Man-E-Faces stuck with me because the character is a strange little plastic reflection of something very real. He had more than one face. In a way, so do we. That is especially true for small business owners. One minute, you are the friendly neighbor talking to a customer. The next, you are the bookkeeper staring at expenses. Then you become the salesperson, complaint department, creative director, janitor, scheduler, problem-solver, and the person who still has to un

That is where honest marketing matters. Too often, honesty takes a backseat to lazy phrases, inflated claims, and shiny words that sound impressive but do not prove anything. And frankly, that ticks me off. So here are five types of marketing language that really grind my gears.

Sometimes the brand is the color pattern. Sometimes it is the packaging. Sometimes it is the shape of the bottle. Sometimes it is the mascot. Sometimes it is the way employees dress. Sometimes it is the whole visual world surrounding the product. That overall look is often called trade dress. Trade dress is the visual identity of a product or business when that look tells customers where something came from. In plain English, it is the outfit your brand wears in public. In

Restaurants are an easy example, but they are not the only place music rights can matter. Christmas parades, sporting events, roller rinks, bars, gyms, festivals, retail stores, waiting rooms, coffee shops, chamber of commerce events, city property, school events, nonprofit fundraisers, jukeboxes, and karaoke nights can all create licensing questions when copyrighted music is used publicly.

If someone quotes Leviticus about sexual purity but ignores its commands about truth, wages, fair dealing, justice, strangers, slander, and honest measurements, they are not defending Leviticus. They are editing it.

Looking back, those toys did not give me a straight career path. They gave me a way of thinking. Finger paint taught me that color changes how something feels. Notebooks taught me that a blank page can become a world. G.I. Joe introduced me to story, service, and communication. Tinkertoys taught me to build with what was available. The electronics kit taught me to trace the signal. The ZX81 taught me that details matter. The cassette recorder taught me to press record and mak

A Jedi mind trick makes a great metaphor, but it also exposes the real issue. When does persuasion help someone decide, and when does it become manipulation? Aristotle’s old framework still gives modern businesses a clean way to think about trust, ethics, and influence.

A marketing contract should promise process, deliverables, communication, ownership, timelines, confidentiality, conflict-of-interest boundaries, and professional standards. It should never promise guaranteed customer behavior.

People may say they do not judge, but they do. We all do. We notice clues, then we start building a story. That may sound harsh, but it is human. The question is not whether people should judge you. The question is what they are already seeing when they look in your direction.

In 1988, a modest adult film broke into my childhood memory for one reason: adults would not stop talking about it. That is the lesson at the heart of useful idiot marketing. Sometimes the people trying hardest to stop a message are the ones helping it spread.

Leaving business cards randomly is not networking; it is littering with hope. Distribution without context assumes exposure equals opportunity. Exposure alone rarely produces alignment. Alignment creates response.

What can Hannibal, Face, B.A., and Murdock teach a business owner about marketing? Quite a bit, actually. This post uses The A-Team to explain AIDA and show why good marketing needs the right jobs done in the right order.

Broken windows aren’t just glass. They’re patterns: inconsistent hours, neglected details, fading traditions, and the small signals that quietly drain trust.

The Electrolyte Effect is the moment a buzzword becomes a substitute for mechanics that ultimately leads to dying crops.

“So, is this a lot better than midgets and mistresses?” I joked. He chuckled. “Yes, it’s kind of nice to be around normal people for a moment,” he replied.

AI can help with speed, structure, and first drafts, but it still needs a human guide. It does not know your business the way you do. It does not know what your customers worry about, what makes them trust you, or what kind of tone fits your community. It cannot sit across from a customer, read the room, and understand the difference between a message that sounds smooth and one that actually feels honest. That is still human work.

Swag stands for something simple: Stuff We All Get. The items themselves are not the problem. The problem is believing that Swag creates momentum when the underlying strategy has not been defined. A shirt can spread a logo, but it cannot clarify positioning.

Marketing culture still leans heavily toward spectacle. You see it in follower counts used as credentials. In beautifully edited videos that never explain what a business actually does. In websites full of buzzwords like “innovative,” “best practices,” and “next level,” but no pricing, no process, and no proof.

Note: This is a sample concept featured in our weekly livestream "Mike Designs" this is an ongoing project. On May 22, 2011, an EF-5 tornado tore through Joplin with winds exceeding 200 miles per hour. In less than an hour, entire neighborhoods were flattened. Thousands of homes and apartment buildings were damaged or destroyed. More than 150 lives were lost. It remains one of the deadliest tornadoes in modern American history. It was not farmland. It was not an isolated str

A simple guideline follows: if a piece of content feels flat, ask who the one human in the story is. Not the demographic profile. Not the target audience. One real person. Anchoring content to an individual brings it back inside the limits of human empathy, where connection happens naturally.