The Complete Guide to 2025 Marketing Strategy Planning

The Complete Guide to 2025 Marketing Strategy Planning

Looking to Craft a Killer Marketing Strategy for 2025?

Curtis and I kicked off Season 2 of the Bullhorns and Bullseyes podcast by going live (originally airing December 18, 2024), during which we covered a range of topics with both curiosity and analysis alike.

Appropriately, we opened the show talking about the importance of authenticity when it comes to branding and marketing. (You know...like, going live and in-person in real time?)

We did our best to cover the relevant bases, fielded some live questions, and tried to tee listeners up to hit a home run when developing their 2025 marketing plans!

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Don't Be a Hero

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Don't Be a Hero

Who Is the Hero In Your Story?

If I told you my life story, would you care?

What if I asked you tell me your life story?

Eugene M. Schwartz’s The Brilliance Breakthrough: How to Talk and Write So That People Will Never Forget You should be (and often is) considered to be the “bible” of effective copywriting and storytelling. One of the many tenets Schwartz embraces is the notion of making the reader (or the customer) the hero of the story you’re trying to tell.

Too often, we put the capes on our own backs. And that’s where the writing falls short.

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Let Content Be Your Praise Singer

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Let Content Be Your Praise Singer

Adrian Lurssen tells the story of when he went to see Nelson Mandela deliver an address in his home country of South Africa. He still draws upon the experience today, but in the most unusual context.

As Adrian has recounted this tale to Jay Harrington and me on an episode of The Thought Leadership Project podcast, he likens this notion of a praise singer to how we considers thought leadership content to work on behalf of the expert that shares it.

In Adrian’s estimation — one I happen to share — thought leadership content serves in the capacity of being one’s praise singer. It exists out in the world to tell everyone how smart you are, what you know, what you think, what you can do, how you solve problems. “It sings your praises,” Adrian notes, “even when you’re not there in the room to do it yourself.”

See how…

From the Archive: July 2009

From the Archive: July 2009

11 Things a Failed Music Career Taught Me About Marketing

It might be hard to believe looking at me now, but a full-time music career and pursuit of rock-and-roll stardom preceded my foray into marketing and public relations. (That’s me on the left up there…looking too cool for school.)

But what I learned as a starving artist back in the early 90s taught me the basics of nearly everything I do today as a marcom professional. In order for us to survive, it was all about promotion…and I mean, literally, “survive.” Here, then, are the 11 lessons I look back on and draw upon even today (musicians always “go to 11”):