What do you do if you’re an emerging manufacturing business with investment dollars at hand and a world of opportunity ahead? Most are comfortable investing in developing technology, getting patents, hiring management, creating sales organizations. And starving their marketing programs.  Case in point: A manufacturing firm that has developed several patents and processes for a [...]

When I came to Seattle in 1981 to join the ranks of budding advertising agency Sharp Hartwig & Vladimir, the landscape was filled with very creative shops. Among them: Wells Rich and Greene, Livingston and Co., Elgin Syferd and Kirkland, John Brown and  Partners, Kraft Smith, Asher Kamuso and Gibbs,Mogelgaard and Associates and—largest of all— [...]

The last thing we all need is further loss of consumer confidence and the business malaise that follows. Creative enterprises that weathered the storm since 2008 have been looking forward to business growth and relief from worry. But with our economic woes and political mess in Washington, D.C., tomorrow is anything but clear. This lack [...]

An editorial in Advertising Age recently caught my eye. Steve Blamer, former CEO of Foote, Cone and Belding, recommended that, in light of its loss of the massive S.C. Johnson advertising account that Draft FCB simply drop  the FCB from its name. His point was that little remains of what once made FCB the largest [...]

A small news item caught my eye last week. It underscores the profound shift in consumer marketing caused by the dramatic increase in smart mobile devices. A game development company, Remedy, announced that its new mobile game, Death Rally, earned back its entire nine-month development cost in just three days of selling on Apple’s App [...]

From the online Merriman-Webster Dictionary: Entrepreneur. One who organizes, manages and assumes the risks of a business enterprise. Owning your own business and maybe more importantly, being your own boss is at the heart of the American dream. The idea of having the freedom to do a you please, with no one looking over your [...]

“When words conflict with actions, believe the actions.” So said my first boss at Walt Disney, Sally Wilson, 35 years ago. Sally and the Disney organization were big on people who did what they said they were going to do. They expected follow-through and weeded out people who gave half-promises. The very same day my [...]

The new year will continue the rapid changes in the way consumers get information and make decisions about the products and services they buy. The job of marketing a company is more complex than ever. Marketing money is tighter than in the past and many marketers are forced to make choices they’d rather not make. [...]