Cynicism Beats All Expectations

In October 2001 I read something in the New York Times that made me think hype was Apple's only bet--and maybe the brand new "iPod portable music player," as the Mac-run...

I would have thought that all conglomerates have learned how quickly they can be damaged by "not checking in" with their customer base. Doesn't anyone remember a year ago when Tropicana disastrously changed their carton without asking if anyone loved the old one? But no one at NBC...

Maybe it's because our current decade dawned with our dot-com bubble busted, that disputed election, and an unfathomable attack on American soil. Or it could be that so much of our attention in the following years was devoted to news too dire to digest (Iraq's consequences) or fluff too digestible...

Can we get rid of this two week hiatus--and move on over to 1/04/10? Do we need the time off that badly? Am I Scrooge-worthy? Or am I just sensible?

It's last call for the decade and I have had enough. To stop and "celebrate" anything after the year we've...

My parents' idea of success was to land a job with a great company. It didn't matter what job, as long as it was in the right building. Success came from working for IBM or Western Electric or wherever for the long haul, climbing your way through the ranks and...

A few months ago, I started writing about celebrity athletes being a bad bet for marketers. It never occurred to me I'd be adding in Tiger Woods. I could not have imagined Woods to be a kind of guy whom advertisers might consider "unusable" because of an inability to keep...

Is this kind of like the worst economic hardship for us? It's bad out there. Let's Imagine a Worse Year! Sorry 2009 was darn ugly but it could get yuckier if we're not careful. So I've devised some scenarios to make this bright Christmas seem better! In next 12 months...

Strange news from polling data has come up to smack us in the head. And I don't like it.

Gallup's latest oddly-named Lifestyle Poll statistically showed that Americans are less satisfied now with their lives than at any time since 1992! While historically we are less satisfied during tough...

When print newspapers finally die off, today will be among those remembered as reason why. Hundreds of thousands of NY Times readers opened the magazine to find stories about Megan Fox and the Octomom perfectly suited to Us magazine and even Star, and while they were painted as...

Thing thing thing thing. Things. Thingamabobber. Thingamajig. Thingery. Thingy thing.

Possessing sophisticated skills of communicating is elementary when you want people to notice you. Your spoken words have to convey a level of "wordmanship" that inspires confidence in your abilities. Real use of language means ridding yourself of all the...

"Personal Branding" is a term that gets bandied about at every cocktail party despite not having any real discernible meaning. We know the purpose of branding products: to sell them to their market. What exactly does it mean to have a personal brand, though? Further, is a personal brand actually...

"I feel my A.D.D. kicking in," an acquaintance muttered while I was meticulously explaining something. So that's it, huh: a greater kind of self-importance where we name an ailment as an excuse not to listen?

A large percentage of my colleagues have antsy pants and can't keep still in their...

As a so-called expert in this field, I'll get right to the point: PR is not the dark side any more.

Yeah, I was a reporter for a plethora of publications in the hard-to-remember '80s. I do recall titters from my colleagues when I defected to PR. I had to...

I've been hearing a lot of people tell me they won't do anything gutsy: Friends advising me against certain actions cause someone might react poorly (as if anyone's paying attention); colleagues warning they think...

Creativity is almost impossible to define. According to consumer-insight researchers at Lucid Incorporated, every person recognizes he or she has it, but its meaning varies widely. Anna Sandilands and Anna David, who quit Starbucks to found a company notably called Lucid, have appealing perspectives on creativity, both from their experience...

To get an idea of how strange today's gossip scene is we need to look at the history of gossiping. There is no beginning to speak of. We assume that buzzing about others is one of those immutable truisms of the human condition: people talk about other people for the...

Ted Kennedy was undoubtedly the lion of the Senate who lived a long and consistent life as a public servant. Not even political foes can argue that his service was not of the highest order; he served just as his brothers before him had and his legacy is one of...

Leonard Bernstein, the emblem of 1960s New York and icon of the time when classical music still mattered, would have been 91 this week.

Bernstein came onto the scene when art music was cool. Here was a 25-year-old with a wild haircut on stage with the New York Philharmonic. The...

Robert Novak was a man.

He served this country steadfastly during the Korean War; was one hell of a journalist; and, in very many ways, was a pioneer in cable news. His six-times-weekly Evans-Novak Political Report was -- from 1963 until this year -- one of...

It's August 18 in whatever hot (weather -- not status) town that you live. That means -- well, it doesn't mean much. It used to denote the last week of work until Labor Day. But heck you know that's not true anymore! I will stop tweeting for a time in...