Gini Dietrich’s Spin Sucks site has been in my industry news RSS feed for a long time. This week she wrote a good piece looking at how VISA has brought all their marketing and communications work in-house. The company is ending relationships with current agencies FleishmanHillard, Edelman and Brunswick. In her story Dietrich connects this […]
Starting soon new BMW owners will start to receive more frequent oil and filter changes as part of the new car “free maintenance” program. According to the Service Information Bulletin 00 01 13, BMW now approves oil changes every 10K miles or 12 months, rather than the previous 15K miles or 24 months on cars […]
Integrating content into the sales process is always a vital part of the client engagements I run. For that reason, my agency is always on the look out for companies offering services that could potentially support improved sales integration. Yesterday we got an interesting presentation from beep Directed Voicemail. Founder Patrick Cahill explained their value […]
For a few years now many commentators have forwarded a theory about millennials and cars. Supposedly the American romance between young people and cars just wasn’t there anymore. Young people were in no hurry to buy cars, just as they were also pushing off marriage and home ownership. But what if that’s not it at […]
Earlier this week I read an excellent article from iMediaConnection. Author Antoine Boulin identified three sure ways to fail at so-called native advertising, messages that look more like editorial content than traditional advertising. Many hope this can become a much needed revenue stream for publishers. I’ve written about native advertising, also called sponsored content. It’s […]
This weekend I replaced the front sway bar links on my 1999 BMW M3. Recently I had new OEM Sachs front struts installed, so it was time to refresh the end links as well. My car has low miles, but 14+ years still take a toll. Replacing front sway bar links is a perfect DIY […]
My latest wine column went live today on WashingtonExec. In it I review the wine manifesto laid out by Jaime Goode, a long time wine blogger and wine columnist for the U.K. newspaper The Sunday Express. It’s natural to get passionate about wine. Some of Jaime’s points are good one in my opinion, others not […]
Earlier this month my partner Marc Hausman spoke at the Inbound Marketing Summit in Boston, organized by Pulse Networks. As part of his address, the conference produced a video with Marc on five tips for aligning your content marketing efforts to support sales. Marc does a great job in the video distilling principles I’ve talked […]
Calvert Woodley Wine and Spirits is an institution in Washington D.C., with a history dating back to 1949. Every fall the store publishes a wine catalog chock full of great values and lots of information about all kinds of wine. Click here to download your copy. For a long time I despaired of finding good […]
Pixel failure is a common problem on the BMW E39 5 Series. My friend Steve’s cluster was going bad on his 2002 525 Sport, and he wasn’t happy about how much a brand new cluster would cost from BMW. So he decided to explore aftermarket repair options. He decided to go with a company called […]
Recently there has been good coverage of how critical distribution is for a content marketing strategy. This is something I talk to clients about often. There is no “build it and they will come” with content marketing, no matter how good your content may be. Forrester came out with a new report early this month […]
The role of marketing has changed dramatically over the past five years. That was the message loud and clear when my agency organized a roundtable discussion on the challenges faced by our clients. We spoke with senior level marketers from 3Pillar Global, Mandient, Blue Coat Systems and the Immix Group. The term hybrid marketer was […]