If Omnicom’s plan to acquire rival Interpublic (IPG) goes through, the new advertising conglomerate will tower above all others in the industry, in terms of both total revenue and employees. Not everyone is happy about it. Recent survey data shows a larger percentage of marketers disapprove of the merger (27%) than approve (15%). The online…Read More
Humans are unique.
We give names to the days of the week (we even have weeks). We eat something different for breakfast than dinner. We chronicle the passage of time. In fact, our chronicling of time is what makes it noticeable.
Coordination can only happen when we’re in sync with our peers, and coordination is the result of the peers we choose and the time we choose to measure.
Show me your calendar and I’ll tell you where you’ve been, where you’re going and who’s on the journey with you.
If your calendar isn’t working for you, get a new one.
By design, filing taxes is painful. So much so that 56% of Americans dread doing it and 26% say they hate it, per Pew Research. TurboTax has built its business around this collective grumble, making it easier for people to submit to the IRS in a few clicks. Now, before the April 2025 tax filing…Read More
“You can try this at home…”
But you probably won’t.
The secret recipe isn’t the reason Coke is successful. And the recipe for KFC isn’t much of a recipe at all.
The secret way you do the thing isn’t what keeps your clients coming back. It’s the part you do in public that matters.
Organizations lie all the time. Big lies, sometimes, but usually small ones.
Is the call volume actually unusually heavy? Did a chef really prepare this meal just for me?
These fiblets are so common that they become part of the culture, a trope that lets the user know that this is a real organization–the same way that certain kinds of logos are trendy, these lies show that the organization is part of a particular genre. (Have you ever noticed how many INSURANCE COMPANIES WRITE SOME OF THEIR RULES IN ALL CAPS? It’s because that’s what big insurance companies do).
The insurgent marketer, then, has two practical choices:
As consumers, it definitely doesn’t pay to call out the fiblets when talking to hard-working frontline employees. They’ve got it tough enough already.
Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina CBS affiliate WNCN has promoted two newsroom staffers. Reporter Deana Harley has been named statewide Capitol Reporter and Leslie Nash has been promoted to assistant news director from executive producer. “In the years Deana has been at CBS 17, she’s proven herself to be a smart, talented, enterprising reporter, who knows how…Read More
No story permeated American life more in 2024 than the presidential election. Now that the election is over, 28% of ADWEEK readers said the outcome has changed their company’s marketing strategy. During the run-up to the election, some advertisers wanted nothing to do with the divisive headlines and contentious social content that often accompanied it….Read More
We’ve arrived at the final Friday of 2024 and as Tom Lehrer so aptly put it decades ago–that was the year that was. But TVNewser suspected that news industry insiders probably had more to say about the historic 12 months Americans watched unfold on their outlets of choice, whether that was legacy media or social…Read More
Twenty-seven. That’s how many times I offered a brilliant freelance creative director a full-time job when I was chief creative officer. Twenty-seven times, they said no. It drove me crazy. They already freelanced with us regularly, loved the team, crushed the briefs, and (apparently) tolerated me just fine. The money was great. What was the…Read More
You might be both.
In big organizations, project management is a distinct skill. It involves timekeeping, record keeping and organization. The project manager knows the budget and the deadline, and ensures that constituents stay in sync. This is the construction coordinator and the movie producer.
The product manager, on the other hand, makes decisions about features, scale and the final product. The product manager coordinates many inputs and ultimately makes critical marketing decisions, because they’re deciding what the product is. This is the architect, the movie director and the real estate developer.
In startups, agencies and scrappy organizations, it’s quite likely that one person is doing both jobs.
If that’s you, it’s worth a second to consider if it pays to get better at the one you don’t like as much. Managing projects better changed my career.
