Your minister of the church of marketing has some words for you to ponder today: if you want to succeed you must show up. Woody Allen has often been quoted - incorrectly - on this subject. What he really said was, “80 percent of success is showing up.” He was not talking about making a cameo [...]

Gave a social media presentation last night to a group of about 45 small business owners as part of Bank of Commerce’s School of Commerce program. I was one of two presenters. While looking at the evaluation forms, I was struck again by how there are always one or two people who don’t get their [...]

Here are the Top 5 Posts From THINKing this month, in case you missed one. Let us know which is your favorite. The Rule Of Reciprocity Twittering Journalists Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say Creativity 2010 - Week #7 Face Time bookmark to:

Here are our creativity links for week 10 of 2010: Three Enemies of Innovation - If innovation’s such a good thing, a good idea, the secret of success, then why isn’t everyone doing it? The Levity Effect - Having fun with innovation.  How far should you let people peek inside your creative process? - Should your creative process [...]

  Creativity is a major topic for us here at My Creative Team. So, we began a weekly series of posts that will run 52 weeks, providing five creativity links in each post. As you might imagine, we look through a lot of creativity-related material to find some really top-notch ones. If you are an iPhone user, [...]

Here are our creativity links for week 9 of 2010: New Creativity iPhone App -  A go-anywhere tool that you can use to catalyze ideas on demand is a compelling one. The Mad World Of Innovation -  I feel I’m in good company as I observe the sheer insanity of companies and the way they embrace innovation. Cultivate Your Genius (podcast) [...]

In 2006, I was introduced to the concept of disintermediation.The short definition is the removal of the middle man.  Since that time I have seen many examples of the Internet acting as a disintermediator in the producer and consumer relationship. Futurist Gerd Leonhard, a consultant to the music industry, put it this [...]

Are you using the rule of reciprocity?  I ran across this topic not too long ago, and it got me to thinking about how this rule applies to marketing and PR. Much of what we PR people do is based upon this rule. Do something for someone else and they will turn around and do something [...]

More creativity links for your dining and dancing pleasure. Creativity & The Idea Grid -  The Idea Grid has been a staple at agencies to illustrate how a product or company can differentiate themselves by occupying or owning  position that no one else is currently exploiting. What Is Lateral Thinking? -  Lateral thinking is one of those [...]

Office worker 1: I just don’t have the bandwidth to get this done. I feel like I’m drinking from a firehose, and besides so many of these assignments are not in my wheelhouse, and they are neither game changers nor paradigm shifters. And we really haven’t baked in all the data yet. Office worker 2: At [...]