Archive for July, 2007
Lend me your ear (or 2 second access to it)
Attention spans and patience levels keep getting shorter. And what with our instant ability to skip an ad entirely by press-buttoning our way to another station, radio ads are getting shorter and shorter, too.
Clear Channel (which, it seems, runs just about every commercial radio station in the world) is now offering its advertisers “blinks” (2 [...]
Second Life Losing Marketing Steam
An LA Times article talks about how marketers are losing interesting in Second Life, the virtual world created by Linden Labs:
“There’s not a compelling reason to stay,” said Brian McGuinness, vice president of Aloft, a brand of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. that is closing its Second Life shop and donating its virtual land [...]
Selling at C-Level
I can’t possibly be the only marketing person in the universe who wants to tear her hair out when I hear the words “we want to sell at the C-level.”
There are certainly products and services that must be sold at C-level. They tend to be high-ticket items. They tend to have enterprise implications. They tend [...]
Furry Money
Pet related marketing fascinates me. I’ve always been one of those animal people (you are one and you get it, or you’re not and you don’t) and so I’ve been the subject of it. And it’s interesting because it’s one of those areas what what is needed for an animal is so simple (strictly speaking: [...]
Really, really good customer service at the Buffalo Hampton Inn.
I recently made a shuffle off to Buffalo, where I stayed - at my client’s corporate rate, thank you - at The Hampton Inn and Suites.
It was my first time in Buffalo since, on a childhood family trip to Chicago, in the broiling heat, our packed to the gills car got a flat tire just outside the city. Which [...]
Twitter Old News Already?
So now I’m hearing about Pownce, a Twitter alternative. I think this was inevitable because I, the Twitter skeptic, set up a Twitter account last week. (Being a skeptic doesn’t mean I don’t want to have a look.) So obviously it’s time for Twitter to be old news.
My take on Twitter…
I set it up [...]
Marketing Mistakes Have Been Made….
Let’s face it. We’ve all done it at one point or another: executing a plan or program that you know is flawed from the get go.
Most of us - at least once we’ve reached a level of experience and confidence in our careers - have pointed out the flaws and suggested alternatives, but sometimes we [...]
Another Sprint Thought: Carrots vs Sticks
After my post this morning, I wondered, “If those 1,000 customers are really just more trouble that they are worth, how could Sprint have handled the situation better?”
Now just imagine if the letter those folks had gotten had said, “Reviewing our customer service records, it seems that we are unable to service your wireless needs. [...]
Sprint Fires Some Customers
We’ve all had times we want to fire our customers - and those of us who’ve worked in B2B environments probably can think of some horror stories of customers who were so impossible to satisfy that their business cost us more than it made for us. And often, we were right; we were keeping our [...]
The 10 Commandments of Freelance Marketing
Well, if the Vatican can come up with Ten Commandments for driving. (For those who missed it, Rome spoke a couple of weeks ago. My personal favorite: Thou Shalt Not Kill. That’s probably because, as a product marketer, I’m all in favor of repurposing existing content wherever possible. Thou Shalt Not Kill is time-honored, proven messaging, that’s [...]
