Whatever you’re selling – a product, a service, even an idea – you need to communicate its value.
But value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. That’s a universal truth. Value is only meaningful in context.
To someone dying of thirst, water is the precious nectar of life. To the cleaning lady it’s a tool for the job. To a fish it’s home and to a drowning person it’s the deadly enemy. Continue reading →
These kinds of things happen all the time. But when it happens to someone you know well, you pay more attention.
A producer friend I’ll call Ruth was getting ready to renew the business insurance for Don, a loyal and long-standing client of hers.
This isn’t one of those horror stories about losing an important account or the hardball tactics competitors might try to win business.
It’s actually about how you can help someone in serious emotional pain even when you haven’t a clue what to do. Continue reading →
Is your attitude conveying the message you want others to be getting?
Dan Goleman, writing in his seminal book, Emotional Intelligence, points out that “People who are adept at reading and dealing effectively with their own and others’ feelings are at an advantage in any life domain – from romance to office politics.”
If you want to cultivate this attitude advantage, consider the way thoughts and feelings interact. Continue reading →
Years ago, Rolling Stone magazine launched an ad campaign aimed at changing the view of potential advertisers who saw the magazine as a cult music paper read by anti-materialist hippie dropouts.
The campaign used a series of print ads split down the middle, the left side labeled “Perception” and the right side “Reality.” In one case, the perception side showed a funky old hand-painted love bus, while the reality side featured a zippy, brand new sports car fit for an ambitious twenty-something urban consumer. Continue reading →