Author: admin

I have long been interested in the Psychology of Marketing and was interested to read the treatment of that topic in last fall’s release, Arlene Dickinson’s Persuasion: A New Approach to Changing Minds (Toronto: HarperCollins, 2011). Canadian readers may recognize Dickinson as the sole female “dragon” of  CBC’s popular reality show, “Dragon’s Den,” a show in which new cash-strapped entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to a panel of veteran (and wealthy) business developers, who may offer them financial backing and mentorship.

In a fusion of business book, biography and self-help guide, Dickinson first tells her “rags-to-riches” story. She was a broke divorcée at age 31, with only a high school education, no experience and four children to care for. In just one year, she became a partner of Calgary’s start-up “Venture,” which soon became one of the country’s most successful, independently-owned, marketing firms. And, 10 years later, she was the highly successful CEO of the company.

Continue reading “Highlights from Reading Arlene Dickinson’s _Persuasion: A New Approach to Changing Minds_ (HarperCollins:2011)”

Want to Write a Better Case Study? (with thanks to Steve Slaunwhite and Ed Gandia, who have written about this format for AWAI):

Case studies are a common format of B2B Copywriting that chronicle the creation and functioning of a successful product or process in a detailed “success story.” Recently I completed a case study on a high-tech food development technology, which gave me cause to reflect on how to write better case studies! Here are 5 major tips on how to improve the case studies that you may be writing . . . . . Continue reading “5 Ways to Improve your Case Study Writing”

A “White Paper” is a long article that explains a new and/or better solution to a problem. Although White Papers vary somewhat in length, the average length is usually about 2000 words (or 8 pages, including a front cover and the back page that details the company whose technology or product is being profiled).

Other names by which “White Papers” are known are the “Special Report,” “Creative Brief,” “Guide to X.” Continue reading “7 Tips to Write a Better White Paper*”

In Linchpin: Are you Indispensable?, Seth Godin cites the late Steve Jobs of Apple (a definite “linchpin”) as saying “Real artists ship,” and that “shipping” (or getting things done) is difficult, because of the “resistance.” This blog posting will explore further Godin’s analysis of Creatives’ “resistance” and how it works. Again, his arguments defy easy cataloging, so I summarize here with examples familiar to you.  The “lizard brain” is the reason you’re nervous or afraid, why you don’t do the best art you can do, and why you don’t “ship” when you can.

Our “resistance” to our own creative, risky work, Godin writes, is predictable and understandable. After all, society pushes artists to “be” geniuses (e.g. “American Idol,” reality TV shows, and pre-school “education” for babies of ambitious parents). To be seen to be a genius is society’s concern and is opposed to the alternative of encouraging artists “to allow the genius within to flourish” (107).

Godin says that we have to think differently about failure as Creatives, and not let the risk of losing feed the “resistance,” to the point that you think “that you don’t deserve to win” and so that giving up begins to look attractive (115). The truth is that each of us does and will always fail at something, and “the key is not to let that wound you out of working.” If we discipline ourselves to write bad ideas daily, we’ll “eventually find that some good ones slip through” (117). But the “temptation to sabotage the new thing [idea or plan] is huge, precisely because it might work” (122). Continue reading “Lacking the Motivation of a “Linchpin?” Resisting your Own Resistance in Seth Godin’s _Linchpin_ (Part Three)”

“The Thing you most need to do . . . is the thing the resistance most wants you to stop” (131).

Returning to Seth Godin’s manifesto on Marketing, Linchpin: Are you Indispensable?,  I want to review in this blog Godin’s ideas on how you can gain the self-acceptance and respect of a linchpin paradoxically by doing the things you least want to do, and that you know you will do imperfectly. This work requires us to counter our own “resistance,” that comes from the “lizard brain” (in Godin’s famous term), if we are to create art.

Godin divides the human mind into two parts—the “daemon” (Roman for “genius”), an “inner or attendant spirit or inspiring force” (OED), and the “resistance.” He says that the world forces us to “trade our genius and artistry for apparent stability” (1). A painful truth is that creative work of all kinds can threaten one’s mental health, partly because we feel anguish from the conflict between our ideas and the outside world. And, more importantly to this blog, we exert mental energy and feel stress when we experience the clash between the work of expressing one’s inner artist (i.e. to record what the “daemon” says) and the insistent force of “resistance.”

“Resistance” is the enemy of the “daemon,” and the daemon has no control over it. At the same time, the resistance is “afraid” of what will happen “if your ideas get out” and “your gifts are received” (107). How many of us haven’t felt that love/hate ambivalence of taking on a new (difficult) client or landing that very demanding project? Continue reading “Lacking Motivation that a “Linchpin” Needs? Resisting your own Resistance in Seth Godin’s _Linchpin_ (Part Two)”