If you would like to know more about what we’re all doing now,
please reach out to retired CEO Ellen Lemming at ellen@dracoslemming.com

Past Articles

Does Marketing Really Matter? It Depends on WHO You Ask…

Throughout my travels and networking with business people, I am often stupefied by the lack of understanding surrounding marketing and its role in an organization. True, most companies I meet with are excellent at their core competency—whether that is manufacturing, retailing, technology or professional services—but appear befuddled when it comes to appreciating marketing’s value in their organization.

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Impact Marketing Assessments

Dracos~Lemming launched in March of 2007 with the intention of providing differentiated marketing programs to companies seeking to grow. Then, the Great Recession hit. After listening to our customers, prospects and the marketplace, we shifted our focus to help clients right-size their marketing activities. Thus, the Impact Marketing Assessment (IMA) was born. 

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Social Media Is a Big Waste of Time

We didn’t choose that headline on a whim. No doubt social media is here to stay. But lately, there are deep and frequent marketers grumbling that hefty investments in social media (including content generation, curation and management) are not paying off. At all.

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Is Your Brand Message Completely Lost?

At last count, there were more than 500 publicly traded retail chains in the U.S. and more than 2,000 publicly traded consumer goods companies (not brands). And if you believe Yankelovich, the average American is exposed to between 3,000 and 20,000 brand messages per day (the difference partially attributed to varying numbers of grocery store visits). However, neuroscience has proven that the human brain simply cannot recognize or store that number of daily messages. So…is your brand invisibly awash in the vast and deep ocean of marketing communications?

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The Cardinal Sin of Business

If you’ve practiced marketing in a corporate setting, this scenario might be depressingly familiar: A product development person comes to you announcing a brand-new product and asks for a brochure, press release, sell sheet or website, and you’re at a loss. You’re missing critical information on the target audience, the competition, the value proposition and the key differentiators. In this case, marketing has become the period at the end of a very long — and perhaps ill-defined — sentence.

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Is Your Marketing Really Working?

In the fast-paced world of “get it done” marketers are busier than ever with their heads down and fingers typing. But not making the time to measure marketing’s impact is a dangerous and potentially self-destructive decision. It is no secret that CEO pressure, CFO pressure, CIO negotiations, budget reports, annual personnel reviews, and managing vendor relationships all float to the top of a CMO’s daily “to do” list and tend to push examining the effectiveness of the company’s marketing program to the very bottom of that long, long list (right behind mentoring young people and scheduling a Lunch n’ Learn.) According to search firm Spencer Stuart, in 2013 the average tenure of a CMO was 3.7 years. That’s 44 months. Yep. Once the honeymoon’s over, you are headed for corporate divorce court.

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Control of the Brand Has Left the Building

Many of you may remember the days when “4 out of 5 dentists recommend Trident”. Those were the golden years of brand marketing, but the world has changed. Does “brand management” even exist anymore? It is an argument worth considering.

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D~L Does That?

In order to address the new marketing world of C2C, Dracos~Lemming’s clients often declare: “We need to do (more) Social Media.” And our first question is always “Why? What are you trying to accomplish?” It is imperative to tie marketing activity back to your business objectives.

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Native Advertising: Hype or Help?

In general, marketers are innovators. But today’s buzz is all about a form of advertising posing as an innovation, when in fact it is a derivation of something invented in 1946. The imposter?  Native Advertising.

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