A recent consumer phone service ad quips: “word of mouth advertising—it’s what they did before commercials”. The message is tongue-in-cheek, but there’s an embedded truism: The ultimate goal of advertising is to get folks talking about you. To get you noticed. To stand out. It’s why car dealers stand out on the street corner in

Partnerships between you and your clients or customers are like any relationship. If you go too long without communicating, you’ll soon begin to disappear. What’s listed below is nothing new. But sometimes it’s good to return to the basics.  Go the extra mile. Answer by the second or third ring. Give ’em more than they

Is telling the cold, hard truth always the best thing to do? According to Paul Ekeman, there are nine basic reasons why people lie. Some are more common than others. As this graphic shows, the size of each “excuse circle” corresponds with the probability that someone will use it for that purpose.  So “getting a

How many of the companies above can you recognize from only part of their logo? Hint: They’re in alphabetical order. Some were easy, right? They may have all been easy. Frankly, these are some of the most recognizable logos in the world. How do you think that happened? Maybe they were all so wonderfully designed

It’s your name. You use it all the time. Whether you are having conversations, answering the phone, writing emails, leaving voicemails, etc. It should be a clear reflection of your brand strategy. The right name is timeless, tireless, easy to say and remember; it stands for something, and facilitates brand extensions. Its sound has rhythm.

In outdoor advertising, this is what is effectively known as an “impression”. My personal pet peeve. Have you ever driven by one of those digital billboards, and it changed just as you were reading it? Those boards are typically up for about 8 seconds. If you didn’t see it at just the right time, you’ll

James Meredith (pictured with me, above) is a civil rights icon, the first black student at Ole Miss. A while back my son Tyler saw him in a local store wearing a cap with “New Miss” embroidered on the front. When he told me about it, It had an impact on me. I may be

“I Know a Little ‘Bout It… And Baby, I Can Guess the Rest”. -Lynyrd Skynard With apologies to Lynyrd Skynard, this mindset seems to have taken over in the business world of marketing and promotions. My dermatologist is one of the best in the market. (This might be a strange comparison, but stay with me

This is an excerpt from the recording below: Mother: “We were farming, up there in that—we called em Jennings place—and we raised cotton, and corn & hay for the cows. And by that time we had about 45-50 cows, and we didn’t have a shed to put ‘em under; we had just this one big

Years ago, Jim Mountjoy, Paul Decker, and John Lyons were judges at our local Addy awards. After the judging was completed, Mountjoy and Decker were kind enough to hold a workshop for local ad folks. We had a lot of attendees. Nowadays, I doubt that we would. But that day we did. In fact, I’d