Perhaps you watched the Super Bowl yesterday. Perhaps, like me, you found the game, the halftime show, and the ads underwhelming. But what the heck was going on with that Andy Warhol ad for Burger King? Go ahead and waste 45 seconds watching it: If you had 45 seconds to put your brand in front…
I just read my favorite sales strategy book of all time: The Transparency Sale: How Unexpected Honesty and Understanding the Buying Brain Can Transform Your Results, by Todd Caponi. When it comes to B2B sales strategy, fashions have been shifting for decades. But whether we’re supposed to form relationships, challenge people, sell solutions, or always…
Elon Musk says Tesla is twice as safe with Autopilot on, but his stats don’t add up. Here’s Musk’s tweet. Here’s the quote from Tesla’s report, as published in Teslarati: “In the 4th quarter, we registered one accident for every 2.91 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot,…
A sex toy called Osé from the company Lora DiCarlo won an award at the Consumer Electronics Show. Then the show’s organizer, the Consumer Technology Association, took the award away. Lora DiCarlo founder Lora Haddock’s pointed, honest response is one of my favorite press releases of all time. Obligatory content warning: If it bothers you…
CES, the consumer electronics show, is the apotheosis of overblown technology demos and promises. Exuberant press releases abound. Kohler’s bathroom products are now fully digital, connected, and interactive — so it must compete on hype with the likes of Facebook and Samsung. Let’s just say that after reading the company’s latest press release, I’m flush…
Your business sells something that helps people, right? Give away free content that helps those people. They’ll appreciate it, share it, and find you. There is a mass of knowledge about how to do this well and effectively. But if you have to explain it to your boss, those two sentences ought to do the…
When you pitch business, what do you do when you lose? I make sure that every sale I lose is a win. This question came up again this week when a lead — a guy who heard about me on a podcast — contacted me about improving some prominently placed copy on his Web site….
Venezuela’s financial implosion is devastating. People are starving. The government is printing money to cover budget gaps. And the IMF estimates that inflation will top 1 million percent. But what would it take to get 1 million percent inflation? Before reading on, take this poll. (If you know the formulas for compounding, please don’t use…
Rock Holdings, parent company of Quicken Loans, has acquired Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com. The resulting press release is a perfect example of how an idiot uses a thesaurus. I know this press release was supposed to be funny. Funny is different in a press release. I salute that. And it worked: Google News shows 7,570 articles about…