This month, Jim Stengel officially retired as Chief Marketing Officer of Procter & Gamble.  As the leader of the largest spending marketing organization in the world, Jim was often named the most influential marketer and brand-builder in the industry.  Last week, he gave his final speech as P&G’s Chief Marketing Officer, speaking at the Association of National Advertisers Masters of

It continues to amaze me how many brands do not invest in digital, choosing instead to stay with the safety of traditional mass media (ie TV and print).  When asked why, you will hear a lot of different answers, but none that haven’t been proven wrong time and time again.  Digital is measurable.  Digital can provide solid ROI.  Digital can

Today’s guest post is written by Bryan Radtke, P&G’s Shopper Based Design Brand Manager, Bengals fan, and all around good guy.  Special thanks to him for picking up the slack on Hard Knox Life while I am out this week. A few months ago I embarked on the annual painful journey that is fiscal year action plan development. The goal

Image by joseph a via Flickr Over the next week, I will be making the move to Cincinnati to start my new assignment in Procter & Gamble Corporate Marketing.  Since I haven’t yet mastered the art of mobile blogging, I have asked a few of my peers and closest friends to keep the fires the burning here at Hard Knox

The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding by Al Ries is one of my favorite branding books out there.  In fact, it was one of the first books I read when I started full-time at P&G.  But though I generally have a ton of respect for Ries, I don’t see eye-to-eye with him in his latest AdAge article entitled “The Pitfalls