“Something old, something new, something stinky, something blue.” So says the ancient wisdom of Cheesemongers, when deciding on which cheese varieties to put on a cheese board. If you want to build an exceptional cheese plate this holiday season to impress your loved ones, and pick up a few cheese facts along the way, I …
Nucleus Resident Cheese Aficionado Dishes Out Holiday Cheese Board Advice Read More »
I get it. Company newsletters and LinkedIn aren’t supposed to be for cute dog pictures. The adventures of our favorite pets are typically supposed to go on, well, every other social media platform. However, there is a work-related connection here if you’ll allow me to explain. Otis Bast was “employee #2” at Nucleus. After 16 …
All businesses go through cycles where activity is high, and everything seems to be a priority. Along those lines, the occasional “hot” insights project is inevitable and even expected. However, in my previous lives before joining Nucleus, I often came across corporate cultures that almost make an art form of this, where every request is …
There were a few reasons I didn’t want titles at Nucleus. First, my original attitude was that if you think you’re too good for something, you’re probably good for nothing. I didn’t want titles to make people feel constricted. This was inspired by a senior art director I worked with early in my career. The …
Entitled In A Good Way: Why We Finally Decided To Go With Titles Read More »
Malcolm Gladwell is at it again, blending together seemingly disparate observations and phenomena from world history and much more recent events into what seems like it should be intriguing tapestry. Subtitled, “What We Should Know About People We Don’t Know,” Talking To Strangers covers a lot of ground, much of which is surprising. Winston Churchill …
The third quarter was a busy one for Nucleus and saw a tremendous return to face-to-face insights work. In August alone, we conducted something like 15 qualitative groups, which included a trip to Minneapolis. In this busy month, we did some card sorting and some shelf display work that just isn’t the same in a …
Anyone who ever made a mixtape gets it. You wanted a certain energy…the right flow…a definite feeling. You deliberately assembled a blend of artists, creators and innovators that you respected. And you absolutely wanted something that would never get old. That’s exactly what we did with Mixtape Creative Coworking, a brand we soft launched this …
Introducing Mixtape: A Funky-Yet-Functional Coworking Space Brand Launch Read More »
We love when we get to branch out from traditional qualitative and quantitative methodologies. A few recent projects have had us doing just that and one approach we wanted to highlight is what we affectionately call a “Customer Illumination” project. To give credit where credit is due, a vendor partner came up with that term …
Revealing Consumer Feelings Through Illuminations Read More »
One of the magical qualities of books is the ability to transport you to another world, another time and another place. No matter the stresses of your life, a book means you are about to enter an entirely new realm — a place of escape, of entertainment and of learning. This is why I am …
Book Review – The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri Read More »
“Next-Stepper.” I had never heard these two words used as a compound phrase to describe someone but that is what my colleague Kim Atkinson called Kristen Katzman back in 2002. This took place at the rapidly-growing corporate marketing department of the even more rapidly-growing Cold Stone Creamery chain of restaurants. The unique description came a …
Welcoming Kristen Katzman To The Squad (or, The Tale Of The Next Stepper) Read More »
