Archive for April 2013 | Monthly archive page
Ron Brown Way
Ron Brown Way
I can’t let April go by without remembering someone who was a major influence in my life. For the last 17 years, I remember April 3, 1996 as if it was yesterday. That’s the day when the late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and 34 other people – 11 Commerce employees, many of whom were close friends – died in a tragic plane crash near Dubrovnik, Croatia.
I still remember what I was doing on that day. I was in my office at the Small Business Administration talking on the phone to my friend, Dan McLaughlin, who had spoken earlier that day to Lawry Payne, one of the 34 people who died in that tragic plane crash. Dan, Lawry and I worked closely together at the Commerce Department when we served in the Clinton Administration. Lawry was one of a kind. He was smart, ambitious, kind and incredibly talented. While Dan and I were talking on the phone, we both heard a breaking story about a plane crash in Croatia. We quickly ended our conversation and headed to the closest TV. Read More
Say What?
I’ve always wanted to be a movie critic and get paid to give people my opinions about what I like and dislike on the golden screen. The late Roger Ebert was a masterful film critic who had a knack for summing up a movie review with ‘bald honesty’ as described by Jeff McMahon in a recent Forbes article. “The movies he loved, he truly loved. And the movies he hated, he truly hated” wrote Christopher Orr in a fantastic piece in The Atlantic.
Can you imagine if Roger Ebert had turned his critiques to the websites of government contractors? I shudder to think what he would say about this company’s About Us page:
“We’re in Business to Help Change Lives”
“We’re in Business to Help Change Lives.” That’s the first thing you see when you click on “Our Movement” page on TOMS website. Underneath this bold statement, it gets even better:
“A Million Thanks to Our Followers”
HP recently made a lot of hay that it is the first company to reach 1 million LinkedIn users. Is this really a big deal? HP seems to think so, and so are others who are trying to figure out how HP beat other well-known brands, like Coca-Cola – the biggest brand on Facebook – by a landslide with a paltry 200,000 LinkedIn followers.
How important is the LinkedIn milestone to HP’s brand, and what can other companies learn from HP’s LinkedIn strategy?
Before we dive into these questions, let’s consider a few important points.