How to Create a Warm Fuzzy File (and Why You Should)

September6^th,2010 | General

Editor’s Note: I’m on vacation this week, so this blog post comes to you from the One Woman Marketing email newsletter. If you like what you read, sign up at right to receive monthly updates with exclusive content, giveaways and discounts on One Woman Marketing services.

One of my favorite marketing techniques has little to do with marketing and everything to do with building confidence and a positive mental attitude.

I know the phrase “positive mental attitude” triggers a gag reflex in some people, but it’s hard to deny how powerfully your attitude affects everything you do. So keeping a positive attitude can work wonders for your productivity – even if you have to keep it positive through corny little tricks like the one I’m about to describe.

I call it my warm fuzzy file, and it’s saved me on more than one occasion. Read more »

Lancaster City’s “Authentic” Logo Drama

August31^st,2010 | Branding, General

Last Wednesday, Lancaster City Pennsylvania unveiled a new branding campaign with a square rose logo and the tagline “A City Authentic.” The work generated criticism on internet message boards for straying from more traditional marketing of the past (among other reasons.)

Then an anonymous YouTube video appeared showing the rose logo to be virtually identical to one used by artist Dard Hunter.

The YouTube video points the blame at Moxie House, a Lancaster, PA design firm that worked with the city on the new branding campaign. So far, Moxie House has remained quiet about the issue. Owner Deb Brandt told the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal that her company received the logo from the city, and did not check the design origin because she was told the city was seeking copyright for the image. Read more »

The Cult of Cute Advertising

August17^th,2010 | General

From the E-Trade baby to the Geico gecko, advertising is awash in all things cute. Far from being a recent phenomenon, advertising has capitalized on our love of cute since stipple prints of babies graced the first Victorian print ads. But our obsession with the adorable has reached an all-time high in recent years.

Examples of Cute Advertisements

Consider the Geico gecko, who first appeared on all fours slithering across the Geico logo in 2000. He’s since morphed into a cuddly character with a charming Cockney accent.

“The gecko’s cuteness tricks you into forgetting that it represents something that’s not cute in the slightest,” James Wolcott writes in the Vanity Fair article Addicted to Cute: “a giant insurance company, which must deal in matters most uncuddly, such as injury, death, and arguments over claim payments.”

Wolcott’s explanation doesn’t work for all cute ads, though. What about Evian’s commercial of roller-skating babies, which garnered over 26 million views on YouTube? Read more »

Do Women in Business Really NEED Their Own Category?

August6^th,2010 | General

A few years ago, I emailed the editor of a local business magazine to complain about its lack of women writers. Women make up 50 percent of the population, I argued, so why did they make up only two of the fourteen writers at the magazine?

The editor responded:

Hiya Kelly,

A number of years ago a leading feminist writer and a frequent commentator upon women’s issues on TV lamented that the only place that serious women are invited to speak is to forums on women’s issues. To which a particularly indelicate male responded, ‘When you stop talking exclusively about yourselves, you will be invited.’  AAARGH! Okay, he was the ugly sexist pig. Not so much for what he said, but the fact that he actually said it. Read more »