Blog RSS

“Our mission has always been to change how America thinks about beer.” Jim Koch, Founder of The Boston Beer Company, now the largest American-owned brewery. Dear CMO: Jim Koch clearly laid out his vision for The Boston Beer Company to me in a discussion we had a few months ago. Reading these words belies the […]

“Apple’s ad agency collected the 1998 Emmy Award for best commercial, the 1998 Silver Clio, and the 1998 Silver Lion at Cannes. The company’s revenues dropped for the next three quarters in a row.” Quote from Sergio Zyman from his book, The End of Advertising as We Know It: “We had a tremendous surge in […]

Dr. Steven Feinberg – who I’ve often quoted here – and I first figured out that the psychology of influence could dramatically impact outbound marketing campaigns close to ten years ago. I was running channel marketing at Plantronics and he was working with the senior staff there on organizational development – basically, getting lots of […]

Dear CMO: “Snapple was a freight train. Everybody was saying in those days colas are dead everybody’s dead and this is the new stuff. We came up with this brand Fruitopia. I remember a reporter asking at a press conference, saying this is a me-too brand. And I said, you bet this is a me-too […]

Dear CMO: “When you do a Power Point presentation, you hide everything negative behind your statistics and your quotes from authority. You hide all the problems, everything that didn’t work. When you tell a story, the whole gist is to admit the negative side, then dramatize the positive side of how the courageous little company […]