Well, they must be wearing sweaters in Cupertino because I just purchased an iPhone. I’m the one who went public in my last blog about taking a stand against the Apple brand. When asked what changed, I was finding it hard to explain, especially since I didn’t even need a new phone. So to understand how I finally became an Apple convert, I went online for the answer.
Meeting mayhem
Three meetings, two conference calls and a Webex — and it’s only Monday. Sound familiar? You’re not the only one. According to a 2007 study conducted by Banyan Way, an executive coaching and development group, senior marketing executives claimed to spend about half of their normal working day, every day, in meetings.
iRefuse: Confessions of a techno-laggard
According to the 2010 Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index (a listing of the brands best able to engage customers and create loyal customers), Apple leads the pack in the categories of laptop computers and smart phones. As an avid user of an Apple laptop, I wasn’t too surprised.
As marketers, we are in the business of converting wants into needs and needs into wants. We create images and words that support the ability of a product or service to improve the way something is currently done or to fill voids, both those that have existed forever and those that have been left by the failure of something else.
Do you speak Sales-ish?
Remember the famous line from Cool Hand Luke, “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate”? Too often that can be the case between the people creating your marketing materials and the people who actually have to use them — in other words, the marketing and sales departments, respectively.
Out of sight, out of mind?
There’s a saying in public health that when it works best, public health is invisible — the injury that didn’t occur, the illness you didn’t get.
While this adage may be true, there is a downside. As a Board of Health member in my town campaigning for re-election, I’ve recently faced an unexpected challenge communicating to my fellow community members what the board does and how our work affects them.