Customer experience surveys shouldn’t give me a choice between whacking hard-working staff and approving corrupt and busted systems. Let me tell you what’s wrong with your systems, not your people. It’s nearly always the systems that are at fault for problems If there’s one thing I learned from the brilliant Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine,…
Those who are not afraid of COVID-19 are behaving irrationally. It’s time to use emotional and graphic advertising to change their minds about vaccination. It worked for smoking; it will work for COVID. Content warning: today’s post contains graphic and disturbing images. If these scare you more than COVID, please get your priorities straight. We…
We trained an artificial intelligence program on 11,216 descriptions written by realtors to sell homes. Then we asked it to generate a few of its own. Results below: This 1803 farm house includes a rustic hand pump. Secluded location at cul-de-sac in dead-end unpaved gravel-and-glass-shard road. 5 BR, 1 ⅘ bathrooms in a colonial ranch-style…
US home prices increased 24% year-over-year in May, the highest increase in more than 20 years. The market is in a frenzy, with some home buyers bidding six figures over asking prices and sellers selling many homes within a week of their hitting the market. What’s really going on? It’s not like the last housing…
I just bought a used car and I’m on the verge of buying a used house. Making such purchases requires lots of information. You can’t collect it all online, but it sure helps. Because I’ve been alive for more than 60 years, I am used to making big purchases with lots of personal hand-holding and…
Online advertising — and what happens next with it — will determine the future of just about everything. In 1995, I made the audacious prediction that online ads, a market I estimated at no more than $10 million, would grow to $2 billion by 2000. People were skeptical. And sure enough, I was wrong. I…
I’m planning a major piece on the problems with online advertising. And I want to hear from you. It feels to me like we’ve driven the digital world into a ditch. I don’t mind advertising that’s helping keep content free, or cheap. But I can’t figure out how these ads are supposed to be actually…
On my Facebook profile, under “religion,” it says “Red Sox fan.” So I cannot remain silent about the special set of uniforms that the Boston Red Sox and Nike unveiled for the team to wear on April 17-18. Here’s how they look. I apologize if this photo has made you come close to losing your…
It’s a truism in social media circles: brands should be more human. Of course, humans have a full range of emotions — they can be angry, not just nice or funny. Do we really want angry brands? Brands like Amazon that attack people on social media are going to find out they’re making a mistake….