The 2009 BusinessWeek "social media snake oil" warning, what it got right, how social media marketing matured, and why the same pattern recurs with every new marketing channel.
The FTC has updated its guidelines for marketing testimonials, affecting bloggers and celebrity endorsers. How will this affect social media?
Journalism's most interesting careers now run through indie magazines, blogs, and email lists — and treat the journalist as the operator of a small business rather than the employee of a large one.
Most corporate writing is bad. The exceptions — Berkshire, Amazon, Apple — share a pattern. What good corporate writing actually requires, and what it costs.
From King Gillette's 1903 razor to ChatGPT's 2022 launch, free has been brand infrastructure for 122 years — the playbook from Dropbox to SKIMS to Tesla to the Vatican.
Paying a stranger to post your message was a questionable idea in 2009. It's a bigger business and the same questionable idea in 2026. Why you can rent reach but never rent trust — the FTC disclosure reality, and what actually moves customers.
Pinkwashing turned breast cancer awareness into a marketing category — pink jets, pink cement mixers, pink beer-pong tables. The record on what actually funded research.
Breast cancer awareness goes mobile with Bright Pink's new Underwire Alerts to remind women to do a self breast exam on a monthly basis. The organization has many projects on the go, but boosting use of technology is proving to work well.
Twelve marketing and PR terms to retire in 2026 — synergy, leverage, robust, seamless, best-in-class, cutting-edge, game-changer, unlock, disrupt, pivot, ever-evolving, at-the-end-of-the-day — and what to say instead.
Fifteen years of brand campaigns and crises on Facebook produced more case studies than any other platform. Brand pages, paid acquisition, comment-layer crisis communications, Group strategy, and the lessons that carry into AI Communications. Satellite to the Facebook and Meta hub.