Comments for Sermon From the Mount

Comment on We’re all selling “tiny transformations and elements of identity”. Or, at least we should be. by admin

admin — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:49:47 +0000

I’ve been devoting some deep thought to giggling and transformation: any brand that helps transform me from “that guy on the outside who doesn’t get it” into “this guy on the inside who gets it” is going to win my loyalty. Laughter at a shared joke is an incredibly powerful bonding agent. That’s why relevant, judiciously applied humor can increase the effectiveness of communication. Sometimes (and before anybody refers me to some mammoth study on how humor can undermine the effectiveness of communications, please note the four qualifiers in the preceding sentences. Thank you).

Comment on “Facts are the enemy of truth.” So said Miguel de Cervantes, 16th Century Spanish novelist and, apparently, savvy marketing guy. by jeb hurley

jeb hurley — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 03:03:56 +0000

My experience has been that developing an understanding of ‘what really motivates’ and translating that into ‘we understand’ is at the heart of creating sustainable competitive advantage in B2B marketing. It is also one of the more difficult disciplines to develop within product management and markting teams who have been indoctrinated with conventional fact based feature-benefit ‘marketing’.

The Drumcircle Message Architecture is a clear, concise and powerful framework for thinking about how to better position and market products and services to businesses.

Jeb Hurley
President & CEO
ONYX Graphics, Inc.

Comment on We’re all selling “tiny transformations and elements of identity”. Or, at least we should be. by admin

admin — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 13:11:55 +0000

Giggling can be very transformative. In fact, It may be one of the most effective ways to evoke new ideas and actions. So, please, keep making us giggle.

Comment on We’re all selling “tiny transformations and elements of identity”. Or, at least we should be. by Jerry Johnson

Jerry Johnson — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 03:11:42 +0000

Leave it to you (and Malcom Gladwell) to raise the bar on everyone, including the purveyor of sheetrock.

So now every experience I create has to be transformative? Jeez. How about if I just make people giggle. And then you stick in that awful qualification “affordable.”

What are you trying to do for goodness sake? How are we going to retire with that?

Comment on Why every single brand of insurance, detergent, appliance, light bulb, motor oil, plant food, rental car, investment service and galvanized roofing nail needs “taste copy”. by Arafat Kazi

Arafat Kazi — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 05:30:33 +0000

Fantastic post! I always think that all the Trout & Ries books from the 70s and 80s really do make a necessary point. If you must drink Budweiser, then it’s best to have a set of values that you can hold on to. Plus, there’s so much taste test research showing that preference is all in the mind anyway.

Comment on I’m Lovin’ It. Carl’s Jr. Consistently Brings Automatic Weapons To A Knife Fight. by Beth Mansfield

Beth Mansfield — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:09:36 +0000

Bill - We’ve included your blog post in our social media posts as well as our latest press release http://pitch.pe/25472. Thanks for the love on our street fighting tactics! We will indeed keep fighting…
Beth Mansfield - PR for Carl’s Jr.

Comment on Recommending Best Practices to Positively Impact the Verbiage-Based Communication Space by Kimberley Freeman

Kimberley Freeman — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 01:19:39 +0000

Yep, you got nearly every one of ‘em, Bill. Just reading the list made me queasy.

Fortunately, I don’t hear best-of-breed or world-class much anymore, but when I do, get out the pushpins.

It’s especially painful hearing those credibility-wrecking buzz terms from potential clients. I guess they’re trying to prove they are real businessmen. It’s often the same guys who wave their fingers in the air to illustrate sardonic quotation marks.

Let’s invent a new term and see if we can permeate the gossamer-thin bubble of biz talk jargon just so we can do a blog about how easy it is to get new words into the idiot-speak lexicon.

How about “bizposeur?”

Comment on Malcolm Gladwell, Howard Moskowitz, spaghetti sauce and the end of endless line extensions. by Bill Mount

Bill Mount — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:21:48 +0000

REPLY TO CHRIS: I’m with you. Making a basic pasta sauce is just not that hard. Of course, if you want the “authentic” flavor, obviously, you’ve got to simmer it ever so slowly for about six days (at least that’s what “mamma” was always doing in all those commercials). But you raise a great point. Why hasn’t somebody created a line of Family Recipe ingredients; jarred, “pre-simmered”, mushrooms, peppers, roasted tomatoes, etc that somebody can combine with a basic tomato sauce and whatever else strikes their fancy to create their “own” sauce. In the tradition of Edward Bernays’ brilliant “break an egg in the cake mix” insight (wasn’t that Bernays?), it would alleviate guilt because it would feel just like cooking. This idea is hereby owned by Chris Perkins and Bill Mount. Get in line, Ragu folks.

Comment on Malcolm Gladwell, Howard Moskowitz, spaghetti sauce and the end of endless line extensions. by Chris Perkins

Chris Perkins — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 02:58:54 +0000

Line extensions and category-clogging brands should face the same sorry death as the companies formerly known collectively as “The Big Three” U.S. auto makers. Oh, wait, we no longer allow poorly performing, irrelevant brands to die… we bail them out. My bad…

As for me, I’ll make sauce from scratch for half the cost (at 10x as tasty) before shelling out any dough for Ragu or one of the other marketing-driven brands.

Curious how convenience does play a role in the dump and heat variety of pasta sauces, yet is it really that hard to do the same with the base ingredients for pasta sauce? Oh, right, nobody learns that any more… perhaps a quick spin to epicurious.com or some cooking wiki might be in order?

Comment on Recommending Best Practices to Positively Impact the Verbiage-Based Communication Space by Jim Paddock

Jim Paddock — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:43:25 +0000

I couldn’t agree more with your observations vis-a-vis the idiotic way
people speak in business situations these days. That vis-a-vis was on purpose. It’s perhaps an older example, but then I’m an older guy.

So many of the phrases you pointed out make me absoutely gag. But I have
to admit, for some reason “Best Practices” makes me hurl the most.