Monthly Archives: September 2011

Are you into Straight Razor marketing?

Straight razors: who can forget Matt Damon’s menacing scene in The Talented Mr. Ripley? And who hasn’t seen movie images of solid citizens calmly shaving on a moving train, unafraid of the cold steel at their throat? The subject of straight razors came up … Continue reading

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Sticking to environmental principles

Yesterday, our CEO, Ward Griffin, spoke to a meeting of the Toronto Board of Trade about our company’s environmental initiatives. His story is interesting to anyone who is looking to remake their business into a more sustainable enterprise. Coincidentally, Ward’s … Continue reading

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Should the Queen’s Printer print?

When I was a teenager in southern Saskatchewan, my burning interest in politics somehow got me onto the mailing list of a federal cabinet minister. Every month I’d get a package from Ottawa, bursting with committee reports and excerpts from Hansard. (Not … Continue reading

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Will the ‘Long Tail’ of eCommerce boost unknown authors?

Does the fast adoption of e-readers mean that lesser-known authors will now find a bigger audience? Paul Barsch thinks so. In a recent post on the MarketingProfs Daily Fix Blog, he suggests that something important is happening in the world of … Continue reading

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Take a deep breath, and look it over again

A few days ago, one of our account managers stopped by my office to show me the bindery proofs of an annual report he was taking to his customer for final approval. It was a beautiful design, beautifully printed. His … Continue reading

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More fun with postcards

The good folks at Canada Post have done it again — they’ve given me another way to pepper my mother with postcards.1 This time it’s a dedicated website at www.picturepostcard.ca. In a previous post, I described how customers can use an … Continue reading

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Steve Jobs – a contemporary Caravaggio?

Immediately following the resignation of Steve Jobs as Apple’s CEO, opinions about his significance began to appear in blogs, newspapers and newscasts. The evaluations were glowing: at the time of his departure, his company held the highest market valuation in … Continue reading

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