Category: Observations

We get very focused on our own industry, almost creating a bubble of content and influence. You need to step outside your area of experience and pay more attention to how other industries tell their marketing stories. Everything you watch, listen to or read has a point of view and a way of sharing it. This includes whatever you are binging on Netflix. In every instance you need to let these other examples of storytelling wash over you to make what you do better.

When is this madness going to stop? Whether this started with Starbucks and their fall seasonal drink, Pumpkin Spice Latte, it is hard to say. These orange foods have gotten completely out of hand. It was bad enough when I saw pumpkin-flavored yogurt, pumpkin-flavored Cheerios cereal and pumpkin-flavored Triscuit crackers, but who in their ever-loving mind would buy pumpkin flavored dog biscuits for their dog?

This morning I saw a woman dressed as Wonder Woman in the airport. She had a cape and a golden lasso. She told me that she wished she had been able to fly here in her invisible plane. She was in town for business meetings.

Today I went rock climbing in Joshua Tree National Park. It wasn’t something I had done before, so I took an all-day introductory class. You are fully supported while you are climbing, so you don’t need to worry about falling. A successful rock climber plans out their route. They know where they are trying to get and figure out where to go before they make a move. It is a very patient endeavor where you make slow, incremental moves to reach your goal. These all sound like great ways to approach both life in general and business specifically.

On the road between Los Angeles and Palm Springs is a billboard for the new Rolling Stones album. There are so many things wrong with that sentence. I’ll start with, the Rolling Stones have a new album? Really? And with more people streaming music these days, is a sign poking out of the desert really the best way to let people driving 70 miles per hour past it know about it. Unless there’s some connection with an older audience traveling to Palm Springs and this septuagenarian-led band.

I met the US marketing manager for a foreign airline and he described the primitive nature of the company website. He called it a DOS website as he talked about the limited fields for entry. After clicking the giant button to purchase your tickets he said you could almost hear the gears spinning in the background. I offered that maybe they were actually gerbils running on a wheel in the background. That made sense to him.

We have always been told that we should not talk about religion or politics in polite conversation. I even read an article recently that these are two topics that we should avoid at work. But driving down the road these are the most common topics for bumper stickers. Oh, and honor students.