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This One Time at Brand Camp…

As part of the Post2Post Book Tour, we’re pimping Tom Fishburne’s newest collection of cartoons illustrating the funny side of business life in the trenches of brand management. BRAND CAMP is basically Dilbert for Marketers. With Dilbert, Scott Adams focuses...

Peter Kim and the Ego Trap

photo credit: Peter KimFor the backstory … go here. For my comment … go here. For Peter’s rebuttal … go here. And now ... after following those links, you know why I had to give Peter the gift you see...

Resuscitating Comatose Brands

Kudos to Karlene Lukovitz for her autopsy-esque article on reviving left-for-dead brands. Click here or below to read the interesting article...

Would you miss Crate & Barrel?

Continuing my “Would you Miss” series ... Does Crate & Barrel provide such a unique product and customer experience that we would be saddened if it didn’t exist? Does Crate & Barrel treat its employees so astonishingly well that those...

Currently reading ...

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How the Marketer Explained Dumbness

Jonathan Salem Baskin (from the Dim Bulb blog) goes Seuss on us with his strong take on JCPenny’s advergame venture to market its DORM LIFE product line to college gals. Sample this snippet … Instead of putting its branding just...

A Visit to Snow's BBQ

Living in the Badlands of Central Texas has some benefits. I took advantage of one those benefits on Saturday morning by visiting Snow’s BBQ in Lexington, TX. Brand Autopsy blog readers will recall an earlier post about Snow’s BBQ, a...

#3 -- Biz Book | Tweet by Tweet

My "Biz Book | Tweet by Tweet" experiment ends today. For those unaware, I’ve been sharing super-tight and ultra-pithy takeaways from a worthwhile book, THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF BUSINESS FAILURE (Donald Keough). (If you need more backstory, go here.) Below...

Re: Whole Foods Market in 2008

Jackie Huba, a fanatical Whole Foods Market customer evangelist, asked What Should Whole Foods Do? in response to its dismal third-quarter financials and its under-performing stock. I was going to comment on her post but my comments were lengthy enough...

#2 -- Biz Book | Tweet by Tweet

You may have missed the first two days of my tweeting meaty and super-tight takeaways from Donald Keough’s Ten Commandments for Business Failure. No worries, I got ya covered. Catch-up by reading and scrolling below. And feel free to play...

Two Buck ‘Bucks

SOURCE: Associated Press article Starbucks offers afternoon drink deal nationwide Looking to bring more value-seeking consumers through its doors for a late afternoon caffeine fix, Starbucks Corp. said it will now offer its morning customers any iced grande beverage for...

Biz Book | Tweet by Tweet

I’ve highlighted Donald Keough’s Ten Commandments for Business Failure in a recent post. It’s a worthwhile read because Keough points out tried and true pathways for any business venture to fail. If we follow Keough’s advice of not following his...

OBD on TCR

Heads-up … you may wanna watch The Colbert Report tonight (Aug. 4) … Lucas Conley of OBSESSIVE BRANDING DISORDER notoriety will be a guest on tonight’s show. For a refresher on OBD ... read this. For more on Lucas Conley...

Business Failure Commandments

What you just read is a money quote from Donald Keough’s recently published, THE TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR BUSINESS FAILURE. For years Keough, a former long-time Coca-Cola executive, has been flipping the script by giving presentations on How to Fail in...

Newest Poster Child for Word-of-Mouth

Ben McConnell introduces us (or maybe just me) to the newest poster child business for Word-of-Mouth Marketing ... TOMS Shoes. TOMS Shoes is a Purple Cow business all the way. For every pair of shoes TOMS sells, they donate a...

Remembering My Mother

Three Reads

ONE | How Detroit can Create the Next iPhone David Murphy from Barrie D’Rozario Murphy shares smart thoughts on how car makers can use Limited Supply, New Distribution Models, Functionality, and Advance Buzz to excite consumers. This piece originally appeared...

Dear Laura Ries...

Laura, do you really believe by adding GPS functionality to the iPhone, it changes it so dramatically that the iPhone goes from being a convergent device to a divergent device? As you’ve implied, the iPhone is the acid-test for the...

Architects Envision the Next Starbucks

Consider peeping the July issue of ARCHITECT magazine. The magazine asked five architect design firms to envision the rebirth of Starbucks. Interesting results ... lots of daydreaming esoteric fodder for design-types. The regular marketing-type in me likes the Modular Community...

When Being Too Good Becomes Bad

Let’s pretend … you live in a small town, population 1,200. You operate a BBQ joint open only on Saturdays in this small town. The townsfolk describe your brisket as “transcendent meat.” By the early afternoon you’ve sold all 300...

Now that it is going away, we’re devastated.

As many of you know, I will occasionally ask if you would miss a specific company if it went out-of-business tomorrow. (It’s part of my Would You Miss series inspired by the book, MAVERICKS AT WORK.) The question is totally...

Pete Blackshaw on Credibility

Just finished reading Pete Blackshaw's book about "running a business in today's consumer-driven world." Those of you deep into word-of-mouth marketing and social media will already know much of what Pete shares. However, most of your business buddies will learn...

Toy Box Leadership

The following Money Quotes presentation shares an interesting angle from the recently-published, TOY BOX LEADERSHIP. As the title conveys, this book takes classic childhood toys and extracts basic leadership lessons we first learned at a young age. It isn't a...

Better Coffee. Faster. ** NEVER **

I’m not as unsettled about Starbucks selling smoothies as I am about Starbucks approving this billboard: LOCATION: Northbound & Southbound on I-35 (near Temple, TX)Sadly, this is another decision the company has made which has “… lead to the watering...

Article (1) & Interview (2)

ONE | I dusted off my “No Business is Perfect” essay and gave it new life with new context. It’s on the Keppler website … READ ARTICLE. TWO | CZ Marketing interviewed me about SBUX, WOM, and OTHER STUFF …...

Simplexity (Jeffrey Kluger)

Jeffrey Kluger's book on why simple things become complex seems interesting. Read a review today in the National Post that sparked my interest. The money quote from Araminta Wordsworth's review is ... "Simple things can be more complex than they...

Would you miss Dunder Mifflin?

Continuing my “Would you Miss” series ... Does Dunder Mifflin provide such a unique product and customer experience that we would be saddened if it didn’t exist? Does Dunder Mifflin treat its employees so astonishingly well that those workers would...

Not OK BK

Over at the Idea Sandbox blog, Paul Williams breaks down the perverted oddities in this Burger King promotional tray liner. Really, this is just odd. Look at the rubber glove-wearing Pickle and the pants-down Onion. Now read Paul's breakdown.

Three Reads

ONE | FREE-DUMB? “Shopping at sales is just one of the ways I fool myself when it comes to money,” writes Alina Tugend in the NY Times. Her point is that getting stuff for free, such as 2-for-1 sales and...