Tom Asacker wrote a really nice piece on the purpose of business..

Your business should be useful, honorable and compassionate. He starts out with a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Along the same line is this recent Monday Morning Memo from Roy H. Williams on the Death of Hype…

Six weeks ago we launched a pair of highly funded, direct-response advertising tests for two different products – a foot cream and a diet supplement – both of which are exceptional. In the first phase of the tests, the ads featured classic, direct-response language: words like “amazing,” “FREE,” and “Call now.” Would you believe that we received not one call from any of the audiences targeted, not even from the older demo that has traditionally responded well to such offers? The following week we toned down the language and the style and received 151 calls from a test-market town of only 300,000 people. Same product, same offer; we simply used different words and a more casual style. I can’t let you see or hear the ads because those tests are still underway. But I can let you listen in on a radio campaign that exemplifies the new style I’m describing. Would you like that?

You have to be REAL. You have to be GOOD. It doesn’t hurt to be REALLY GOOD either.