Every time I stay in a hotel and find Neutrogena French-Milled soap, I cringe. When I was at Neutrogena we tightened our strategy, and built the market value of the brand from $15 Million to $88 Million in three years. Eight years later on the same strategy, Neutrogena sold out to Johnson & Johnson for [...]

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about Wilson’s, the Leather People, beginning to show non-leather goods in their stores.  A reader has informed me that Wilson’s is changing all of their stores over to Studio branded stores and will carry a range of non-leather products. Regardless of the business need to move away [...]

On Ventura Blvd in the LA area, one can experience two different burger concepts in a few blocks that are worth examining. One is Fat Burger. The other is Habit. The Fat Burger unit is minimal and dated. The food is good. Once you stop in, the marketing is clear, the concept makes sense. They [...]

See Ernst’s comment about the Empty Words post.  It is a post in itself.

Aristotle in his Principles of Rhetoric explained that persuasive communications are best contructed from three priciples, Ethos, Pathos and Logos. Ethos consists of giving the audience permission to listen to you.  Pathos consists of giving the audience an emotional reason to agree with you.  Logos consists of giving the audience points of logic to support [...]