June 2017

The agenda for MarTech Boston, October 2-4, has just been posted, and I am once again awed and humbled by the incredible cast of speakers who have agreed to participate. If you want to understand the real truth of how to lead at the intersection of marketing, technology, and management, this will be a two-day conference you won’t want to miss. Let’s start with the keynotes: David Edelman, CMO of Aetna, on B2C marketing and …

Check out the amazing speakers who will be at MarTech Boston Continue Reading »

It’s a scenario straight out of Kiefer Sutherland’s TV series 24. There’s a ticking time bomb somewhere in the city. The only way to stop it is to torture a captured suspect into revealing its location. Yes, torture is wrong. But is it worth it to save the lives of hundreds of innocent people? What do you do? This hypothetical dilemma has come up so many times in both fiction and serious philosophical and ethical …

If a marketing tactic works, but people hate it, should you use it? Continue Reading »

The easy answer, of course, is that they’ll both be controlled by Jeff Bezos and the rapidly evolving Amazon empire. That alone is a pretty remarkable for hybridizing the digital and the physical on such a massive scale. But in my worldview, Amazon’s $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods — insert requisite “Whole Paycheck” joke, such as it was cheaper than buying groceries there for the company cookout — gives Amazon a powerful new touchpoint …

Pop quiz: What do Amazon Alexa and Whole Foods have in common? Continue Reading »