When my parents travel from Illinois each summer to spend a few months on Lake Champlain with us, our evening entertainment (besides the sports game that happens to be on TV in the background) is playing Scrabble®. Okay, so how do I get from Scrabble to marketing communications? It's really not much of a stretch. [...]
So here is the cold, hard truth: On the exterior, I look my age to the outside world (best case, “middle-aged”). This is a fact I accept, sometimes. (I don’t buy Oil of Olay, for example, but I do spend a great deal of money to camouflage the undesirable natural color of my hair). On [...]
I love words. Short words. Long words. Word jumbles. Words that rhyme. Words that sound like what they mean, and words that don’t. Words can shape the way we think and feel. Powerful, well-written words can change the world. I know I am not by any means alone in this love of words, so I’ve gathered three treats here for my fellow wordies.
As long as there are humans, there will be harmful vices; and as long as there are harmful vices, there are those who will profit from them. Of course, as long as there are people trying to profit from something, there are some marketers who will try to profit from those profiteers. And apart from [...]
Whatever the cause, there seems to be significant confusion about the when, how and under what circumstances it's OK to use materials you or your employees did not create. Let's look at a few common stories to illustrate the issues, and then we can turn to several of the excellent resources available online. (Please note that our suggestions are based on our experience and are not a substitute for legal advice from a licensed legal professional.)
I can no longer count on my fingers the number of times I've searched fruitlessly for the perfect, convincing set of facts to change minds or advance an issue. Really, I should know better. Facts are not what change peoples' mindsets. Frames are.
The recent political debacle in South Carolina, where a clearly unqualified Alvin Greene can regularly be heard stammering through interviews with confused reporters, got me thinking about the phenomenon of talking (or writing) without saying anything. It's particularly poignant in the political arena, wherein avoidance of real issues, and issuance of benign platitudes are rewarded [...]
