Advertising Age published an interesting set of findings from The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) about a significant shift to more use of in-house advertising from outside agency usage. The title of the article “Leaner Ad Budgets Mean …” got my attention mostly because of the word Lean, which has become a throw away word similar to what happened to Re-Engineering a while back. (OK quite a while back.) …read more

The Harvard Business Review publishes on a range of business topics, and while their content is often good, sometimes one wonders. This is one of those times. In the April 2013 issue they published an article, “3 Rules for Success,” based on the research of two members of Deloitte, one of whom is their Chief Strategy Officer. The article starts with this statement: “Much of the strategy and management advice that business leaders turn to is unreliable or impractical.” I agree. In the authors’ quest to give valuable advice they undertook “rigorous research …” that involved “…read more

US Airways has been promoting their affinity credit card recently. At the end of each flight they provide the opportunity to apply for the card. The script is reasonably good so the flight attendants, who I assume mostly do not like the idea of “selling” anyway, can do a good job with the copy. However…read more