If December is about faithful friends drawing near to us, then January, it follows, must be about breaking up with them by email. So last weekend I did my annual review of things subscribed to, and tossed the ones I don’t like, don’t recall signing up for and that just plain irk me. You would […]
The Slow Elf Returns: More Bad Holiday Greetings
Boxing Day at last. A day to get stuff done, clear up some of the clutter, go through all those e-cards at work and see who loves us. Last year, we looked at the generally dismal offering of Multi-Denominational Winter Holiday (MDWH) e-cards and broadly categorized them as: Self-indulgent, creepy, time-wasting, salesy, stalkerish, and, very […]
This Old Website – 7 Unfortunate Realities
Years and years ago somebody thought it would be a great idea if the corporate communications function in the company I worked for reported in to the CFO. I was the corporate communications function and that meant some very interesting conversations, that mostly ended with “just don’t let it cost anything”. At about the same […]
Why Marketing Briefs are a Circle of Hell
A friend asked me recently to review a marketing communications brief he had drafted to help his internal customers, mostly product managers, get something meaningful out of his group. It had all the usual sections: communications goal, target audience, budget, timelines, fries with that, and so on. My friend was also planning a series of […]
Porcupines Part II:How Can I Ignore You When You Keep Going Away?
I’ve been thinking a lot about Porcupines lately, which is either testimony to Richard Gallagher’s brilliant insight or a sad commentary on my social life. My thesis in the last post was that porcupines, defined in this context as people who are angry, demanding and rude, are not born, but made. So the question for […]
