Marketing Newsletter Archive

2023 Spring: Marketing Spring Cleaning

Case Study: Conducting a Marketing Audit

Practicum: ChatGPT for Marketing

 

 

2022 Fall: Marketing Reality Check: Are You Really Saying What You Think You Are?

Case Study: Backing off Buzzwords

Marketing Minute: Reasons to Believe – Not Just Blowing Smoke

Case Study: Lakeview Pantry Rebrand

 

 

2021 Fall: Invention and Reinvention

Case Study: Wynk™ THC & Seltzer – Diving Into Cannabis Beverages

Video Case Study: Backing off Buzzwords

Case Study: Evolving Value Propositions Over Time

 

2021 Winter: Turning the Kaleidoscope

Article Review & Case Study: Looking at Your Competitive Set in a New Way

Video: Thinking Differently and the Human Brain

Blog Post: A Fresh Look at How B2B Customers Buy 

 

2020 Spring: Manageable Marketing While Sheltering in Place

Blog Post: How to Lose a Lead in 10 Seconds: When Email Marketing Goes Horribly Wrong

Blog Post: Tools You Can Use Now to Improve Your Marketing – It’s Time for a Marketing Audit

Case Study: From Positioning to Packaging – Building Amylu’s Award-Winning Packaging

 

 

2019 Fall: Better Stronger Faster

Blog Post: Is Your Point of Difference a Buried Treasure?

Video: Four Easy Tools for Identifying Your Point of Difference

Video: Throwdown: So You Think YOUR Service is Differentiated?

 

2019 Spring: Positioning Palooza

Blog Post: So You Have a Positioning Statement, Now What? Elevator Pitches

Blog Post: So You Have a Positioning Statement, Now What? Messaging Matrix

Under Construction: Positioning Boot Camp

 

2018 Fall: It’s Okay to Be Needy

Blog Post: Bain’s B2B Value Pyramid

• Blog Post: Warby Wannabees

Video: Using Human Words – How to Describe Unmet Needs

 

2018 Spring: Getting Into Your Customers’ Heads: How to Get Your Message Heard

Blog Post: Overcoming “Not For Me” With Your Marketing Messaging

Blog Post: So You Want to Know More About Your Customers

Video: Strategic Execution

Video: Making Your Customers’ Lives Easier

 

2017 Fall: Applying B2C Thinking to Your B2B

Blog Post: Marketing For a Smaller B2B

Video: Marketing Minute: Word of Mouth

Workshop: Marketing Strategy for B2B’s

 

 

2017 Spring: Filling Your Marketing Tool Box

Blog Post: Marketing Your New Book

• Video: The Difference Between Strategies and Tactics

Blog Post: Net Promoter Score: Measuring Word of Mouth Potential

Marketing Hack: Measuring Brand Awareness

 

2016 Fall: High Efficiency Marketing: Making the Best Use of Your Time

Blog Post: The Care and Feeding of Your Brand Ambassadors

Video: Four Market Research Rules You Should Know

Blog Post: Have I Got a Deal For You – Evaluating Unsolicited Opportunities

 

2016 Spring: Marketing Hacks: Maximizing a Minimal Budget

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  • • Blog Post: Favorite Marketing Hacks
    • Video: Conducting Free Client Research
      • Blog Post: No-Budget Research

 

 

2015 Fall: Change is in the Air: Thinking Differently About Your Marketing

• Webinar: Positioning – Laying the Foundation for Sales & Marketing Success
  • • Blog Post: Blowing Up the B2B Sales Funnel
    • Blog Post: Netflix: Building a World Class Brand
      • #CoolClient: Take a virtual tour through a Matterport 3D Showcase

 

2015 Summer: Bringing Your Strategy to Life: Creative Partnerships

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• Case Study: Hiring an Advertising Agency
  • • Blog Post: Five Pitch Mistakes.
    • Blog Post: Tips For Hiring Freelance Creatives

 

 

2015 Winter: Don’t Drive Off the Road: Take Some Time to Plan

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• Video: DIY Marketing Planning, from a workshop we conducted for the University of Chicago’s Polsky Accelerator.
  • Blog Post: What it really took to make Dollar Shave Club’s viral video.

