In early May, British musicians Radiohead did the unthinkable: they lived up to their song title “How to Disappear Completely,” and erased themselves from the internet. Their website gradually decreased in opacity over the course of several hours, until it disappeared completely. Then, the band and its lead singer, Thom Yorke, removed all past posts, […]
There’s an old saying in marketing, “Happy customers tell three friends. Unhappy customers tell ten.” These days, with the ease of sharing on social media, those numbers are probably an understatement. The fact is the customer experience is arguably the most critical element of a brand’s success. According to a McKinsey study, 70% of buying […]
J.Schmid President and Chief Creative Officer, Brent Niemuth, shows us that even while on vacation there’s always a branding lesson to be learned – How do brands that sell a commodity product or service separate themselves from their competitors (assuming the price is the same)? Need help making your brand stand out in a commodity […]
“Facebook Inc. is largely ruled by algorithms. But ultimately people must make judgments about what to show its 1.6 billion users and how.” -May 11, 2016 Wall Street Journal People actually have something to do with what you see on Facebook – oh my! According to the article, there are “allegations that Facebook workers manipulated […]
I won’t keep you in suspense: print is alive and well. Back in the day, when investing marketing dollars, it was easy to draw a line between mailing catalogs (the only direct marketing investment at the time), the value of acquiring a customer and the bank statements that arrived months later. This news from Victoria’s […]
What’s the secret to a successful marriage? OK, confession. I’m not married, so really how the hell would I know? Just bear with me here. This is going somewhere. Thanks to copious amounts of TV and movie viewing, along with observing my married friends, I’ve come to see what contributes to a good marriage. Like […]
I recently came across an interesting study that looks at the power of brand from a little different angle. Anyone reading this is probably familiar with the concept of the placebo effect. The subject of countless articles, it was first defined over 60 years ago. It identified the important role that perception plays in physical […]
You only need to do two things to have a great website. 1). Make shopping your website as intuitive and simple as possible. 2) Tell the story of your brand and your unique selling proposition, without interfering with the above. Simple, right? Riiiiiiiiiiiight… In search of that elusive combination, I found three eCommerce websites that tell their story […]
Sadly, we’ve lost a couple more music legends recently—Merle Haggard and Prince. It’s the latter I’d like to talk about. There is no doubt that Prince was a musical genius. And there are actually many branding lessons we could learn from him. The importance of being different, of standing out, of being true to who […]
