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Blog
8 Social Media Marketing Strategies to Beat Big Brands
December 10th, 2015
There are social media physics and if you understand how it all goes around, it’s easier to win the popularity contest. Here are the strategies that work across all social media marketing communications. If you …
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How to Create Amazing, Simple, Flexible Brand Assets
December 2nd, 2015
Many of the in-house marketing creative teams I meet are relegated to "production work" tasks to retool internal communications to be "on brand". There are real creative challenges facing these teams. Once the brand strategy …
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Why The Hero Narrative Works for Brand Strategy
December 1st, 2015
There is a heroic narrative connected to commerce, baked into our evolutionary psychology. When we spend money, we become the hero to fulfill this narrative. This is why brand and storytelling are precisely linked. The fact of this connection is smart news for brand …
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Do Not Advertise to Attract Core Members
November 24th, 2015
If you really want to attract core members to your plan, club, or union, do not advertise. Do not let them find you easily online. Make your name hard to recognize, preferably using foreign words. …
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Free Coffee Bar Community Experiment
November 19th, 2015
If I repeatedly offer something free to a community or to a client, when do they become entitled to have it? For how long should this person recall my generosity? What about the nonprofit organizations …
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Why Core Members Are Your Best Brand Ambassadors
November 18th, 2015
When my older brother Michael started our martial arts Dojo in 2006, I thought I understood how to build and manage community organizations. In fact, it was marketing communications that I knew, which clearly was …
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Circle Communities for Your Best Brand Strategy
November 17th, 2015
The word "community" in business is abused as often as its Latin origin suggests, communis, meaning "common". If we define community simply as a group with something in common, there is plenty of room for context. What does this …
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How to Watch Shark Tank Like a Girl
February 10th, 2015
The show Shark Tank is awesome when they drop a contestant onto the stage and unleash the predators. It makes for great TV, waiting for Kevin O'Leary to say: "You're dead to me," or: "Just …
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An Open Letter to Ignorant Brands
January 27th, 2015
Dear Ignorant Brand, You romanced me. Secretly, I hoped to see an improved version of myself by virtue of your promises. Then through several engagements, I discovered you don't care about me at all. I needed …
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8 Ways that Corporate Narrative Leads to Marketing Results
January 23rd, 2015
To uncover and to integrate an organization's authentic story. This is my job. I love this gig because everyone loves a cleverly reported, smart story. The work is most effective for people who value revelation …
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The Economic States of America
January 22nd, 2015
The way I see it, there are four economies in the United States. Among these different economies I can choose to conduct business. I am lucky that my agency has a choice. Generally speaking, most …
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The Scariest Rollercoaster In the World
January 16th, 2015
This Youtube video named The Scariest Rollercoaster In The World has 2.6 million views so far. I don't think it's for the reason audiences who watch the 11-seconds have in mind. Spoiler alert: it's just …
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You Master the Two Laws of Effective Pitch Theater
January 14th, 2015
You leave your comfortable marketing job with reliable benefits to launch an agency passion project but you call it a business. You do this just before the economy collapses. You are forced to survive and …
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Now Serving Mindcrack for Kids
January 12th, 2015
How do brands build momentum to last for generations? Maybe we can track this newly minted one for answers. My seven-year old daughter, Maddy, seems addicted to the video game Minecraft. So we jokingly call …
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Story Trance Me Into Never Neverland
January 8th, 2015
The US is a consumer culture and the stuff we consume at a rate compared only to food and drugs are stories. What is TV if not a storytelling device? Right now the national average …
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Freedom from Hell with a Cooperative Spirit
January 7th, 2015
How did people endure before modern medicine? By modern I mean out-patient surgery and MRIs, of course, but we could say 1880 marks the birth of modern medicine, when it was discovered diseases were spread …
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How Marketing Justifies Its Own Shitty Existence
January 6th, 2015
This year marks our seven-year anniversary. First, I am a writer and I love communications and the way stories work on us. So we started Writers' Dojo in 2007. Over the years to the degree …
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Why Storytelling Is The Ultimate Weapon and other links
May 3rd, 2014
Here's a curation of media with notes for your consideration. This is my short syllabus for new students of brand storytelling. These resources cover the topic smartly, I think. If you need the history, context …
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The Rise of Chief Story Officers
May 1st, 2014
Here are three reasons why I'm forecasting the rise of Chief Story Officers in corporate culture: All leading brands will become media companies, in that they must produce extraordinary content that shares multiple, non-linear storylines in …
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