Last month you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing about Old Spice ads.
The company managed to put itself back on the map with a number of humorous commercials featuring Isaiah Mustafa and Terry Crews. What, if anything, can entrepreneurs and professionals of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) learn from them?

The following posting is from my monthly column for the Globe and Mail. I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original version online here:
Creative problem solvers defy marketing conventions
Here’s a challenge for all the open-minded marketers out there: The next time you [...]

Almost every entrepreneur is focused on doing something differently, creating a different product, a different culture or something that stands out in a crowded marketplace. Everyone wants to be unique but very few companies are willing to do what it takes to achieve this because they are stricken with a condition I like to call [...]

The harder you try to play it safe, the more likely you are to fail, but far too many organizations are still perfectly comfortable fitting in. It doesn’t take long to figure out that if you deploy that strategy you won’t break through.
In a world cluttered with communication, advertising cannot spread the word about your [...]

There are newly graduated, ambitious adults who are fresh out of university eager to implement knowledge that is 50 years old. There are CMOs and marketing directors who are sticking to these strategies and are still asking why their business is not growing. All of these people will either suffer or are currently suffering because [...]