Archive for June, 2007
Having it Both Ways
This popped up on a site with listings of freelance/consulting gigs (sort of a Craigslist for marketing consulting):
I’m looking for a reputable marketing company, on and off line to construct a marketing campaign with the intentions to recruit clients for a two day seminar which I’m holding.
That sounds reasonable, right? But then…
This job is [...]
Product Naming: Yaz Takes on a Whole New Meaning
I will admit that, when it coms to product naming, I’m not particulary good, usually ending up going the route of “the name should tell us what it does”. I’ve veered of this a few times, and have actually come up with an occasional name or two that’s not half bad, only to be brought [...]
Subversion for Fun and Profit
I feel like I should write something highly critical about Subvert and Profit, but I just can’t get worked up about it.
Subvert and Profit pays Digg users for their votes. (Digg, for those unfamiliar with it, is a news site where the contents of the front page are determined by votes of users. Digg users [...]
Now, that’s what I call customer service
The other day, I ordered a screen filter for my laptop from CDW. I haven’t ordered from them before, but their site was easy to use and the price seemed right enough, after I found the same item elsewhere for $20 more, I decided to look no further.
Within minutes, I got an e-mail confirming my [...]
Balance of Power, continued
I wrote recently about the new balance of power between businesses and their customers. It’s a fascinating topic and there have been all kinds of stories that made me think more about it in the last week.
Consider “gagwrap” software licenses, which attempt to ban users from writing anything bad about a piece of software by [...]
Boom Town: Marketing to the Baby Boomers
The Marketing Profs had a recent piece on marketing to the Boomers. Which I didn’t see, other than the headline, because it was premium content which I don’t - but should, they’re very good - subscribe to, and which I was too rushed to do the other day, but it did get me thinking about marketing [...]
Oh, Pioneer! Sprinting to a New L.D. Provider
Here I’ve been chortling each time I read a John Whiteside manifesto on his dealings with the wonderful world of telecommunications. Knock on plastic, I told myself, but things are going so darned well these days with the multiple entities, large and small, local and not-so-local, that make up what used to be known as the [...]
Selling Civic Duty
It’s been an unusual week; Monday I had jury duty, and I was picked to be on a jury. The trial began Tuesday morning and wrapped up yesterday, and now I’m done and back to normal life and trying to get unburied.
As I sat in the courtroom on Monday during the jury selection process, [...]
It Slices, It Dices…Ron Popeil, Marketing Genius
Well, I saw the other day that Ronco is going into bankruptcy. Could this be the end of the Veg-o-Matic and the Popeil Fisherman?
Before it’s too late, it’s time to think about what Ron Popeil (the Ron of Ronco) can teach us marketing types about concise product naming and enticing messages for our products - let alone [...]
The New Balance of Power
Here’s something interesting about the new power than consumers have over marketers: some companies don’t get it.
Consider Dell, for example. When the Consumerist blog ran a post called 22 Confessions of a Former Dell Sales Manager, the company’s reaction was to demand that they remove it, in a rather heavy-handed way.
Still, Dell is smarter than [...]
