Whenever I am involved in a primary market research project with an industry that I am familiar with, I can usually predict about 80% of the data within the margin of error. But, just often enough, the findings are serendipitous. We are looking for answers to the questions that we ask, and end up with insight that we weren’t even going after.

Whoooooaaaaaa… Slow down for a minute, Mr./Ms. Marketer. Take a breath. Open your eyes and ears and see what’s going on. It’s bad. Really, really bad. And marketing can’t fix it.

It’s 2016. By now you know the importance and impact of an integrated social media strategy. You’ve secured a social media advertising budget and you are ready to push the big red go button on a campaign. But, before you promote your beautiful graphics or videos, do you know why you’re launching this campaign in the first place? Do you know why you’ve chosen a particular social media platform to advertise on over another? Are you even sure you can call it a “social” campaign?

Woo-hoo! I won the Powerball!!

Don’t believe everything you read online, kid. But, you can bet on these:

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OKLAHOMA CITY (Dec 22, 2015) – The Flying Pig Food Truck won the coveted Carne Cup in the professional division. VI’s Beth Ouzts claimed the amateur title in her first try. 

First comes the fear.

Earlier this summer Instagram announced they would open up their ad platform for all businesses that yearn to get a perfect visual of that thing you don’t need in front of you – slowing down your scroll speed in seeing your bestie’s brunch from a 5-star yelp establishment.

When a city approaches you for a re-brand you take a slightly different approach than if a company is seeking a re-brand. Most marketers are familiar with B2B or B2C marketing but what about branding an entire city?

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Public relations (PR) was created to influence, some say manipulate, public opinion. It’s true in the early days, and for a lot of the next six decades, propaganda and manipulation (coined “spin”) were often the rule of the day, especially for high-powered lobbies and politicians who had products or ideas they needed to sell, despite a few skeletons in the closet.

In October I attended a talk by Tug McTighe entitled Being Purposefully Purposeful About Your Purpose. It was profound, inspiring and gut wrenching - all the things a good talk should be.

The mishandling of the Volkswagen emission scandal came early and often. To use baseball terminology, and actually emission terminology as well, Volkswagen “whiffed.”