 

 

 2014 Summer: Reaching Your Target

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• Video: Narrowing Your Target, from a workshop we conducted for the University of Chicago’s Polsky Accelerator.
• Book Review: Jonah Berger’s Contagious, about what companies of any size can do to drive word-of-mouth marketing.
• Case Study: Empowering a sales force to build their own personal brands while concurrently promoting the company.

 

2014 Spring: Know Thy Customer

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• An overview of the basic how-to research class we created for 1871, Chicago’s tech incubator.
• Blog Post: Easy customer research.
• Two great articles from Inc. magazine that talk about innovative research methodologies young companies are using. How To Gauge Customer Demand and Putting Data in Design

 

 

2013 Fall: Gear Up For Growth

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• Blog Post: Two-part series on gearing up for marketing growth.  A response to entrepreneur Ankur Gopal’s questions about how to know when you’re ready for “real” marketing.
• A review of one of our favorite go-to marketing books, Tim Calkins’ Breakthrough Marketing Plans.

 

 

2013 Spring: Marketing Simplicity

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• Blog Posts: Don’t Let Cool Be the Enemy of Clear and More Powerful Elevator Pitches.
• A simple but clever video demonstrating why great creative takes time.
• Update on a project we completed for Clarke, a global environmental products and services company.

 

 

2012 Fall: Defining Your Brand

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• Two brief video segments from a marketing workshop we conducted for the University of Chicago Booth Accelerator Program’s inaugural class of entrepreneurs.  The segments address two subjects we get asked about a lot: 1) The difference between positioning and elevator pitch and 2) how to define a company’s competitive set.
• Update on a project we completed for Swingbyte, an innovative golf technology company.

 

2012 Spring: Powerful Customer Approaches

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• A recent webinar we conducted on creating powerful value propositions for your business.
• Insight into how consumer habits can help inform your marketing.

 

 

2011 Fall: Fresh Perspectives

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• A review of some marketing lessons from the 10/11 TEDx Midwest,
• Case Study: How to hire an agency that’s right for your company.

 

 

2011 Spring: Looking At Your Business Differently

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• Simon Sinek’s terrific TEDx presentation that looks at value propositions from his distinctive “inside out” perspective.
• Article: The ways that successful entrepreneurs truly think differently than their successful corporate counterparts. How Great Entrepreneurs Think.
• Case Study:  Client who requested Marketing Coaching so he could learn more about marketing his company by collaborating with us.

 

2010 Fall: B2B Marketing In A B2C World

• Examples of B2B client companies who are learning to speak their B2C customers’ languages better.  Three benefits are:
  1. Easier for customers to buy when benefits can be clearly understood;
  2. More constructive conversations because you start from the same page;
  3. Demonstrate that you understand your customers, an important building block for strong, long-term relationships.

 

2010 Spring: Marketing Mistakes To Avoid

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• An Argentum TV appearance outlining three common marketing mistakes that small to mid-sized businesses often make.
• A brief review of Switch, How To Change When Change Is Hard, that addresses smart, easy ways to make change possible for you and your organization.

 

2009 Fall: Smart Marketing

• Two of our favorite marketing-related articles, Business Week’s piece on the Comcast Cares Guy and the Harvard Business Review article about how the Sales and Marketing functions evolve in an organization
• Two case studies that highlight the value that strategic marketing can bring to any organization.

 

2009 Spring: Smart Marketing in Tough Times

• Visual Case Study: How Brand Positioning Led To Improved Packaging
• Two case studies that show how and when hiring a Timeshare VP of Marketing® can make sense for a business.

 

 

2008 Summer: Celebrating Two Years

• Article: Is Your Company A B2B2C?
• Case study: Helping A Company Live The Brand

 

 

2007 Summer: Celebrating Our First Year

• Quoted in Business Week’s SmallBiz
• Case Studies: Branding A Brazilian Adventure Spa, Developing an Innovation Pipeline and Helping A B2B Supplier Provide Strategic Marketing Support