Last week, Colorado legalized recreational marijuana. And Ben & Jerry‘s brilliantly tweeted this on Thursday, January 2: BREAKING NEWS: We're hearing reports of stores selling out of Ben & Jerry's in Colorado. What's up with that? pic.twitter.com/zBs8nyxZWn — Ben & Jerry's (@benandjerrys) January 2, 2014 The tweet has been retweeted 9,584 times and favorited 5,750 […]
Content
Tell True Stories Well: Hire an Artist
The best content isn’t storytelling. The best content is telling a true story well. It’s a subtle difference. But the creators of the best content of 2013 contemplated not just what story was worth telling, but how to tell it. And one way to do that is to hire an artist. I’m tempted to insert […]
WestJet Christmas Not a Miracle, but a Mindset to Adopt in 2014 #BMTPPT [New Video Series]
What can marketers learn from the WestJet Christmas Miracle video? How can you coax buttoned-up executives to get on board with some playful improv? What’s it mean to give “generous content gifts”? In a special holiday edition of our new show – Better Marriage Through PowerPoint – Tim Washer and I discuss all this and […]
The Funniest Mobile App Update: From Boring to Breakthrough Content
I’m writing this post because TalkTo updated its app yesterday and it made me laugh out loud. Yes, you read that right: I’m calling out a mobile update as inspired content, because it’s just that good. TalkTo has taken the notion of a pedestrian smartphone update to a new level: Creating compelling content in a […]
Humor and B2B Marketing: A Love Story
Business-to-business companies often can’t find a way to fold humor and storytelling into their marketing, because what they sell isn’t… well, funny. Or they think it’s not much of a story. Here’s how one company challenges that assumption. If I were Cisco Systems trying to show how the role of information technology (IT) is changing, […]
Marketing Needs a Built-in, Shockproof, Sh*t Detector
The subtitle of this post is: “What QR Codes Kill Kittens really communicates.” Because: “The most essential gift for a good marketer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector.” Hemingway is the author of that quote, although he said “writer” instead of “marketer.” But I think it applies equally well to marketing, because we have a […]
9 Qualities of Good Writing
👉 👉 👉 New newsletter! Get a letter from me to you in your inbox, every two weeks! Sign up for free right here. There are two kinds of people: Those who think they can write, and those who think they can’t. And, very often, both are wrong. The truth is, most of us fall […]
‘Content’ Isn’t Just ‘Marketing’
“Content” isn’t just things we think of as “marketing.” A great example is Virgin’s new pre-flight safety briefing, which my friend DJ Waldow Skyped from on board a Virgin flight to share with me last week. If you haven’t seen it, check it out here: There’s much to love about this video. I detailed why […]
The First Tweets of 16 B2B Brands (and a Few Familiar Faces)
What was your first tweet? As Twitter began trading on the New York Stock Exchange last week, I couldn’t help but consider how far this small, simple, fledgling network has come. Once mocked for being stupid and insipid, and plagued by its own persistent identity crisis, Twitter has nonetheless become a prominent and important part […]