Home
Free Marketing Advice
Welcome to my home page.
Based on experience, your search for a marketing resource should begin with questions like “How does this person think?”; “What does he know?”; “What is my investment if we work together?” …in other words, how do we become a team that benefits from each other’s strengths?
Let’s start with a free marketing lesson I call Monthly Marketing Morsels. Since 2013, I have been sharing advice on a broad range of marketing topics, and many of them are posted on this website for your review and evaluation. The latest lessons can be seen below.
Contact me if you want to sample a free personal consultation – phone, video chat, or face-to-face. Call Jack Cantwell 717-269-0288, or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. At the very least, get into the database and start receiving Morsels each month.
For Auld Lang Syne - Jan. 2022
A young Advertising Agency guy named Jack got his start in a giant worldwide company named BBDO in the 1960’s, the Mad Men era of the advertising industry. Jack leaned a lot from top BBDO leaders. One of them, the CEO of all of BBDO, Charlie Brower, retired with a memo to all of us. “It would be ungracious to creep away without giving my friends a chance to ignore my advice.” He then shared “16 things I have learned in my 43 years in the adverting agency business.” I kept the memo and pass on Charlie’s wisdom this month. It is still timeless.
1. The expedient thing and the right thing are seldom the same thing.
2. The best way to get credit is to try to give it away.
3. You cannot sink someone else’s end of the boat and still keep your own afloat.
4. It is not important to come in early and work late. The important thing is why?
5. If you get a kick out of your job, others will get a kick out of working for you,
6. No one should knock research who has ever been helped by a road map.
The Care and Feeding of Your 2022 Brand - Dec. 2021
Time to wrap up 2021 in a nice bow, and file it away. Before you do, what did you learn from your marketing efforts that will help you focus your thinking for 2022? It must start with the idea of public perception of who you are and what you do. That, to me is the essence of being the gatekeeper of your Brand.
This is an exciting time to sit down with a checklist of “who am I and what to do about it”. The slate is clean when the bologna drops in Lebanon.
I recommend you get a planning checklist together to help you deal with this important basic issue. Here are some categories that work for me.
Read more: The Care and Feeding of Your 2022 Brand - Dec. 2021
Getting to Yes! - Nov. 2021
If you work on projects, much of the work is professional and useful to the intended audience, but occasionally, you look at your finished work and say “yes!”. It hits the mark and connects to the audience in an unusual and satisfying way.
EXAMPLE - Here’s a procedure I use that gives “yes!” a better chance. I write a monthly series of articles series for a local on-line resource, which profiles people in theater and the arts. The latest one hit over 275 likes on the subject’s Facebook page in the first days after publication.
- Prepare as a team exercise – Plan ahead. Give the interviewee “homework” by providing him/her with detailed questions that will spur reader interest.
- Sit down interview – Review the “homework” and collect other background.
- Collect related photos/videos – Visuals always enhance the article.
Worth another look - Oct. 2021
It's a fact: people don't mind scrolling to read an email, as long as it's relevant and interesting. Make sure your message follows through on the promise in your subject line, and use several short paragraphs if you have a lot to say. When in doubt, challenge yourself to write less and add links that support your topic.
Worth Another Look:
In the words of Dorothy, “Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore.”
Neither are we. The pandemic took care of that. So, let us look ahead. In terms of marketing, where do we go from here? I would be very rich if I knew the exact answer to that one. But I can offer some simple advice, based on doing this for many years.
Follow your own yellow brick road…in other words, follow the trends that have risen to the top since we started the Covid-19 journey, and use this learning to help you plan your strategy for 2021.
Labor Day and Switching Gears - Sep. 2021
I am not sure why this happens, but Labor Day has this effect on us.
On September 6th, we take the time to pause, relax, reflect on the idea of the “workingman’s holiday” which dates to the late 1800’s, and then we turn on the fall mindset – summer is behind us, time to get serious about what to do with business plans.
But first, a brief pause, and a prayer of thanks for the day of reflection – to thank God for blessings received, for the motivation and fire within to keep making contributions to this world we live in. May we all be motivated and determined to do what we are meant to do, to make the world a better place.
We will never see Kansas again Dorothy - Aug. 2021
I appeared on stage as The Wizard of Oz, seven years ago, so I apologize for the shameless connection to this month’s Marketing Morsel. But the truth is things will never be the same, since the pandemic entered our lives. “Kansas” as we know it may “disappear”, but in reality, we will never conduct our lives the way we look at marketing again.
So, what do we do about it? We scramble for answers.
Renowned research company McKinsey and Company took a hard look at how Covid-19 is changing how we consumers behave in all spheres of life. And it behooves us to pay attention.
We are nesting at home more than ever, so what home comforts do we pay attention to as marketers? Shopping has been redefined as a surging on-line activity. What do we do about that? Not a day goes by that I do not figure out some household need that drives me to Amazon to click and forget, and wait for the post office to do the footwork for me. This takes a toll on local retail, so what do you, the retailer do about it? No answers here, for now just questions.
Read more: We will never see Kansas again Dorothy - Aug. 2021
Is Marketing an Art or a Science? - July 2021
HAPPY SUMMER. TIME TO TACKLE A TOPIC THAT IS NOT TOO SERIOUS.
I first wanted to ask, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” but could not build on that as a Marketing Morsel. So, I chose this one instead - “Is marketing an art or a science?” I guess the answer depends on which side of your brain dominates your thinking.
So let us prepare for the debate. In this corner stands the CEO. He or she is the science person. “All decisions must be based on solid data.” Left brain rules here. They conclude that the purpose of marketing is to influence the behaviors of other people. So, we rely on data about human psychology and how people react to stimuli determined by facts and figures. Data, they conclude, drives marketing decisions that are strategically more effective. Since the CEO is “the buck stops here” person, it is a good idea to listen to what is being said.