It’s not rocket science people. When customers connect to your brand, your products will sell themselves.
What Marketers Get Wrong About The New Buyer's Journey
"In focusing so much on convincing B2B buyers they should change, marketers have forgotten that buyers are trying to learn how to change."
Bring Value To Your Audience Every Single Day
A good content strategy for brands brings value to your audience. Every. Single. Day.
Don't Talk About The Product! A Steve Jobs Brand Lesson from 1996.
Successful brands connect with their audiences with meaningful stories.
Netflix Has Lost Its Way
Filling the platform with endless 'stuff to watch' isn't going to cut it if Netflix wants continued growth.
Marketing Is Storytelling, Not Just Data.
Marketing is storytelling. All the data in the world won't tell the best story.
Storytelling: Start With Your End Goal In Mind
Start with the end goal in mind.
LinkedIn Branding. It Takes Time and Consistency
"LinkedIn? Oh yeah, we tried that. It didn't work."
Did you really? Did you really try or give up because it's not easy?
Beware of "Shiny Object Syndrome"
Sharing articles and trends constantly via an instant communications tool is not leadership. It’s the opposite and quite frankly it's lazy. Some CEOs and Supervisors feel like everyone must have the same information at the same time. It’s ok to do this once in a while, but a constant barrage of "read this!," "Lot's of great stuff in here," "Let's discuss!" leads to confusion and frustration among the team.
Creative Management: People Are More Important Than Technology
As you look to retain and expand your in-house creative team, you need to understand that people are much more valuable than any technology.
All the technology doesn't matter if you don't have the right people. Once you find them, don't let them go if at all possible.
The Power Of The Daily Huddle
Huddling on set before a scene ensures we’re all on the same page before rolling the camera.
A Daily Huddle is more important in managing a team than any meeting you’ll ever hold.
Why are meetings so prevalent in today’s corporate world? I’ve been in companies where meetings follow meetings followed by more meetings and before you know it the day is done. Not to mention one-hour meetings that stretch into three hours because either someone really likes to talk or we branch out into multiple topics that have nothing to do with the original meeting.
A powerful means of leadership, enhancing productivity and growing a cohesive team is the Daily Huddle.
A Good Hire Doesn't Have To Graduate
With the Original Walter Biscardi in Alaska back in 2009. He never went to college but is the most successful man I'll never know.
At one time, every job description here on LinkedIn or anywhere else had a college degree as a requirement. A very slow trend has been the elimination of that requirement. In today’s digital environment I have to ask, “Why do you still make a college degree a requirement at all?”
To Build A Network; Give, Give, Give.
The Power of Networking in one photo. With Jesse Averna, Tej Babra and Monica Daniel.
Nobody and I mean nobody, is safe from elimination at any company. No matter how valuable you may consider yourself, situations change daily and if required, positions will be eliminated for the greater good of the company. The sooner you understand and accept that, the easier it is to prepare yourself for that eventuality. Preparing yourself includes building a strong and respectful professional network.
Branded Storytelling: Setting Up Your Creative Infrastructure
One of the most confusing and vexing areas for any company starting up an internal creative team is knowing what equipment to purchase. There are thousands of pieces of equipment and hundreds of recommendations on ‘what you need to buy.’ While every situation is different, here’s a basic primer on the types of equipment and how much you might spend to set up a basic two-person internal team.
Branded Storytelling: Hiring Your First Creative Team
Branding today is all about storytelling. And there's no better way to tell your story than through video.
With social media, you want to be putting out content every single day. Especially if you're a consumer product. But if you've never built a Creative Team or an Internal Creative Agency and you're thinking about starting one, well where do you begin? You start with Two.
Bullies Do Not Own You
Enjoying life and career at 10,000 feet on Sandia Peak, Albuquerque
You sad little man...You are quite honestly not that important to me.”
Those words were directed at me by my former employer.
The words and the personal attack are supposed to hurt and humiliate me, but they simply sound like the taunts of a schoolyard bully. Words like those might have affected me when I was 10 or 11 years old on the playground, but as a 30 year veteran in the creative field, they strike me as sad.
It’s a fact that in your career you are likely to… no scratch that. You WILL interact with people who are self-important.
Music Licensing and You.
My response to the Peloton Interactive lawsuit by the music industry has garnered a lot of interest with some of the responses mirroring what I've seen from creative clients. Basically "I understand going after the big companies, but why would they care about the little guys and small companies? What is that going to hurt?"
It could hurt the music industry dearly.
I'm not a lawyer and it would take pages and pages to explain all of the legalities, but here's a basic primer on what you need to know and understand about music licensing.
Branding Videos - Start with Audio.
Almost every time someone asks me for advice on getting started with video they always lead with 'what camera should I use?' or 'how do I make my smartphone camera look better.' Not one person has ever asked me how to make their audio sound better and that's honestly the most important aspect of creating good videos.
Building Your Brand Narrative: Just Start Writing
Building your brand narrative is not a ‘one size fits all’ type of deal. This article can’t tell you exactly what you need to do. What I CAN do is give you food for thought allowing you to find your own path to that brand narrative. “What’s your swim lane?” That’s a great question from Joe Mullings, CEO of The Mullings Group. In other words, what topic or topics can you offer value to your audience? What can you write about or speak on intelligently? What topics and areas are you comfortable engaging in discussion with others? That’s your swim lane. That’s your comfort zone where you can share quality knowledge and have an educated discussion with those who engage with you.
Branded Storytelling: Sell Without Selling
The power of digital media is that it opens up a direct pipeline between you, the brand and… well pretty much the entire world. If you’ve built your destination correctly as described in the previous three chapters and have begun thinking about edutainment as the driving model for your content, now it’s time to think about what does that content actually look like? How does edutainment apply to my brand?