The aro Marketing Blog
“Great American Things”
I have worked with many start-ups including several of my own. I have never been any prouder than the one I am working on right now with Robin Chalkley. Our new Partnership Chalkley/Robbins LLC was formed this past month to aid in the development for "Great American Things" a Chalkley blog created in 2009. You can see the current version of it at: http://americanthings.wordpress.com/ When you are "bootstrapping" you have to have the support of a lot of different people. Jeff Hay a partner with Womble Carlisle made some key introductions, Ashe Lockhart the Attorney who created Chalkley/Robbins LLC, Haines Maxwell, our ...
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Getting Marketing Started for Start-ups
Over the thirty years plus of my work in the marketing business, I have managed hundreds of new brands and start-ups. Recently we have created work for a first time non-fiction author and personal chef releasing her first DVD. With both clients we were creating identity from little or no materials at all. One of our clients had been in business a long time but had never collected a full palate of professional photos. Much of what I am about to talk about will seem like the most base remarks but since I continue to run into these challenges every day, ...
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Outliers
I love Malcolm Gladwell. He offers us just the right amount of interesting business reading tossed with a large dose of off-the-wall research. Each time I read one of his books, I always learn something. "Tipping Point" gave us the circumstances that led to powerful change in cities and companies over the years. In the case of "Outliers" I was stuck by several powerful facts: 1. Your Culture can make a significant difference in your personal story of success. Culture can be an advantage, or a disadvantage or a disadvantage that leads to an advantage. 2. The amount you practice a skill ...
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Practice What you Preach
When I became involved with Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Classmates and Youtube, I really was not sure how the social media might help my business. In the last several months of working with these new tools I have become more and more convinced of their power especially now when the economy and time does not allow for more traditional networking. A few years ago I reconnected with a classmate (we have actually known each other since grade school). On a phone call with him not long ago I discovered that he was working in the Charlotte area with a a company that ...
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Living in Prime Time can be Living in Tough Times
The Story Last May my small business began working on an event geared to those of us in, or approaching the second half of life. Titled "Living In Prime Time" we did not know that as we closed in on the crucial window for registration, we would be thrust in the center of one of the worst financial meltdowns this country has seen since the 30's. The event has terrific content. Dr. Kevin Soden is our lunch keynote. He is a former medical correspondent with NBC and is presenting "Laughing Your Way to a Better You" then following that program with ...
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Digital Immigrant?
So I saw a presentation at the American Marketing Association put on by one of the Apple Engineers a few weeks ago. I was pleasantly surprised that the content of the presentation was not product oriented but rather industry and market focused. I was also pleasantly surprised that an engineer was capable of a presentation like this. Francis Shepherd gets many kudos for pulling it off. He is a blogger and a tweeter so he communicates better than a lot of tech heads I know. It was during this presentation that I learned that I was a "digital immigrant". Apple ...
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