He told me his First Rule of Consulting: No matter how much you try, you can’t stop people from sticking beans up their nose... Time and time again, I come across situations where I think, “OMG! They are trying to stick beans up their nose!” It explains what’s happening and what I should do next. The only thing I can do in a beans-and-noses situation (notice my clever use of flight-attendant grammar forms?) is wait. Wait until the bean is in its final resting place. Then, with a calmness only seen in yoga instructors, I can turn to the nose owner and ask, “So, how is that working for you? Did it do everything you’d hoped?” Of course, if they answer they enjoyed it and it was wonderful, then they are not someone I can relate to or help in any way. However, if sticking a bean deep into their nostril doesn’t meet the very high expectations they’d had, I can now start talking alternative approaches to reaching those expectations.

Sometimes we marketers can climb so far up the brand ladder from functional benefits to emotional benefits to social benefits, we can lose touch with why people are buying our products in the first place. There is power in purpose-driven brands. And yet, when every piece of marketing attempts to communicate some kind of social purpose, social purpose can start to lose its meaning, particularly when purpose is left to the agency.Sometimes we marketers can climb so far up the brand ladder from functional benefits to emotional benefits to social benefits, we can lose touch with why people are buying our products in the first place.

Data viz - "I'll pause for a moment so you can let this information sink in."

Spiderman sketch in 10 min, 1 min, 10 sec

pt 2

WSJ Pepper and Salt cartoon

"It's taken us 15 years, but we've finally figured out how the teenagers of the 90s think, act and consume media."