Just returned from a major industrial trade show in Chicago. It was interesting to see some things surprisingly it seemed a pretty healthy show. One big takeaway was the benefits of two things: 1. Being different. 2. Being simple and direct with your message. Blue and grey are the new business camouflage. What was once […]
LOTS of buzz in marketing about social media – Twitter, Facebook, blogs, YouTube. Seems like everyone wants to talk about these channels lately. For business-to-business marketers, I must admit I’m skeptical about many of these tools. I hear lots about Twitter, but find it rather hard to imagine what it could do for b-to-b branding […]
In the current economic correction/downturn/recession, I see an alarming trend. The biggest organizations seem to be the most effected – GM, CitiGroup, Bank of America. Something I’ve noticed is that bigger organizations seem the most disconnected, both from their customers and from themselves. All the layers and functional roles seem to cloud people’s thinking and […]
The lowly banner has been much-maligned in the trade press in recent years. But like so many things in the marketing equation, banners can have a place if used appropriately. I would concur for mass-market consumer sites. Banners are likely dead. The victims of too many re-finance ads, credit card offers, and mass branding efforts. […]
“Do what you’ve always done and you’ll get what you’ve always got.” I wish this hackneyed quote was even still true. The reality is that in the new economy even this perspective doesn’t work anymore. I’ve heard far too many business people tell me they’re working twice as hard for half as much money. But I’ve […]
I Recently attended a Google presentation and learned more about their free Analytics offering. We’ve had Analytics on our site for a while, but hadn’t really ever utilized it very much. Due to some shifts in hosting and redirects and other IT mysteries, we weren’t even tracking the right pages. But fixing it was really […]
I participated in a panel presentation last night at Ann Arbor SPARK – the Marketing Roundtable, highly recommended – on developing a marketing communications plan. There was some discussion on the elements of a plan, but the real issue focused on having a plan that was aligned to your business objectives. Years ago I worked […]
Just wanted to take a moment to give props to PWB Sr. Art Director Keith Kopinski. Over the past few years, Keith’s taken to sculpting professionally on the side. With some training from some long-time industry folks, he’s been able to break into crafting sculptures under license of comic book super heroes and villains. These […]
Sometimes the blog will be professionally relevant, sometimes it won’t. Part of our goal is to give our viewers a little peek inside the heads of PWBers – scary though that can be. We hope you find it fun, interesting, and educational. Sometimes even all three. Have you noticed how camo seems to be the […]
Redone your website lately? Did you get held up when it was time to build out as all that content you thought you had wasn’t really there? Or it wasn’t in a form that was appropriate for the web? We’re routinely finding that clients underestimate the amount of time and effort it takes to generate […]