When I moved to Chicago in 2002, I knew very few people and had time and energy to explore my new hometown. I felt ready to step outside of my comfort zone — so, I signed up for an acting class. Which was ironic, because I’d just vacated the city where everyone is an actor. […]
These days, you can follow a movie’s production schedule for months or even years before it’s released. Director and casting rumors, set photos, interviews with the right entertainment magazines and websites, social media campaigns — no rock is left unturned for a movie that wants to build incredible anticipation. However, there’s one movie-marketing tool in particular […]
What do you mean by integrated marketing? A new client asked me this the other week. He’s a smart guy with a lot of experience, so I paused to try to give him a more thoughtful answer rather than just barfing out a definition gathered from Wikipedia (of which there are at least three). In […]
Two years ago, my inbox was at 28k+ unread messages. Forget overwhelming — my inbox was simply un-addressable. If something fell below the fold (50 emails), it was effectively gone forever, unless I remembered and specifically searched for it. This led to dropped communications, forgotten tasks, and a constant anxiety that I was missing something […]
MarketingProfs featured our article about glassCanopy’s content marketing project on their homepage this morning and we’ve seen a deluge of traffic. So, I thought I’d offer a quick update. It’s been three months since we published “Content Marketing Lessons: 30 Articles in 30 Days.” Since then, we’ve posted 59 additional articles to bring us to […]
I am shocked – shocked! – by the number of poorly formatted web articles and blog posts I come across on a regular basis. Even some of the more polished websites still fail to spend enough quality time ensuring their content is easily digestible and flows intuitively. But there are some simple ways to optimize blog […]
As a copywriter with a degree in English, there are a lot of arcane grammatical rules I have buried away in my head. I’m the type of person who looked up the definition of “split infinitive,” just so I could use it in conversation the next time someone brought up Sandra Bullock (there’s a moment […]
Here’s a joke: what do Dracula, an obnoxious camel, a frustrated caveman, and a talking gecko have to do with car insurance? Answer: NOTHING. Don’t get the joke? That’s cool; my sense of humor is weird. And so is Geico’s marketing strategy. They’re pioneers of what I call absurdist marketing — a strategy that completely […]
Is it possible to feel overwhelming empathy for an experience you’ve never had? 12 Years a Slave is the harrowing account of Solomon Northup, a free black man who was captured and sold into slavery in the 1840’s. Solomon’s narrative — and the stories of those with whom he travels — unfolds through bravura performances, […]
I saw American Hustle in a jam-packed theater, and the laughter in the room was irrepressible. Proud and pompous beer guts, wavering British/New Joisey accents, and a cast clearly enjoying the hell out of themselves, made for perhaps the most uproarious cinematic experience I’ve had in a long time. But it also reinforced a sobering […]
