Imagine you're a high-flying auto exec in Detroit with a big mansion in Grosse Pointe, kids at boarding schools back east, club memberships, a nice boat, box seats for the Lions' home games and so on. Then one day, a day like today, you open up The New York Times to learn that the castle is really made of sand and its collapsing all around you. Just two months after celebrating its 100th birthday, General Motors is …
Columbia Sportswear Makes Huge Investment In Retail
It requires diligence to sift through all the negative business news these days in order to find some positive news, but I have done so today, at least this once. Portland's Columbia Sportswear, in business since 1938, is busy executing a retail expansion plan that will result in almost two dozen new stores in high-profile locations by the end of 2009. On Friday Columbia opens a new store inside the Portland airport …
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Straight Outta Compton Baghdad
I can hear myself presenting, as if I was on the Army account... "Guys, we need to up the reality. As you know we live in a time where reality TV is king. So, it's important that we too get gritty, we need some dirt on our hands. Let me send a documentary team to Iraq and we''ll put what really happens up on YouTube when we're done. Sound good?" According to Stuart Elliott of the Times, The Army did hear a pitch like …
Red Lobster’s Quality Play: From Fried to Wood-Fired
When foot traffic is the lifeblood of your business, as it is for any brand in the retail space, you have to keep investing in new creative, quarter after quarter. Darden, of course, knows all about it. …
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Kenneth Cole, Punny As Always
And I once wrote about why I think he can get away with it. …
Brands Need To Work The Room
Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibraryTV is a big fan of social media. It's worked for him, as he's grown his family's wine business in New Jersey and become Internet famous in the process. GV says in the video above that brands have to care enough to work the room. In other words they can't just make a presentation from the stage and be done with it. That type of "talking to" is Nowheresville today. …
Care For Some Sausage?
"We only select the two best bits." That's a line I can cozy up to. Hat's off to Beattie McGuinness Bungay. p.s. Here's another. …
