Tedoo

Though he had his fair share of flops in his early days (Apple III, NeXT, Lisa) and some well documented personal flaws, probably the greatest “product design CEO” of our era was Steve Jobs.

I realize that I am writing about Jobs a little later than most, but I finally finished the massive 500 page W. Isaccson biography over XMAS & I wanted to jot a few thoughts down about the [...]

“For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself” –Viktor Frankl, Author of Man’s Search for Meaning

How many times have you been given the simple advice to just “follow your passion” and [...]

Apparently the topic of “purpose driven marketing” was in vogue at the latest Association of National Advertisers convention in late Oct.  You can read all about it in this Ad Age article.

It is great to see the advertising community getting on board with purpose.  I hope they don’t treat the idea of standing for something beyond $$ as a fad.

The greatest brands all stand for something above and beyond profit

The [...]

Those not as familiar with marketing/brand building like to send questions on the topic my way, so I thought I would write a few lines on brands and purpose.  This is not an exhaustive discussion, but hopefully it provides a couple of links for you (esp. start-up folks) to check-out.

Let’s start by pulling a definition of a brand from experts in the space:

A brand is a distinctive bundle [...]

Back in the late 80s/early 90s, I was a Andre Agassi fan.  I remember thinking how cool Andre’s life must be…jetting around the world, winning the big tournaments, making the big bucks.  Like many others, I liked Andre because he was a tennis rebel in an often lame world of white shirt tennis guys.  Agassi seemed to be a sort of Gen X rebel with an attitude.

Canon picked up on [...]