I’ve been thinking a lot about the function of marketing lately and its role in the business. What IS our true purpose in marketing? Perhaps it was seeing lava flowing on the Big Island over Thanksgiving and the calm reaction of the residents as it slowly shifted directions, burning up everything in its slow progression…. More »
The High Cost of Free: The Next Wave Beyond Free Internet and Social Media
Have you heard the news about Ello, the new ad-free, invitation-only alternative to Facebook? Apparently invites are so valuable that they are being sold on eBay for up to $500 for 33 invites. The site is reporting that they are getting up to 31,000 requests per hour. I’ve put mine in, just out of curiosity…. More »
Cutting through the Fog: Cloud Business Models Demystified — and Repositioned (event summary)
Who could resist an event title like that? The evening’s Harvard Business School Innovation and Strategy Roundtable (Sept.18, 2014) conversation did not disappoint. Steve White, program director for the Strategic Alliances Leadership Council (SALC), which is part of IDC’s Software Business Strategies Group was the entertaining and respectful moderator, Chris Yeh, SVP, Product and Platform… More »
How to Make Change Work: The Importance of Socializing Ideas
If you are making a big change, a leapfrog change, like repositioning your company, you will need to gather input from the people who will be affected by the change. Why? First of all, I guarantee you will see things from other people’s perspective that you would never see on your own. We all live… More »
The Gap: The Difference between Vision and Reality in the Creative Mind
I’ve spent most of my career working with creatives. I love them. And they drive me crazy at the same time. And I’m one of them as well, struggling with my own art in transforming companies and individuals and functioning as creative director for clients. One of my coaching clients, a high-level engineer (which is… More »
San Francisco Foster Youth Fund Wine Tasting and Fundraiser
On October 9, we are sponsoring the San Francisco Foster Youth Fund Wine Tasting and Fundraiser event. Besides great wine and appetizers, there will be a silent auction. Please join us there to catch up over a glass of wine. The SFFYF provides children with resources not available through the Department of Human Services to… More »
“Paws with Patriots” Wine Gala
On September 13, ThinkResults is proud to be a sponsor of Operation Freedom Paws’ “Paws with Patriots” Wine Gala at the Mountain Winery. Come on out and join us for an evening of dinner, music, and wine with a live and silent auction. Operation Freedom Paws is non-profit organization that matches dogs with individuals who… More »
The Dangerous World of Rebranding: The New Airbnb Launch
While there has been a ton of controversy about the new Airbnb logo design (it’s too sexual, it looks too much like another logo launched at nearly the same time), dubbed Bélo, I want to speak out in its defense, and in defense of their overall launch strategy. On the day of the launch of the… More »
The “Busyness” Competition: Who Wins?
It’s summer time, which means time for new thinking and a new book in my mind. Currently, I’m reading Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time by Brigid Schulte. I picked Overwhelmed up recently because I find that most of my clients are in a near constant state of overwhelm and have… More »
Using Vine and Instagram to Your Video Marketing Advantage
Vine and Instagram are the happy marriage of video marketing and social media. It can be a challenge to create video content for these social media platforms because they have extremely short time limits. Almost all the typical formats of video marketing mentioned in our last video marketing post are possible on Vine and Instagram, but it does… More »
7 Fresh Ideas for New Video Content
As a follow up to the earlier 4 Tips for Video Marketing Success post, here are seven different video types to inspire some fresh approaches to your video marketing strategy. 1. “How to” and Tutorials How to’s, tutorials, tips and tricks, and product demonstrations are all very popular video formats because they help customers see… More »
Launch Readiness Assessment
BitKeeper wanted to relaunch its brand and therefore needed to understand the full scope and impact of this decision before beginning. ThinkResults worked with the BitKeeper team to do a Launch Readiness Assessment, a ten-point assessment covering areas like product readiness, management team readiness and sales strategy assessment. This Launch Readiness Assessment tool reveals how… More »
OFP Board Facilitation
The Executive Director (ED) and Board of Operation Freedom Paws needed a facilitator for their annual two-day Board Retreat. They hired Jenn LeBlanc to facilitate, with a special focus on role definition and communication skills. Jenn began the retreat by having the group list their desired outcomes for the retreat, which became two full flipcharts… More »
Six Simple Rules for Your Next Website Design
These six basic but oh-so-often violated simple rules should guide the design for any website. Despite the simplicity of these, we’ve seen every single one of these rules being broken over the years — from different sets of navigation on each page of a website to a home page containing a book’s worth of content…. More »
enACT (Ready, Set, Launch!)
enACT, a new consumer energy management software platform, needed a new logo as part of their overall launch project, which included a new website. The original logo in this case was interesting visually but had some execution problems. The CEO also wanted to move into the consumer space and wanted the logo to do its… More »
Logo Designs: From Elegant to Weird
Getting stuck in San Francisco traffic means I get to look around at what’s happening in the city. I always enjoy the colorful pole flag banners lining the streets around the city advertising various cultural exhibits. Last week when I was on my way to Sausalito for a meeting, I spied the California Academy of… More »
4 Tips for Video Marketing Success
Video is such an important element of any marketing strategy because it gives marketers the power to show, instead of tell. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is a video worth? Here are 4 Tips to Successful Video Marketing: 1. Create Great Content The first step in successful video marketing… More »
New FDA Social Media Guidance Means Marketers Must Skip Twitter
The FDA recently released two draft guidance documents on the use of social media platforms by drug and device manufacturers. Guidance on the inclusion of risk and benefit information is one of the most important pieces to come out of the documents. The draft states that the character limitation on certain social media platforms does… More »