In house, agency of record, whoever it is hasn’t done their homework in responding to the crisis with facts and data.
Here’s a useful table of US federal data on auto acceleration complaints similar to those from which Toyota is now being smeared in the popular imagination (gathered by National Public Radio (NPR) in the [...]

SAP may be an old-line vendor in the technology space, but along the way to the top of the stack they figured out how to talk to their customers.
This SAP ad on Youtube does NOT talk about bits and bytes. It talks about what the tech can do for the biz AND for [...]

As a matter of fact, and especially in the B2B world, people CAN buy a product or service from you – and not know you exist. And in any B2B sale I can think of, and also many consumer purchases, awareness is not enough.

People ask this all the time. (Which is fantastic, by the way!)
“Why Invisible Marketing? Isn’t marketing about getting visibility?”
Well, here’s how I think about it.
I have enjoyed, talked about, and experienced deep emotional connections with super-cool Superbowl ads for products I’ve never bought and companies with whom I won’t do business.
But I earn a living [...]

Marketplace indifference is a soul-killer. It’s a big reason why sales people hate prospecting. All reasonable efforts must be made to manage the amount of indifference to which a sales person is exposed. Sure, rejection comes with the job.  But what’s gained by throwing away emotional energy if nothing is learned from the experience?
I’ve said [...]

People ask me all the time why I think marketing should be invisible. Here’s one of those examples.
Did you see the 2008 Microsoft/Seinfeld ads? (If not, time for a quick trip to youtube.)
This campaign illustrates why many innocent young creatives go into advertising: to get their personal creative statements funded.
Now, the agency sounds reasonably intelligent [...]

Awareness is a common goal of marketing.
The assumption, of course, is to know me is to buy from me. Image advertising. Being funny, memorable, businesslike, serious, whatever we think will help the customer remember us.
You know the textbook example of great awareness/brand marketing? Movie marketing for Snakes on a Plane. It went viral months [...]

For the corporate brand, online social media represent the end of top-down message control.
If media have gatekeepers, then messaging is a top-down event. To be heard, I have to make friends with gatekeepers. (In many markets/niches, that’s not over. It’s just not as powerful a channel as it once was.)
If media are democratically owned and [...]