Almost every recent article on email marketing I’ve read begins with, “contrary to what people believe, email marketing is not dead” or some paraphrase of that. I find it hard to believe that anyone believes email marketing is going away. In a single day, I probably receive at least 20 emails from organizations, businesses, and [...]
B Corp Profile: GreenHeart Global Makes a Better Hanger—and Learns How to Sell It
When Gary Barker’s design team embarked on redesigning the clothes hanger as an environmentally sustainable product, Barker secretly thought it was the “stupidest idea” ever. That was in 2006; now the resulting Ditto hangers are being embraced by major retailers such as Levi Strauss, REI and the Gap, and Barker’s green product design company, GreenHeart [...]
Neologisms ‘R’ Us
I recently wrote about how words should not be stretched and abused to be made to mean all sorts of things they’ve never meant. It’s true, though, that somehow the English language, voluminous as it is, will sometimes lack a word or phrase for the precise thing or experience you are attempting to describe. In [...]
Can You Stretch a Word So Far That It Breaks?
I think it is possible to stretch the meaning of a word so far that, like a suitcase overstuffed with dirty laundry and souvenirs, it bursts, creating an impossible mess and possibly breaking things. Case in point: curate/curator. Back in the day—I don’t know, a year or two ago—a curator was someone who organized exhibitions, [...]
Plain language (and nerds) rule
I love Nerd Nite SF—cool lectures by people who are passionate about their geeky subjects (DIY drones! Weird fungi! Space hacking! Physics magic!), happening on the third Wednesday of every month (that’s tonight) at the Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco. The organizers’ motto: “It’s like the Discovery Channel—with beer!” What’s not to love? But what [...]
