To those of us who are not web savvy, it's a little creepy. As I understand it, search engines have these virtual spiders (robots) that crawl all over the Internet, making exhaustive notes of everything they find. Then, when you do a GOOGLE search for something, say, "Stately plump Buck Mulligan," the spiders remember all the places they encountered "Stately plump Buck Mulligan" and post a list of all the pages where they found it in their explorations. There are secret formulas by which they decide the order in which they list the pages. In your site, you have code,…

In Permission Marketing, Seth Godin makes the point that in the future, as options become more plentiful, time will be the common currency, not money. There will be so many options, at such low prices, that people will be able to afford to buy whatever they want, but they will not be able to afford the time to consider all the options. This is one of the basic principles of permission marketing. Well, along those lines, I've been thinking about time as currency.There is a principle in the Bible, where your treasure is, that is where your heart is. So,…

The Discipline of Market Leaders. A little while ago I came across this business classic on a bookshelf, while looking for something else. It was a huge hit back in the 1990s. Then it kind of disappeared, probably because it isn't a "seven steps to category dominance" kind of book. You actually have to read it. And then, to get anything out of it, you actually have to think about it. But it was a pretty smart book. The premise was that all category leaders master one of three disciplines: operational excellence, product (development) leadership, or customer intimacy. Makes sense.…

We've been having a lot of conversations lately about the benefits of a full service agency relationship vs. the advantage of a project relationship. There are two ways of looking at this: from the agency perspective and from the client perspective. In general, any client large enough to have an advertising budget and to benefit from annual planning does better with a full-service relationship. It's a matter of scale, synergy, and consistency. You have too many initiatives to be paying a premium for each one (as you do when you treat them as projects). You gain momentum in the relationship,…

Tomorrow, two high-octane smart guys are going to debate whether or not God exists. It will be quite an event. John Lenox, author, serious math genius, Oxford professor and Biblical Christian will go toe-to-toe with Richard Dawkins, author, serious physicist, Oxford professor, and spokesman for the "new atheism." Should be a great debate. Fun to listen to. Fun to watch. Fun to talk about later. I'll be rooting for Lenox, of course. But in the end, the debate will not make one bit of difference. God doesn't need a math genius to prove He exists. Nor can a physics dude…

To me, this is the biggest job of branding. Yet, most people who talk about branding, even those who really, really get it, hardly give managing expectations a thought. But think about it this way:- Any effort you spend trying to sell somebody who is NOT going to buy is wasted effort...time you will NEVER get back- Any effort you expend to draw prospects who are not qualified to buy or likely to buy is wasted marketing expense- The most expensive part of any sale is the closure-the part that involves people's valuable time, creativity, energy, and knowledge- Anyone who…