Many wise managers and agency partners have taught me over the years that when asking for changes to creative work, framing the problem you want the creatives to solve, versus telling them how to solve it will virtually always get you the best results.

For example, instead of saying this: “Can you make the label bright green?”
Say something like: “I’d like the label to be more noticeable on the package”.

This way, you use the creatives to identify different, multiple ways to solve your problem. Versus spending their time on coming up with the perfect shade of green.

So I was pretty mortified a few weeks ago when I realized that I should have applied this “Frame The Problem” approach to my personal life as well.
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Okay, so maybe I’m biased. After all, I do love to travel. And I just got back from another great trip. This time I spent 2 weeks in Egypt and Jordan with two friends.

But I have always thought that the best marketers are able to put themselves in other people’s shoes, and traveling is a great opportunity to practice that. When you are exposed to how people in different cultures live and work and eat and shop, it can help you look more objectively at your own customer and consumer behavior back home.

Now that I’m home, while reflecting on the trip, I realized that there are 10 things I try to do to better experience a country while I’m there

10 Tips for Maximizing Your Marketing Skills Through Travel Read More -›

I read an article recently in National Geographic Adventure magazine (link below) about how a team of climbers helped with an archeological expedition in one of my favorite parts of the world, Nepal.

The gist of the story is that for years, local residents of Mustang have “reported seeing old manuscripts fluttering out of [an inaccessible] cave, but they never had the means to explore it.” So National Geographic got an expedition together to use expert mountaineers to climb up and into the caves. One of the climbers said something which has really stuck with me: “It was the first time in my career that I got to use climbing techniques for something other than mountaineering.”

There’s a great parallel to the business world here. Read More -›