Every day in business, I wear two hats (metaphorically of course).  The first hat is in the agency world as the Chief Marketing Officer at Rockfish.  The second hat is in the start-up investor world, both as the co-founder of The Brandery and as a partner at Brand Ventures.  While these two professions have more differences than similarities, I know

Last week, quite the debate was started when Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures wrote a post that shared his thoughts on marketing as it relates to start-ups.  I decided to wait a week to respond because frankly I was kinda fired up about Fred’s disrespect to my profession. You see, apparently Fred has a major issue with the entire

Love this quote courtesy of Bob Lefsetz: “Before if you were making a product, the right business strategy was to put 70% of your attention, energy, and dollars into shouting about a product, and 30% into making a great product. So you could win with a mediocre product, if you were a good enough marketer. That is getting harder to

With the holidays around the corner, it seems that everyone is coming out with a gift guide or wish list these days.  You have gift guides as broad as for him and her, and as specific as Pop Culture Fans and Foodies.   But what if you need to buy a gift for someone that spends the whole year marketing to

Over on MarketingProfs, Beth Harte recently wrote an article about “The Value of a Marketer.“  Beth starts out the piece by claiming: “Frankly, it’s just not a fun time to be a marketer. Those who have a job are fearful and waiting for the axe to fall and those without a job are struggling to secure one in a sea