To prevent the spread of COVID-19, San Francisco and other cities have asked people to only leave their homes for essential goods like food and medicine. Of course, the essential goods can only be made, packaged, delivered to the store, and sold in the store, when thousands of people who do this work leave their homes. A Walmart spokesperson said that "while this is a challenging time, people have remained …
Repurposing for the Public Good: What Compassionate Companies Are Doing to Help
With fear and negativity rising, it's important for brands to bring illumination and direct help to the fore. Alberto Brea, the chief growth strategist at DiMassimo Goldstein in New York City, points to some of the companies who are doing good works. He also wisely notes, "In times of Coronavirus, the best ad is not an ad." In other words, brand experience and customer experience are much more …
Brand Reputations Are Inextricably Tied To A Firm’s Operational Realities
Brand reputation is always on the line. Each and every day anything can (and does) happen to ding the brand. Sometimes the ding is more than a ding, it's a gong. Today, the gongs are banging from coast-to-coast as the retail sector is annihilated by the spread of COVID-19. There Is No Safety Net for Majority of America's Workers Over the weekend, The New York Times' editorial board published a tough piece of …
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Corporate America’s Leaders Get Crash Course in Crisis Communications
Crisis management and crisis communications are not disciplines that you want to learn on the job. Yet, on the job in the midst of a crisis is exactly where and when you will learn them. Some CEOs will blunder during this time of disease and turmoil. Others will excel, along with their brands. John Mackey, CEO of Austin-based Whole Foods, blundered on Wednesday when he sent an email to employees suggesting that …
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American Shoppers Can’t Drive the Economy When They’re Afraid to Leave Home
SXSW is canceled and cash refunds are not available. NBA games are canceled. March Madness is canceled. St. Patrick's Day parades are canceled. In-person classes at hundreds of universities across the country are canceled. No more than 250 people can lawfully gather in public. Hotel and airline bookings are spiraling down and down. The stock market is in free fall. People are sick. People are panicked. As a …
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Mid-Day Danger: The Worst Commercials on TV
I want to explore one of the secret dangers of working from home, a real and present danger that no one talks about. The danger is exposure to bad TV, bad commercials, in particular. If you watch cable news in the middle of the workday, even for a short time during lunch, you're screwed. Apparently, the viewers are older than the hills and/or out of work. What we know for sure is the commercials that are meant to …
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Adpulp Unbound: Social Media Marketing
This website is unbound, and do its size and the breadth of coverage, somewhat difficult to navigate. You can search by topic, but then what? Then you must scroll and click to get to the best material Adpulp has to offer. Unless I intervene and aggregate the aggregator (me). Which is precisely what I am up to here. In preparation for a series of eBooks on Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Lifestyle …
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Know Thy Customer: IBM’s SVP/CMO on the Value of AI
How does a modern brand team get to know the company's customers and prospective customers better? Do the MBAs on board make it a priority to "walk a mile in the customer's shoes?" Or do they prefer to suck up the data with a machine? In IBM's case, the company trusts in the machine. IBM's SVP/CMO Michelle Peluso says AI is changing how brands interact with customers. Here she is on …
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