Branding Blog

Boom Your Business March 4 & 5: 2-Day AUSTRALIAN Wizard of Ads Seminar

If you're Australian, it's a great excuse to get yourself to the Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne. If you're Canadian or American, there's no better excuse to fly downunder as a business expense.

FIVE Wizard of Ads Partners, including your's truly, are convening for a 2-day event in March.

For just under US$1,000, you'll learn:

• Signaling Theory - Learn what biologists have known for the past three decades.
• Business Problem Topology - How to create a revolutionary innovation model in your business.
• Persuasion Architecture - Improve ROI on your website and business.
• Web Blogs - What you have always wanted to know.
• Online Video Introductions (OVI's) - Your 24/7 online salesperson.
  
• Strategy
• Branding
• How to Calculate an Ad Budget
  
• The Most Common Mistakes in Marketing & Advertising
• The Most Common Mistakes in Marketing to Women
  
• How to Buy Word of Mouth
• Neurology 101
• Personal Experience Factor (PEF)

Please be aware each of these topics is normally a one to two day course in itself. As a sampler you will be given a sneak-peek into each.

Read more about it and register at our Wizard of Ads Australia site.

Grok, Grok, Grok

My buddies over at FutureNow have consolidated all of their bloggy efforts into the NEW GrokDotCom blog.

It's a great new site powered by a ContentRobot installation of WordPress with some very cool technology humming in the background.

In addition to the original content, it pulls in feeds from some great marketing blogs and sites. It may just be the only blog you need to read! I've added the post feed to my sidebar. Check it out.

Art as a Marketing Tool

Sonja Howle has been studying art as a strategic tool for marketing for over a year now and has been busy posting her observations and case studies on her American Visionaries blog. Our Wizardly Customer Experience partner, Mike Dandridge picked up on her latest story about The Palm restaurant in NYC.

By sheer coincidence a book landed in my lap 2 nights ago that chronicles the story of an iconic Austin restaurant called Fonda San Miguel. The restaurant is owned by a native of my little hometown in Nebraska, so I'm familiar with it and I've dined there. It was great, but my focus wasn't on the experience as much as it had been if I had "discovered" it myself.

Now the book has allowed me to re-discover what the owners have been able to create over the past 30 years and how they have woven authentic Mexican cuisine (not the enchilada plate #2) along with art and architecture into a truly experiential dinner.

I sent this link to Sonja and suggested that a group of us head to Fonda San Miguel next week when we're back in Austin. It will be good to catch up with Tom Gilliland and take a look at the place with a different eye.

Terrific New Columnist at Inc.com

Inc.com has a new Marketing Columnist. Michele Miller of WonderBranding fame will be dishing up her marketing wisdom on a regular basis.

Check out her first column and be sure to subscribe to the Inc.com feed!

Why Study the Brain?

It's great having a partner like Craig Arthur. He's put together a wonderful collection of material on advertising, branding and all of the techniques we teach and use for our clients.

Take a look for yourself.

Making Ads Work: Why Study the Brain?