Harassment marketing

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Seth Godin wrote the book on permission marketing — the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them. You know, like a mailing list. Marketers have turned this on its head with a new kind of marketing: harassment marketing. Those are marketing messages that … Continued

How to cure 22 annoying and repetitive writing tics

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Everyone has writing habits. Some of them are even endearing. But when repeated, they draw attention to themselves, and that’s a distraction from whatever you’re trying to communicate. Every manuscript I edit has a problem like this. They’re all different. But they all need fixing. They’re often invisible to the writer, even if when they’re … Continued

Lowe’s finds 13 ways to undermine customer experience in a single transaction

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Customer service usually sucks. That’s not news. So I reserve my commentary for companies that manage to screw up in more interesting ways. That’s what Lowe’s just did. It not only failed, it failed 13 different times in one transaction. And it’s worth reviewing, since nearly all of those failures are due to the same … Continued

Irrational arguments

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Let’s use a mathematical proof to understand the irrational, irrelevant, and distracting ways that people argue these days. Proof that the square root of two is irrational If you are math-phobic, be assured that the argument below is relatively painless. You might even enjoy it. The square root of 2, which we write as √2, … Continued

I love Tesla. I hate Elon.

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I love my Tesla cars. But Telsa CEO Elon Musk has become increasingly unhinged of late, and I have serious problems with him. What to do? Maybe some “I love Tesla, I hate Elon” swag would make us Tesla owners feel better. How did this happen? Here’s the story. Teslas are terrific cars I bought … Continued