For many small businesses, their first contact with marketing comes when they need a brochure, website, or trade journal ad. After finding a graphic designer, web developer, copywriter or marketing communications guru, these companies focus their marketing efforts on branding and messaging. In some cases, these companies are unaware of other marketing programs — and […]

A business article I wrote for Realm Magazine will be featured in a Canadian university textbook. The article, which has been translated into French, outlines steps to writing a successful business plan, while telling the tale of a Calgary clothing manufacturer now known as Body Blocker Co. My 2-page article appears on pages 108-9, followed […]

I recently received an email from International Dairy Queen’s director of product and brand marketing. Dairy Queen wanted to address my blog on Moolatte. According to Dairy Queen’s representative, “We love the MooLatte’ name and are having excellent success with the product. The name is not a play on words. The confusion seems to be […]

Google’s right to call its online shopping service “Froogle” may be in jeopardy. Last Friday, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) rejected Google’s claim that a competiting website, Froogles.com, infringed on the Google trademark. Froogles.com, a search engine for free stuff, pre-dates Google’s registration of the Froogle.com domain. Froogles probably refers to […]

Dairy Queen’s latest creation, the Moolatte,* is creating a stir. Aimed at drawing frapuccino lovers to DQ, the name sounds like “mulatto”. Now, I must admit that, upon first hearing “Moolatte”, my in-brain Napster engine turned on a Dean Martin rendition…”Moolatte, whoa-oh, Moolatte…oh, oh, oh, oh!” However, after seeing a couple of ads for the […]

Atlas DMT has released a study showing that paid search engine listings affect website traffic. Atlas measured the trade-offs between the top 10 ranks in paid listings on search engines. The study found that, in some cases, a lower ranking may be more desirable, given the costs of supporting increased traffic. Overall, marketers should expect […]

Want to know something? Check Wikipedia. You’ll find 300,000 English articles — that’s five times the volume of Encyclopedia Britannica, according to The Boston Globe. And Wikipedia also offers a half-million articles in other languages. You might expect at least a penny for Wikipedia’s thoughts, but this massive online encyclopedia is free. Readers don’t pay […]

The National Business Reviewhas an article on how “fear that immunizations were part of an American plot to make Nigerian Muslims sterile and spread HIV has led to a large outbreak of polio among children”. Nigeria now accounts for 77 percent of the world’s polio cases. The challenges faced by Nigerian health educators are, in […]

Old Vancouver Grizzlies never die — they just claw their way to Memphis, Tennessee. The Vancouver Grizzlies played their last Vancouver game on April 18, 2001, later re-emerging in Tennessee. The Memphis Grizzlies unveiled their new logo in public today. Developing and marketing the new Grizzlies logo.* took three years of focus groups, NBA negotations, player feedback, staff […]

Many companies spend huge amounts of time and money to build flashy websites that will wow visitors. They post the site…and wait. And wait and wait and wait. No one stumbles upon the site. Why? Search engine optimization and solid copywriting skills go hand-in-hand with website development. If you haven’t build both your site and […]