My new book, Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition is now available. The cover price is $29.95. It is approximately 500 pages long--twice the length of The Art of the Start. This book is the "superset" of all my books, articles, and blogs. I wrote it to provide answers [...]
Over at the American Express Open Forum blog, I posted a report by Razorfish called “FEED: The Razorfish Consumer Experience Report.” The document examines the changes that Web 2.0 and social media are causing for companies. It's one of the best reports about this subject, and you can get it for free by clicking here.
Pontificating, theorizing, and terrorizing abounds these days in tech startups. Here is a simple test to help you figure out if the startup you work for is in trouble. All you have to do is listen to your CEO talk to people for a week and determine if she uses these lines. “Let me tell [...]
No matter who you support in the upcoming election, you will appreciate the cleverness of customizing videos to get your friends and relatives to vote. Click here to see what I mean. Many companies could use custom, viral videos for their products and services. I would love to do something like this for Alltop. For [...]
Nothing warms my heart than an entrepreneur who seizes the day, and Kathryn Finney seized it in a world-class way. Step 1: Republican National Committee buys the Sarah Palin family $150,000 worth of duds. Step 2: Kathryn Finney of the Budget Fashionista shows how to outfit the Palins for $147,500 less. What did this take? [...]
Check out this very interesting application of Kronomy technology to portray the lives of Barak Obama and John McCain. Check here for Obama, and here for McCain. Cool stuff no matter who you support.
I learned of the "mother of social media lists" and the "father of social media lists." Click here to see mom and here to see dad. These are the most comprehensive lists of examples of social media applications, videos, blogs, podcasts, widgets, crowdsourcing, bookmarking, microblogging, photosharing, wikis, mashups, brand monitoring ad nauseum. Check them out [...]
The experts are promulgating many esoteric ways to determine the financial condition of the economy. It's irrational to base one's mood on the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). After all, (a) what does that have to do with the real world? And (b) it reflects the buying (and selling) decisions of the same investment bankers [...]
I've been to many interesting places, but nothing compares to my twenty-four hour visit to the USS John C. Stennis, an aircraft carrier. I was a guest of the Navy who operates this program in order to bolster recruiting, retention, and overall awareness of what it does. I hope that you enjoy these pictures and [...]
Nancy Ortberg of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church recently gave a sermon called "Every Life Needs a Truth-Teller." It contains excellent advice about telling people the truth--admonishing them well if you will. Get the audio version here or the video version here. You can apply much of this sermon to relationships with employees. Nancy is the [...]
I posted an entry called "What You Can Learn From Hollywood" over at the American Express small business blog. I derived these lessons from the work of Scott Kirsner. He studied the movie industry and ended up writing a book called Inventing the Movies: Hollywood's Epic Battle Between Innovation and the Status Quo, from Thomas [...]
Free video chat by Ustream Chris Pirillo is on the cutting edge of live stream media. The 35-year-old web whiz knows how to generate online community by hosting videos on UStream and other websites such as CNN.com. In this interview, he discusses how he drew an audience of five million people in 2007, what you [...]
I posted an entry in American Express blog entitled the "The Art of Customer Surveys" based on some information sent to me by Dave Wanetick, the managing director of IncreMental Advantage. He points out deficiencies in typical customer surveys that you will find interesting, and he boils down effective surveys to one simple question.
"Dear Henry" certainly generated passionate comments. Here's another marketing thought: If people want the House to pass the bailout, all they'd have to ask is, "Do you want China and Abu Dhabi to come in and buy America at fire sale prices?" The bill would pass by this weekend. It's all about framing.