Archive for December, 2006
Happy New Year!
Well, it’s the end of the holidays, and I have things other than marketing on my mind, so I’ll just say Happy New Year to everybody! Have a fun and safe time this weekend, whatever you do. Unless something comes up that I just have to blog about now, I’ll see you in 2007.
When You Sell Hammers, Everything’s a Nail
Today we read that Verizon is planning to put banner ads on mobile phone web browsers. Personally, I can’t think of a better way to make people not want to use their mobile browser.
I use mine (I’m not a Verizon customer, by the way) occasionally. My take on it: it’s nice that you can look [...]
Figgy Pudding Award: My Favorite Holiday Ad
It may come as a surprise, given how I ragged on/raged about the Lexus ads that I find completely irritating, but my favorite “it’s the most wonderful time of the year” ad for 2006 is for yet another luxury car: the screaming kids opening presents ad for the BMW.
The sheer crazed, greedy exuberance of these [...]
Bah, Humbug: The Worst Holiday Ads
Hands down, the absolute worst ’tis the season ad this year has to be for the Sierra Mist holiday hawk. You know, the one that hawks the cranberry-flavored Sierra Mist. Gotta be the worst ever. And just when you think it’s over, they make it even worse when the hawk starts singing Jingle Bells in [...]
Okay Service vs Great Service
Perhaps it’s because it’s the holiday season, but customer service stories are everywhere these days.
There’s a great magazine called Oxford American. It’s a quarterly that features writing and culture of the American South. The American South is, in my opinion, probably the most culturally rich part of the country when it comes to writers, [...]
Know Thy Audience
I have to say that most days, Marketing Profs is like a candy box: you open the lid and there are a lot of good posts to pick from. (Fortunately, unlike with the candy box, you don’t need to sample just one or two.)
Yesterday, my favorite - the chocolate covered cherry, as it were [...]
A Quiet Second Life
Second Life, the virtual world created that claims over two million “residents,” is one of the more hyped things in the interactive marketing world today. Major retail brands are falling over themselves to create Second Life outposts, Starwood has created a hotel there, there’s an ad agency with headquarters there… it seems that everybody’s diving [...]
Yo, what’s down with that yo-yo?
I have long keened the marketer’s lament about all those times I’ve gotten “stuck” with products that were priced well above the market norm. That seemed larded with features that no one really wanted to pay for. That weren’t all that differentiated (other than the lard).
Then I saw an ad in The New Yorker for [...]
More on Bad Service and Listening to Blogs
It’s in the air this week! I wrote about companies paying attention to bloggers commenting on their bad experiences with them, and then found local blogger John Wagner talking about a heinous Home Depot experience.
As of this morning John hasn’t heard from Home Depot, although he’s called them - and there have been some [...]
What Are They Saying About You?
A few reminder from the last week that smart companies are watching blogs for mentions of their name…
Maureen wrote about a less than fabulous experience trying to buy Red Sox tickets on her Pink Slip blog. Lo and behold, after posting that, she heard from them.
Last week I wrote about my unpleasant eFax experience. [...]
