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A good chef doesn’t just cook the food, he connects the people who consume it. My friend Jonathan, a chef who only makes things he hasn’t cooked yet, develops new recipes every week. Then, on the weekends he performs cooking demonstrations at his local farmers market. And not only is the food delicious, but his ingredients are available right there at the market, from his vendor partners, along with…

Some digital marketing feels too close for comfort. Instead of a customized, helpful recommendation, it feels more like an alarming, creepy intrusion. Instead of an enthusiastic engagement between the brand and the customer, it’s another opportunity for companies to use new technology to interrupt people more effectively. Instead of orientating the company around what the customer needs or wants, it’s another online vanity exercise about what the company does. …

Toshi’s has live music every night of the week. Which isn’t uncommon in a big city, except for one key difference. The stage is catty cornered between two massive floor to ceiling glass walls. This allows bystanders, tourists and other people passing by to get a perfect view of the stage. Some take pictures, some hang for a moment, some stand for a few songs, and some decide to…

A fabulous product always has a longer shelf life than fabulous marketing. If your team is planning the creation of a new product, promotional tool, piece of software, tactile delight item, sharing device or social object, consider thinking like a designer asking a few of these questions first. How could we make something people want to use? How could we turn the product into an object of devotion? How…

If you look at the fastest growing companies and highest performing organizations in the world, they don’t rise to the top because they’re leveraging technology. It’s because they’re learning new ways to fulfill the human desire to belong. Do I stop by the same coffee shop each morning because of the espresso, or because of the feelings of familiarity and connection when I walk in the door? Do I…

Almost everything has changed. The technologies with which we innovate have changed. The processes by which we execute have changed. The ecosystems in which we do business have changed. The platforms that connect us have changed. The knowledge that we gain has changed. The way we document and store that knowledge has changed. The systems by which we spread our ideas have changed. And the structures through which we…

Language is the packaging of your brand. It’s the single most underleveraged marketing hotspot, crucial to your company culture, essential to the way people experience your service and an ideal strategy for making the mundane memorable. Photojojo, a website dedicated to insanely great photography projects, uses engaging, playful and memorable language on their website, newsletters, shipping materials, warning labels and product receipts. In fact, most their language is dinosaur…

To belong is to feel at home. And home, physical or otherwise, is the place where you are remembered, met with accepting eyes, welcomed with wanting arms and cherished for what you contribute; the place that embraces the weirdness you have to offer and gives you the freedom to use talents you might never exercise anywhere else; the place that makes you feel part of something most people can…

First impressions are formed long before first encounters. By the time people get to you, they’ve already verified your reputation from a variety of virtual sources. Thanks to online reviews, friend recommendations, price comparisons, smartphone apps, geolocating programs and social media conversations, curb appeal has been replaced by blurb appeal. Consider the implications of this shift on your business. Smarter buyers. Treating customers like idiots won’t work anymore. It’s…

Masterworks creates art you can ride. They build gorgeous, fully functioning wooden bicycles, handcrafted from start to finish, each with its own unique look and feel, using the finest woods salvaged from condemned city trees, each of which takes hundreds of hours to build and thousands of dollars to buy. It’s a work of art that happens to be a bike. And it’s a bike people ride to been…