I’ve pitched and landed some new clients lately. When we do our first “kick the tires” meeting, I always send them an invite from my Zoom videoconferencing account — partly because it works, and partly because of the impression it makes. Here’s why you should, too. My clientele are entrepreneurs, business executives, and publishers. I…
Google will stop targeting political ads based on behavior. That’s a start. I call on every platform to end all targeted political ads (except by geography) — and for Congress to make this the law. Here’s what happened with political ads so far in 2019: Twitter banned all political ads. Google just announced that for…
The parent company of Facebook is now FACEBOOK. As rebranding goes, that sucks. I have some better suggestions. “Today, we’re updating our company branding to be clearer about the products that come from Facebook. We’re introducing a new company logo and further distinguishing the Facebook company from the Facebook app, which will keep its own…
In a recent post, commenters criticized me for publishing the email address and phone of a person who tried to bully me by email. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” one wrote. In general, it’s poor form to publish someone’s contact information. Automated processes can harvest those and spam people with emails and calls. Angry…
HBR published an article called “How to Improve Your Company’s Net Promoter Score.” What a misguided goal! About the quest to improve NPS A little background here. Bain fellow Fred Reichheld invented Net Promoter Score (NPS) decades ago. In NPS, you ask your customers, “How likely is it that you would recommend this product or…
When you descend into unethical and annoying marketing tactics, your desperation shows. You destroy your reputation in pursuit of questionable gains. And it’s permanent. Today, I’ll share two marketing messages that are object lessons in how marketing can backfire. Each was an automated message directed at me in a personal communications channel, but in this…
You have a piece to edit and limited time to work on it — and the piece is a mess. How can you fix it quickly? While every author has their own idiosyncrasies, some problems are common, easily fixed, and make a dramatic difference in readability. Here are the five quick steps to make writing…
I was surprised to get a promotional message in my doctor’s patient portal, mislabelled as “New Information in Your Chart.” It made me think about marketing, what it is, and where it belongs. Here’s how it looked: I like my doctor and I like my doctor’s practice, which I think is doing excellent work. I’m…
There are press releases. Then there are out of body experiences. Cryptography firm Crown Sterling announced a new product called Time AI. It leaves ordinary buzzwords like “seamless” and “omnichannel” in the dust, reaching instead for a heady mix of mathematics, quantum computing, mysticism, and privacy handwringing. Let’s take a look. Commentary is mine. Crown…