If you’ve ever watched a National Geographic program, you may have seen the constant struggle for life that takes place on the African Serengeti.  Predators and prey are locked in a constant battle for survival in which the strong survive and the weak perish, all in a land where food and water are scarce. Welcome [...]

Companies like Apple are known for creating new products like the iPod, but if you want to impress me, apply some new thinking to existing, mundane products.  It’s called changing the rules, and we’ve seen some good examples of that recently. Dyson has built a brand on revolutionizing the vacuum cleaner, a product that has changed [...]

There are some unmistakable signs that the holiday season is upon us.  The days get shorter, the air a bit cooler (for those of us living in the North), and the stores display Christmas decorations, although lately that’s been starting around Labor Day. And there’s one more that anyone who watches TV will recognize.  No, [...]

My column in this month’s issue of Retail Observer is about investing in your brand during a tough economy.  Some will dismiss it as self-serving advice from a marketing guy, and to a certain extent, it is.  But it is sound advice, as others would agree.  And who would you prefer marketing advice from?  An accountant?  Do you get golf tips [...]

In our postage-stamp sized backyard, we have two pear trees.  I don’t know my pear varieties, but I recall being told one was a Bartlett, the other Anjou.  Almost every year, at least one of these trees bears no less than 500 pears.  The last two years both trees produced at once, giving me some 1,000 pears to [...]