If a campaign fails but no one is there to measure it, did it ever really fail?

Years ago, while spending some days in a hospital (never mind why, it wasn’t my fault), I roomed with a retired junior high school math teacher. When he introduced himself as such I recoiled, shaking off some nasty memories. But as time passed, with little else to do, we began conversing.

Read this 3 times (it's short)

Marketers (at least good ones like us) keenly appreciate repetition in our messages. And we’re on it. It’s been reported that a city dweller sees up to 5,000 advertising messages per day. And that was over 10 years ago. We're not repeating our messages because our audiences are thick headed. It's tough out there. Repetition is the necessity of a business landscape that is oftentimes cluttered.

A Clumsy Ballerino

Time was, you had a choice of getting your newspaper in the morning or afternoon. The “old” newspaper business is all but dead, gasping in the wake of digital news. And the afternoon papers were first to go in an industry that has been massively impacted by the transition. I was proud to be a part of that old era, and the lessons learned were enduring and invaluable.

Go-to-Market: It looks easy, doesn't it?

I once drove demand generation globally for four product programs. Each program had a marketing director who led a small team of marketers. They were responsible for product use cases: disaster recovery, applications, databases, and business intelligence. The marketing directors developed unique value propositions, messages, proof points, customer success stories, and target lists of buyers and influencers for their programs. They also provided direct support of sales activities, and served as industry pundits. And, they came to me to generate demand so their programs' value could be measured in leads, opportunities, and sales revenue.

It was chaos.

High-class Jeep Problems

I’m fortunate enough to own two Jeep Wranglers, both of which I’ve had since new. My “old” one is a 2000 Wrangler Sahara. The “new” one is a 2009 Wrangler Sahara. And the 18-going-on-19-year-old is now relegated to “fun.” I keep it parked in the garage with the tops off (it came equipped with both hard and soft tops), and just drive it when the weather is suitably warm and sunny. (And it's not too far from home, because it's a little unreliable.)