It was in the 1970s and I had been working in the US for a few years. I was hired to work with a client, Heublein, that had been in the liquor business for some time. They had recently purchased a couple food companies and had hired product managers, mostly from General Foods, to work on… Read More: Why Tacos Are Not Mexican Food »
As a teenage student, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I was channeled into Math because I was good at it. After one year of Honours Math, I realized it was not what I wanted to do with my life. I wasn’t inspired by it, like I had been in high school. One… Read More: Prospecting for Opportunities »
Canada has opened up its international business strategy to gain more international trade around the world while avoiding relying on the neighbouring US who has, in the past, been our most reliable and endlessly hungry neighbour, especially for our energy – oil and electricity. Canada is rich in raw materials, ores, wood, fish, agricultural crops… Read More: Canadians – We Are Our International Strength »
There are so many lesser known brands that need advertising help to become better known and gain trial. How do they get it and is the help they get any good? Every retail or on-line store has more brands than you could count. Some well known. Most scarcely known. Some totally unknown. The more a… Read More: Even a Small Brand Has a Story – Acapulco Hots… »
It took some explanation for me to understand that washing clothes was not something done in a basement room, but the opposite, on a rooftop. It was part of my learning when I started working in the 1980s in Venezuela on heavy-duty detergent, Ariel, made by Procter & Gamble. You have to put your preconceived… Read More: Up on the Rooftop Doing the Chaca-Chaca »
There is an old adage that You can’t read the label from inside the jar. The story is told in many forms, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is just one example. Groupthink is when everyone drinks the group Kool Aid and agrees with an entrenched group idea based on their common assumptions. These assumptions may not make any… Read More: Outsiders Don’t Drink the Kool Aid »
The advertising industry glorifies cleverness and wit. Clever ideas are the ones that win at all the award shows. But clever can also lose the customer. Sometimes folks in our industry use their cleverness to feel superior over the poor schmucks who are their target market. That lack of humility can turn off the target… Read More: The Argument Against Cleverness »
We had done a very successful Texaco promotion featuring Fuji Photo Film. The commercial was a winner at the International Film & TV Festival in New York. The commercial presented a man driving in to a Texaco station on a giant 35mm camera asking for a fill up. Customers received a free roll of Fuji… Read More: How to Shoot Yourself in a New Business Pitch »
Anyone who has worked in marketing or advertising, particularly in packaged goods, has worked on a lot of new product ideas that were never a success in the market. Some products died in concept testing, some actually made it to prototype then test market in regional or local markets, and some made it nationally before… Read More: Lost Products: The Hall of Lame »
If you ever doubted that the social standards in the world are changing and changing rapidly, just listen carefully to an oldies music station. It will soon occur to you that the lyrics might be incomprehensible to today’s young adults. Phrases like “you’re still living in a paper doll world” or even newer, Sheryl Crow… Read More: Listening to Oldies Music »