Right after the new year I upgraded my E36 M3 headlights with a new set of European elliptical headlights from BMW supplier Hella. Here’s the full story. After I installed them I had the beams adjusted at a local service station. Recently I noticed that the headlight assemblies were no longer flush to the corner […]
Earlier this week my E39 M5 had a flat tire, driver side rear. This happened to me while I was traveling on the Washington Beltway, heading north 95/east 495 going from Tysons to Alexandria. The loss of air pressure was very quick, and I pulled off onto a narrow shoulder area as quickly as I […]
Great work for great clients — that’s the fundamental philosophy at my agency. Today a great client unveiled more great work when Polycom launched The Public Sector View. We’ve got a track record of success with this client. Three years ago, the BreakDowntheWalls site we designed and executed for TANDBERG won Best Corporate Blog honors […]
More and more people are using mobile devices to consume content, both professional and personal. It’s a macro trend affecting business and society at large, and your online presence needs to respond. According to Google Analytics, 29 percent of the traffic to chrisparente.com in the past 30 days came from a mobile device. Google Analytics […]
Steve Farnsworth’s @Steveology blog is a good source of content on digital marketing. Recently Steve wrote a piece about IBM documenting the increased efficiency of what they call social business. Working with researchers from Rutgers and Duke, IBM found that inside sales people who used social tools both internally and externally were higher performers. According […]
My latest Wine and Dine column published today in WashingtonExec. I take a shot at deciphering Italian wine by explaining Italian classifications. The piece also shares my review of some good Tuscan wine sampled at a Grape and Bean tasting event in Alexandria this past weekend. In the piece I share my notes on two […]
This weekend I found an entertaining video from MotorTrend, courtesy of the BMW Blog. Mike Febbo of MotorTrend and Greg Emerson of European Car Magazine squared off on their pick of the best affordable sports car today. Mike is a huge fan of the Scion FR-S, while Greg feels that the Volkswagen GTI is the […]
One of the wine bloggers I follow is Joe Roberts, of 1WineDude. Together with Tara O’Leary, aka the Wine Passionista, he has launched a video series interviewing major influencers in the world of wine. Recently they featured an interview with Gary Vaynerchuk, one of the true trail blazers in wine marketing. After shooting to social […]
This morning I fixed a small issue that could have caused me a large problem. My E36 M3 spoiler brake light wasn’t working consistently. Sometimes the light came on when I applied the brake pedal, sometimes it did not. In addition to being a potential problem while driving at night, my car needed to pass […]
Is content marketing done differently depending on organization size? That’s the focus of a new study from the Content Marketing Institute. CMI defines an as over 1,000 employees. One of the reasons this study got my attention was because that dividing line roughly describes my agency’s two main types of clients. We tend to work […]
The concept of content marketing is red hot these days when discussing effective communications. It’s not a new concept, and I’ve been discussing it on this site for almost two years. Lately the concept has reached the fully hyped phase. Like many terms that become hugely popular, content marketing can mean different things to different […]
My 1999 BMW M3 turns 14 this month. I’ve owned the car for almost 10 years, having bought it with less than 16,000 miles. The first birthday story back in 2008 still says it all on how I feel about the car. It’s been a busy year keeping the car in top shape. That’s because […]