All across the heartland of this great nation are hilarious examples of bad advertising--and one in particular has not only hit us on the funny bone, but serves as an object lesson in how to write better, more profitable (one hopes) ad copy. 

There are plenty of folks who will argue that to be competitive requires having merely a better product and an intellectual justification for the benefits. They are wrong, and this particular business category illustrates the power of emotional...

A recent solicitation by an internet radio provider was supposed to tell me four essential truths about advertising with internet audio. What it actually revealed was partial truth combined with possible ignorance. Technology changes. People...

Can you really become big enough as a small brand to inspire an attack from the big brands in your category? This object lesson in how a small brand looks and feels answers the question definitively: yes you can. 

Rebellion, dissension and non-conformity. Is it hard to imagine these qualities coming to the US from a British invader in a three-piece suit? On this Independence Day, we celebrate an independent-thinking British iconoclast who changed American...

The advertising awards handed out at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity do not represent what small businesses can do with their miniscule advertising budgets--or do they? Can you really learn something from a big advertising case...

The Most Interesting Man In The World is an example of an advertising campaign that has been made more successful without being made as interesting--and also serves as a decent study for the small business owner who needs to understand: profit isn't...

Whether you're writing your own copy or someone's writing it for you, it's possible the copy is costing you money--by being incomplete. What are the words? What are they saying? What do they mean? And can you make them better--and more profitable? 

What works better and is more profitable for your business? No brand, or the wrong brand? Interestingly, there's an example of the different ways this can go out on the interstate highways of the Western United States...

A brand always has internal problems. It's how they deal with those problems in relation to the customer that determines success. And if that problem is made the customer's problem, there's a good chance that it will lose a potentially...