You like long walks on the beach too?

Another one of my entrepreneurial ideas has been taken: PersonalsTrainer offers to fix your personal ad so you sound more like you than you can manage yourself. However, the lead example offered on the home page is less than reassuring. The “before” is definitely all kinds of wrong (“I have a nice personality. I have …

Number one reason I hate lists

The Wall Street Journal and Harris Interactive have conducted a survey of corporate recruiters, asking which are the “top MBA programs.” The full results will be published later today, so we can save grousing about the criteria and the questionability of recruiters’ opinions until then. For now, let’s take a look at the top five …

Time to bring back the two Martini lunch

I’ve never liked vermouth. When I ask for a Martini I always say, “Skip the vermouth.” So actually I don’t drink Martinis: I drink very cold gin or vodka, up, with a twist. Sometimes I even order just that: “I’d like ice-cold vodka, up, please. Lemon twist.” But this distaste for vermouth nags at me, …

Harder than naming children

All the good ones — and many, many bad ones — are taken: Car companies have a terrible time selecting new car names. General Motors found out last year that a forthcoming Buick sedan called LaCrosse, to be offered in Canada, was French-Canadian teenage slang for masturbation. Volkswagen’s SUV, the Touareg, is not only unpronounceable …

How to sell expensive water

Nice little case study on “anti-marketing marketing”: the brilliance of Darius Bikoff and Glaceau Smartwater. Despite the success, despite the obvious attention to marketing principles such as design and differentiation, and despite even the national effort, Energy Brands seems to have retained the important sense of being an irreverent underdog: It has mastered the art …

But how to phrase it in one’s job description?

Even Businessweek says it’s a good thing: Blogging With The Boss’s Blessing. Increasingly, execs see employee blogs as a way to transform a transaction with a faceless behemoth into a personal relationship with an employee. Blogs are also hyper efficient at driving product innovation. And they create loyal audiences. Once people get hooked, they keep …