by Marc H. Rudov | May 11, 2017 | Article
Increasingly, I hear one CEO after the other wax enthusiastic over artificial intelligence, or AI. AI is a system that does the “thinking” that humans do, or once did. When you call AT&T’s customer service, for example, the computer recognizes...
by Marc H. Rudov | January 1, 2016 | Article
Every day, one can hear someone exclaim: I put my photos in the cloud. What cloud? Where is it? What is it? This common utterance proves that technology CEOs dismiss branding and, consequently, have genericized their products and companies. Cloud is the new Kleenex....
by Marc H. Rudov | October 31, 2015 | Article
In 1960, Bob Newhart recorded a best-selling comedy album called The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back. In this album, he did a routine, “An Infinite Number of Monkeys,” which reminds me of how so many technology products are created and funded. Newhart...
by Marc H. Rudov | May 17, 2012 | Article
You’re at a banquet filled with cacophonous chatter, barely able to hear the person on your right. It’s time for the program to begin. The guest speaker ascends the podium as the MC quiets the crowd, so the speaker can take control of the audience. Taking...
by Marc H. Rudov | June 7, 2011 | Article
On June 6, 2011, Steve Jobs, emerging briefly from his medical leave, made a rare branding blunder in a product announcement: incorporating “cloud” in its name. Jobs heralded Apple’s free iCloud service, which allows users to store remotely their...