Jackie Danicki

It’s hard not to quote every single thing that Hillary Johnson, my beauty blog co-editor, who also writes on business topics for Inc magazine and was the founding editor of charitable giving mag Arroyo, ever blogs. Delve into her back catalogue of articles - like the one about how her innovation-minded father struggles “to reconcile his big ideas with a small-minded world” - and you’ll read lengthier versions of something truly unique in business writing: suspenseful, very human stories.

Hillary’s latest two posts on the blog for her start-up, Kerabu, are equally quotable. In the first, she says:

Skype’s marketing plan is the opposite of the old bait-and-switch. It’s more like Marie Antoinetworking: Free cake, come and get it! …and nobody much minds paying for the birthday candles if the cake is free.

The genius thing is, the marketing plan and the business model are seamless. One is the other.

On Katrina, what failed and what worked, Hillary writes about what a splendid job the private sector did in responding to the emergency, with a couple of pretty stellar examples. She also says something so true and so self-evident that I cannot believe people are having actual debates about it:

[T]he notion of a bureaucratic emergency response really is an oxymoron.

And I can’t resist echoing Hillary when she urges people to go to the Acadian Ambulance website and make a contribution to them. Consider your donation a vote for private enterprise. Amen.

Filed under: Business, Friends, Marketing, The State Is Not Your Friend