebook promotion?” (They had owned Facebook page for quite some time, but until now, hadn’t ever advertised there.) I explained that, when the circumstances are right, a Facebook promotion can be an organization’s least expensive way to engage with its followers. And that for most organizations, it’s not a particularly good place to sell.
Read more

Reputation scrubbing is no easier today.

Reputation Scrubbing: “What’s a Mother to Do?”

Just this week, a client asked us if we knew any firms that do reputation scrubbing, or whether such practices were even legit. It’s a great question and one that we thought deserved a public answer.

Read more

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Baby, It’s Cold Outside!

If you live in or traveled through the Eastern United States during the last week of January, you probably felt the effects of the Blizzard of 2016. More than 60 Million people were under blizzard, winter storm, or freezing rain warnings, thanks to winter storm Jonas. Some were hit harder than others. Baltimore, Allentown, and Harrisburg posted the deepest snowfall on record for their cities.

Read more

familiar echoes of partisan bickering

Familiar Echoes

In business, the space between sales and marketing is often filled with familiar echoes and empty talk. On one side of the aisle, marketing “professionals” level scorn on sales folk, claiming they are pompous, overpaid, unable to uncover the simplest of client needs, and unreceptive to much-needed marketing advice. On the other side, sales “professionals” rail against their marketing counterparts, calling them naive, unaccountable myth-promoters, who should just shut up and do their job, generating leads. Read more

On-hold promotions are the bane of customers' existence

On-Hold Promotion

There is no more captive audience than an on-hold customer. That makes it extremely tempting to push out advertising or public relations messages, while they wait for your attention. But how does it affect your brand? Read more

Anonymous is changing the face of cybersecurity.

Cyber-Not-So-Security

70 million records breached at Target Corporation, 100,000 taxpayer accounts compromised through the “Get Transcript” application on IRS.gov, 14 million Federal employees’ files accessed by Chinese hackers, and you haven’t done anything about cybersecurity in your organization? Read more

Red Apple

Apple’s Bite at the Apple

When Apple Computer was formed on April 1, 1976, no one could have forecast what would happen in the next 40 years. The concept of “personal/home computers” seemed beyond hopeful to many and ludicrous to most. But Steves Wozniak and Jobs, with a little financial help from Mike Markkula (who lent them credibility by cosigning a $250k loan), pressed on, crushing rivals Commodore and Tandy, and eventually piquing the attention of powerhouse IBM. By 1984, just three years after it entered the personal computer market, IBM PCs were outselling Apples by more than two-to-one, and the great rivalry between platforms had begun. Read more

Four identical white bicycles showing no innovations since the 1970s

Innovation at Home and Abroad

Picture a map of the world. Now think of the word “innovation.” Does one country stand out? Most Americans consider the United States the world leader. But the facts on this Innovation Infographic say otherwise.

Read more

Tomorrow's immersive virtual reality experiences will require big data

Big Data

Businesses have been collecting and analyzing data since the dawn of time – or at least the dawn of paper. Until recently that data was stored in notebooks, file cabinets, ledgers, receipts, personnel files, production logs, Rolodexes, and cardboard boxes stacked to the ceilings. But as the computer age changed our capacity for storing and analyzing data, our thirst for data grew.

Read more