Are Your Superstar Employees Suppressing Other's Productivity?

We've all been conditioned to believe that superstars are required to accomplish huge victories in everything from sports to business...until now! In this Ted Talk, Margaret Heffernan uses a humorous but factual analogy of what she refers to as "super chickens" to kick off her observations of how employees can accomplish incredible results using some surprising methods of working together without "pecking" each other to death to get to the top. These methods encourage team work, open minded strategic thinking and, of all things, friendship amongst co-workers.

I personally found several of Margaret's points hitting close to home as I've always operated with a "no trophy needed" motto with respect to leadership. In many cases its my job to create a road map and provide "roadside assistance" as our team works to create a marketing or communications solution for a client or a cause. Once we've reached our goal and it's time for recognition and rewards, it's all about recognizing the people doing the day to day directional work....not about the map maker. Cheers to Margaret and one of my favorite Ted Talks.

Trademark Law | Is your trademark in jeopardy?

Are you launching a business or do you have a risky or possibly offensive brand name and logo? On Monday, June 24th, 2019 the Supreme Court of the United States possibly ruled in your favor and the company at the epicenter of this major case is clothing brand name "FUCT." Read the interesting article on Fox News below and talk to your Trademark Attorney about saving your business from being "FUCT" if for some reason you do create a brand that crosses the new legal line set by the highest court in the land of the free. 

Supreme Court strikes down ban on scandalous trademarks, in dispute over 'FUCT' clothing line

The Supreme Court on Monday struck down part of a federal law blocking trademarks for names or logos bearing "immoral" or "scandalous" images -- including profanity and sexual imagery. The justices said in a unanimous ruling that the law violated the constitutional rights of designer Erik Brunetti.

Top 10 Reasons Our Agency Loves Constant Contact

Constant Contact is GBM Marketing's choice for eMail marketing because it allows us to focus on quality content and optimization without getting stuck in application set up hell. But, most of all we love the click through rates our clients get with every campaign!

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Wow...what a great feeling when you create an email campaign for a Century21 franchise and land a 54% click through rate from a targeted email list. In the world of proactive marketing results like this most certainly lead to phone calls, emails and good conversations between agents and prospects. And, we all know that quality conversations lead to closed sales.

One important reason why we use Constant Contact is that we can focus on quality content production and optimization without spending too much time fine tuning the email marketing templates, images and links. This is because the developers behind the Constant Contact interface have engineered easy to use "what you see is what you get" tools that are fast and reliable for any level of publisher. The finished publications look professional and respond well with all types of devices. This also makes our agency confident when we commit to delivering marketing and communications results quickly and cost effectively.

Grateful Dead Marketing Lesson #1: Let Fans Share Your Product

Cassette with Grateful Dead Tunes

How in the heck did the Grateful Dead know that to build a global following of loyal fans they would need to let people record and share their live music - royalty free?

What an amazing marketing strategy and to think this came from the stereotypical "hippie" band at a time when there was no Internet, no smart phones, no cable television, and the most popular recording would later lead to Richard Nixon resigning from his post as the President of the United States. 

Even better, the band never played the same set of music at any one show creating a constant stream of people sharing recordings of live music that were highly unique. This was the epitome of social sharing in a time when recording music wasn't easy and sharing a cassette tape required an in-person exchange. Imagine if Soundcloud and Facebook were available way back in the seventies?