A good thesaurus not only helps you find the right word, it helps you navigate your train of thought. Here’s a great online thesaurus that a word lover could get lost in.
Author Archive: Alicia
Overused But Indispensable
Word lovers from various fields–marcomm, design, philanthropy, venture capital, and entertainment PR–tell us about the overused words they can’t live without, no matter how much they’d like to.
Gizmo Alert—Take a Smartpen to the Conference
Now I know what I’ve been missing all these years–a Smartpen to help me take notes.
The Word Lover’s File
I thought about calling this new monthly CB blog column “The Lexiphiliac Gazette.” Lexiphiliac is a cool word, and maybe even a real word (not in my Webster’s*, but plenty of bloggers seem to like it). It runs afoul, however, of The Writer’s Golden Rule: don’t use a fancy big word when a plain little [...]
New Study Proves That Success is Exciting, Contagious
One of our job perks is occasionally to be swept up in “coattails excitement.” Our clients often call on us for help when they’ve got big things brewing—they’re launching a new product, expanding into a new market, or presenting a new idea that’s tricky to explain (or all of the above, as in the case [...]
Stop Me If You’ve Already Heard This Joke, Quip, Jest, Drollery
The Atlantic‘s blog recently ran a post on the genesis of a joke that’s making the rounds in a big way. We may be behind the curve on this one, but this joke hits so close to our hearts that we just have to help viral-ize it: Twitter’s Best Joke: An SEO Copywriter Walks Into a [...]
More Lab Coats, Less Tie-Dye! Branding in Academia
My alma mater, Wesleyan University, is experiencing a branding identity crisis that’s way more amusing than the Gap logo flap (and way more substantive: private-school tuition is a heck of a lot bigger consumer decision than jeans and tees, after all). The alumni network is lapping it up. Rather than recap, I’ll let the principal [...]
How I Poisoned My Family
The rains have come to Northern California—and that means mushroom season. It means stealthy dawn hunts along promising trails. Squinting through first light at the prizes that came up in the night. Getting ‘em fresh and new—because mushrooms grow incredibly fast, and they get old, slimy, maggoty, dried up, or just plain picked by somebody [...]
Crash-up on the Highway to Helvetica: the Gap Logo Flap
Helvetica is the hip font. So why was it such a crime when the Gap tried to eat lunch with the cool kids?
Microniche or Macromarket? Choose Your Irony
Here’s a story that can be interpreted either as a doom-and-gloom report on the demise of two beloved forms of communication—newspaper journalism and indie movies—or as an optimistic rah-rah for innovative marketing. As optimistic marketers, let’s go with the latter.
