From the monthly archives:

June 2009

Is your brand trustworthy?

June 29, 2009

I attended a local networking meeting last week. The first question was an innocuous sounding, “So how is your business faring?”
The ensuing discussion lasted 20 minutes and had very little to do with the state of everyone’s businesses and everything to do with the state of the economy, the state of housing prices, the [...]

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Did you hear me say what I think I said?

June 24, 2009

We tend to like to see things as black and white, night and day, wrong and right. But there is an entire spectrum of perception between two absolutes. And given that, is it wrong to think that a story you’ve told – or the positioning statement, the speaking notes, the message points – could be [...]

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Can your story be told out of order?

June 22, 2009

Albums used to tell a story. Led Zeppelin’s “Heartbreaker” from the Led Zeppelin II album
ends abruptly. And when people of a certain age (ahem) hear the song, they expect to hear “With a purple umbrella and a fifty cent hat,” the opening line from “Living Loving Maid” the song that immediately follows “Heartbreaker” on the [...]

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Are you trying to tell a story for everyone?

June 19, 2009

No matter what, Harley Davidson doesn’t have a story for me that will make me purchase a motorcycle. Don’t get me wrong, I think they create beautiful works of art on wheels that are exciting and get my pulse racing. But I will never drive one, so I will never purchase one. Maybe a tee-shirt, [...]

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Do you think you’re smarter than everyone else?

June 17, 2009

I learned a really great – and tough – lesson when I was 24 years old. I was a young production manager for a group of magazines and newspapers. One Friday on deadline to make our final news close for the week, we had a problem with a page (these were the days before WISIWYG [...]

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