A recent example from National Rental Car. An associate rented a car from National for a week for about $125. She needed to extend the rental for a second week and that week alone was quoted at over $300. Wait. Not as stupid as it gets. After much discussion of how such a discrepancy could [...]

I just saw an online news article on DealBook with the headline “Greenhill Says 2 Executives Die in Plane Crash.”  The article goes on to explain that two of the investment firm’s executives died in the New Jersey crash of a private jet.   Right within the article is a display ad for CitationAir that [...]

I have had a lot of discussions around this issue lately. It seems that most of us have two great fears.  The first is the fear of failure.  The second is the fear of success. By most people’s standards, I have led a life of success.  I am educated, can jitterbug well at the company [...]

The new Acura campaign is ludicrous. First of all, the situations, Gordon Ramsey hired for a Christmas party, and another I meant to remember for this post but cannot at the moment, are worst case scenarios of borrowed interest in that they are a far stretch from the Acura cars being sold, and secondly because [...]

The new ad for GE about the employees who make cancer screening machines that save lives is pure genius.   Employees do take pride in saving people.  People do want to thank employees.   This ad brings them together.  Very well done and makes a very good point. We don’t just have jobs.  We generally have a [...]

I have been meaning to compliment Dr. Pepper for awhile now, both for the new advertising campaign for the basic brand, as well as the TEN introduction. The brand campaign defies belief in that adults would never have such a good dance party without alcohol, but the party, the music and the editing makes me [...]

In the commercial production business, they talk of “practicals.”   A practical is that a cowboy or Indian in the 19th century should not be wearing a wristwatch or the sun should not be shining in the window at night. I saw what I consider a “practical” last night for media planning.   Chick Filet ran an [...]

No one yet knows the long term effects of the plethora of line extensions by major brands over the last few years. I  suspect that the brands which were either form factors (Oreo’s), or named for form factors (Wheat Thins) or both (Alka Seltzer) will suffer the most from line extensions that departed from their [...]

I am serving in a full operating role at the moment for a company reinventing advertising and marketing for the Digital Age.  In that capacity, I have been reminded vividly of the differences in a good operating executive and a good opportunity executive. We have a relatively new employee, Jimmy Bogroff, a sales team leader [...]

“I follow your emails/blog and have read your book Killer Brands several times – love them both.  We spoke briefly a couple of years ago about my branding as a realtor.  I wanted to offer this thought: I recently realized that “FedEx Kinko’s” has now re-branded itself as “FedEx Office”.  This is the culmination of [...]