Z-Files

Starface is a perfect example of the say-do gap in marketing. Had you asked consumers, “Do you want to wear brightly colored stars on your face to highlight your pimples,”…

Jaguar is a luxury brand in transition. But by losing its heritage, is it losing its magic?Jaguar isn’t selling many cars right now.  It has no current models in Britain…

Credit: Philipp Torres / Unsplash As Shakespeare put it in The Taming of the Shrew, “No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en.”A study in the Journal of Marketing suggests…

Credit: Caterpillar Even the hardest, toughest jobs can be romantic, as evidenced by “The Secret Life of Quarries,” a video series produced by Caterpillar, the manufacturer of construction and mining…

Credit: 1950sUnlimited / CC by 2.0 In some categories, there isn’t much distinction at a product attribute level.  Sometimes heritage and a brand story is all you have – and…

We love this new video ad for Montefiore Health System in the Bronx.  Montefiore is a national leader in transplants, so they are promoting that with a Hero’s Journey story…

Igor Omilaev/Unsplash Obviously, AI cannot feel emotion.  But it can make us feel emotions.  Think about your experience with chatbots.  Yes, “frustration” is one unintended emotion that can emerge from…

Richard Bell /Unsplash How do you persuade people to adopt a new behavior?  It can be a challenge – even though they may know they should adopt that behavior.Here is a lesson…

WARC suggests that reports of the news industry’s death have been greatly exaggerated.On one hand, local newsrooms are being gutted or shut down everywhere, but this also is a time of…

Credit: Zheka Kapusta / Unsplash IKEA’s has entered the secondhand furniture space. It is called IKEA Preowned and is getting a trial run in Oslo and Madrid. At the end…

Credit: Cannes Lions Cement would seem to rank as one of the most boring products, but one brand has proven that with a little imagination, that need not be the…

The business world is eagerly embracing AI, but that isn’t necessarily the case for consumers.  Or, to be precise, consumers might embrace AI if you don’t call it “AI.”Research in…