What makes an innovation successful? What makes it have great impact? What makes it so successful that we don’t even notice it’s ubiquity? One word: SIMPLICITY. No one seemed to understand this better in the last half-century than Charles Harrison. Charles Harrison is not exactly a household name. But you know him. Well, you know his products. But, the products he designed have become so ubiquitous that you probably don’t even think about them. Plastic garbage bins, the Fisher-Price View-Master, Craftsman power tools, lawn mowers, hair dryers, toasters…the list in practically endless. Harrison was an industrial product designer for the Sear Roebuck Company from 1961 to 1993. During that time he designed over 750 products that Americans and people worldwide came to know and use on a regular basis.  Read the rest of this post

Go to any wine shop this week and you are bound to find them announcing “Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé” (“the Beaujolais Nouveau has arrived”). Step inside and you’ll find countless cases of colorfully labeled bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau displayed prominently. Yes, it’s that time of year again! On the third Thursday of November, the official release date chosen by the French government, wine stores around the world celebrate the arrival of Beaujolais Nouveau. And, it’s a marketing blitz like no other in the wine world. American and Japanese wine enthusiasts in particular look forward to this day with anticipation and are often waiting in line to get the first bottles of the latest Nouveau vintage.  Read the rest of this post

Larry Deckinger

In everyone’s life, there are those rare people you come into contact with that truly change your life. There are a precious few such people in my life, but probably none more important than Dr. E.L. Deckinger…or as most of us have come to know him, Larry. I met Larry back in 1986 when I was studying marketing and advertising at St. John’s University in New York. He was my professor in my first advertising class. When I walked into the class for the first time, I saw Dr. Deckinger’s crazy, wild hair and his big glasses and wondered what I had gotten myself into. Before long, I realized that what I had gotten myself into was the opportunity to work with a marketing and advertising genius on a daily basis. Dr. Deckinger distilled his 40+ years of marketing knowledge into some very basic principles: (1) be different….always be different (2) be remarkable…always be remarkable and (3) make people happy…ALWAYS! At the time, I didn’t realize it, but these were not just the keys to success in the advertising and marketing world, they were the keys to a successful and happy life.  Read the rest of this post

As promised last week, here is the download link to the latest Seth Godin Tribes teleseminar featuring:

• Keith Ferrazzi, bestselling author of Never Eat Alone
• Pam Slim, author of Escape from Cubicle Nation (Portfolio, ‘09)
• Dan Pink, bestselling author of A Whole New Mind and Adventures of Johnny Bunko

This download link will lead to a blank page and open a pop-up box for you to click save and download the MP3 to your computer. please be sure your pop-up blockers are turned off.

If you’d rather not download the MP3, click here to stream audio of the teleseminar instead.  Read the rest of this post