Resources

Here’s the full transcript of my interview with Koichi Kimura, the CEO and founder of Japan’s MIKI House – a very unique children’s clothing brand that has expanded into retailing, publishing, education, sports sponsorship and more. It’s a fascinating – and rare, given that it’s in English – discussion on mission, values and “the ideal shape of a company.”

Here’s the full transcript of my Killing Giants interview with Method co-founder Eric Ryan on brand tension, the power of subject matter naivety, and the dangers of being a single attribute brand. This is an outstanding discussion for anyone interested in branding and the role of nuance in brand development.

Tamsin Smith, former president of Product (RED), talked with me in November of 2009 about the licensing brand’s start, creating a point of view bigger than your brand, and how she and partners Bobby Shriver and Bono used “jujitsu” to entice giants to help those who weren’t able to help themselves – those who couldn’t afford the 43 cents a day for the antivirals to keep themselves alive.

“Head Monster” Noel Lee, founder and CEO of Monster Cable,  discusses with me the “art of attachment selling,” turning products into processes, and the  crash course in lifestyle marketing with Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre that propelled Beats by Dre into the #1 headphone brand in the world. All this and a remarkable founder’s story as well. This is the full transcript of my August 2012 interview with Noel, the essence of which appears in The Killing Giants Framework. Well worth the read.

Money rarely changes anything – especially behavior. In this short piece, we discuss the “decision triggers” that influence behavior – and back them up with actual case studies of real marketing programs that have delivered 10X returns.

Hear the post-mortem on a campaign that Dr. Steven Feinberg and I collaborated on a few years ago with what looks like an impossible goal: to get more than our fair share of Fortune 500 CIO’s to bite on a high stakes program aimed at enterprise wide adoption of the brand’s solution – in a down economy and (best of all) in the New York and New Jersey area just months after 9/11, when no one was supposed to be buying anything. A wonderful primer on tapping the “decision triggers” that determine how, when and why we say, “Yes!”

My conversation with Sergio covered a lot of ground, from Sprite ‘s positioning and the “Obey Your Thirst” campaign to the Tab Clear kamikaze attack on Crystal Pepsi, the hidden brilliance of the Pepsi Challenge, the launch of Fruitopia as a model of how a flanker brand is best used, and more. 

Here’s an abridged version of my interview with Bob Parsons, the CEO and founder of Go Daddy, Inc. It’s worth the read just to hear his thoughts on the role of advertising alone. Great interview.

My complete transcript (slightly abridged) of the Killing Giants interview with Boston Beer Company founder and CEO Jim Koch from 2009. One of the first Killing Giants interviews and one with tremendous take-aways.