A dear friend gave me some good advice recently. She advised me thusly: ”Focus your life on those things, activities and especially people that give you energy. Cut out the things that sap your energy.” That is incredibly good advice. If I had always followed such sage counsel I probably would have avoided much of the pain [...]

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When you think of the truly great and lasting TV brands, there are not that many that immediately come to mind. “60 Minutes” is one, “Meet the Press” is another. I guess you could count “The Simpson’s” and “Monday Night Football” amongst this very small group of historically important and long-lived TV brands. Of course, [...]

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Just as “Linsanity” seems to be waning, Volvo debuts its first new full page ad in the NY Times today to tout its big new endorsement deal with the NY Knicks wunderkind Jeremy Lin. The ad’s headline uses the following attributes to link Lin with the Volvo brand: Intelligent, Driven and Brilliant Performer. All good [...]

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It seems that every day one encounters another piece about the growing importance and use of content marketing in the overall marketing practice. I would agree that these are the days of content in the marketing mix. Perhaps understandable with such a fast growing and developing marketing trend, content marketing is greatly misunderstood. Is it [...]

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The Super Bowl really is a cultural and business phenomenon. It certainly is not “just” a sporting event. With that in mind, I watched yesterday’s Super Bowl with great interest. The following is how I would grade the event: The Game — Solid A: Especially the last quarter. The news about Tom Brady’s wife (supermodel [...]

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So much has already been written about Steve Jobs as a business, design, and technology visionary. The commentary has focused on how he saw a dazzling digital future, and created it for every consumer to live and enjoy. And also how he changed the world in so many ways. He was frequently compared to those other giants [...]

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The news of Detroit’s demise certainly was premature. Like the mythical Phoenix rising from the ashes, Detroit has been pulling itself out of its death spiral to show the world what it’s really made of. First there was the rebound of the US car industry. (Of course, that would have never happened without the Obama [...]

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That, of course, is the big question that everyone has been asking following the recent resignation of Steve Jobs, the iconic founder, savior, and CEO of Apple, and now the deified business and cultural figure. (Am I the only person who felt the gushing stories about Jobs’ God-like qualities were way over the top?! Probably. There [...]

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NY Times business columnist James B. Stewart recently ran an article on the improbable comeback of Chrysler. The story, now pretty well known, had timely new resonance because Italy’s Fiat Group had just acquired the remaining percentage of Chrysler that it did not already own. Of course, Fiat bought its initial chunk of Chrysler (from private equity firm [...]

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I have written frequently about the new bubble that has been descending on Silicon Valley (and the social media industry overall) during the past year. The growing bubble is painfully clear to me, even if some of the bigwig tech investors continue to deny its existence (“it’s different this time”…yeah right!). Even for those of us [...]

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