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So You Want To Be an Agency Account Manager? A 17 Step Guide To An Accidental Profession.
So you want to be an agency account manager? First off, no, you probably don’t. But let’s just say you do. There are 17 things you should know first.
Increasing Conversion With Dressing Rooms
Why are dressing rooms always in the back of stores? They can be hard to find (looking at you J.C. Penny), usually on the periphery. In past posts we’ve looked at how in-store sampling increases sales (free samples in grocery stores). So aren’t dressing rooms essentially a vehicle for in-store sampling…of clothes?
Creating Observable Behavior
Here’s the challenge: taking a product or service that most people consume in a non-public way and making it publicly visible. If you’re Ford Motor Company, then the cars you make are mobile billboards for your brand. But what if you’re the local car dealership who sells those cars? How do you take the sales […]
Canned Laugh Tracks: 5 Examples of Social Proof
People imitate what others do. We do this because the actions of others provide us with intel on a given situation. Psychologists call this “social proof,” which is a phenomenon where people imitate the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation. We follow suit because it reduces our […]
We Were Promised Jetpacks …
If you graduated from college between 2006 and today, you’re part of a generation dealing with a new normal. With freshly pressed college degrees in hand, we walked optimistically into the great recession. It was/is hard. Today our cherished college degrees aren’t getting us the jobs we want, to pay for the houses we can’t […]
Honesty and Connection
The content creation machine is out of control. With corporate blogs cranking out pages of seemingly innocuous content, choking the internet to the gills with re-purposed “Top 5” lists, we’re losing sight of what quality writing is. What’s missing in this flood of content is risk, the risk of being disagreed with, the risk of […]
The Power of Stories: 3 Examples
Facts, data, and statistics are great. They help to root claims in reality. However, they’re just cold numbers, and numbers are hard to put into context. But stories are vivid and memorable and our brains are hardwired to recall and react to them. Here are three examples of how storytelling can be used to positively […]
The Medium Is The Message
It’s not only what you say, it’s how you say it. In fact the “how” significantly impacts the “what.” Don’t tell me how cool you are, show me. The choice of medium plays an important role in how your story is told.
Ship It Like SNL
Perfection is impossible. And worse still, it’s subjective. A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow. Saturday Night Live thrives on shipping what is good this week. The format of the show does not allow for the pursuit of perfection. It improvises in the face of bad material. Some sketches are hilarious […]
The Von Restorff Effect
Why do we remember the things we do? Why are certain messages or images memorable? Not just in advertising, but in the larger world? How do we process the worlds around us? To understand this we need to go back, way back.
Reducing Risk vs. Building Trust
Building trust? That’s one way to look at it…
3 Examples of The Anchoring Bias in Marketing
In 1974 cognitive psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky identified what is known as the “anchoring heuristic.” A heuristic is essentially a mental shortcut or rule of thumb the brain uses to simplify complex problems in order to make decisions (also known as a cognitive bias). The anchoring bias describes the common human tendency to […]
What Working at Market Basket Taught Me About Management
Remember your first job? I do. I started work at Demoulas Market Basket — a prominent grocery store in New Hampshire and Massachusetts — when I was 15, bagging groceries, pushing carts, etc,. When you work in the checkout (called “the front end”) you’re either a bagger, cashier, assistant front end manager, or front end […]
Appearance = Reality
Do first impressions matter? Do we make decisions based on information we collect in the first minute of an experience? As in turns out, in many cases a first impression is all the brain needs to make a decision. Take ancient cavemen for example, if something looks like a lion, then it is a lion. […]
Broken Windows Theory and The Office
Your work environment matters. The desks, the chairs, the paint color, the pictures on the wall, and of course, your coworkers. These elements create a landscape that sends a signal to employees encouraging them to act in certain ways. Often times, you’ll hear how creative professionals need to work in an inspirational/creative environment. This “inspiration” […]
12 Lessons Learned in My First Years at an Agency
I spent my first couple years after college working as an ad agency account executive. It was busy, crazy, awesome, stressful, and (in between the madness) fun. I learned some things. These are those things: