Archive for April, 2008
Haven’t I Seen This Movie Before?
A few weeks ago I had lunch with a friend and former colleague who’s also in marketing. Like me, my friend has worked in large companies, worked in small companies, done freelance work. Like me, my friend has done pretty much everything on the product management through product marketing through marcom continuum. Like me, my [...]
Press releases on your web site
Most companies publish their press released on their web sites. Gerry McGovern of Giraffe Forum says that it’s a bad idea:
Press releases are a form of propaganda. Publishing them on your website shows your customers how you are attempting to spin the media.
The Web is where we go because we don’t believe the hype, because [...]
Effective Product Marketing Rule #6
This is the sixth in a series of posts on Pragmatic Marketing’s Effective Product Marketing Rules.
Effective Product Marketing Rule #6: You need a positioning document for each buyer you want to influence.
In marketing, as in every other thing I can think of, things fall in and out of favor, and for a while one of [...]
Will spam kill Twitter?
Paul Cheney at Conversational Media Marketing asks an important question about TweetScan, a Twitter search engine:
Lately, I’ve received notifications that I’m being followed by those who’ve set up Twitter accounts strictly for marketing purposes. For example, I’ve tweeted that I was about to go on a diet. Within a day or two of mentioning that, [...]
A Beeline to Uline
Don’t ask me why I’m so enamored of the Uline catalog my husband gets every once in a while. They’re a company that specializes in shipping supplies, and 99.9999% of the shipping Jim does is via e-mail attachments, but he is incorporated, and somehow he found his way onto the Uline list.
It’s not as if [...]
Does your brand have an ecosystem?
I’m one of those people who likes to drive a car until there’s not much car left to drive. Sure, a shiny new car is fun, but it’s not that much fun to me; I think that 150,000 miles is the time to start thinking about what your next car might be, and the ideal [...]
Skanking up a staid old image
In the last few weeks, I’ve done two Burberry-related things.
One, I watched that most excellent of actresses, Helen Mirren, in a most excellent of movies, The Queen, and got to see a depiction of royals traipsing about their country "place" in Balmoral, Scotland, in gear that looked like it came straight out of Burberry: never [...]
If you ask, you must listen
About once a week, I get the same mailing offering me a credit card that earns miles in Continental’s frequent flyer program. It comes from Chase, and it has the Continental OnePass logo emblazoned on the envelope, with a note that says “IMPORTANT - Do Not Discard.” I immediately open them and shred the material [...]
Direct marketing: start with what you know
Over the course of my marketing career, there’s a trend that’s never stopped: data about prospects has gotten easier to obtain and easier to analyze. Segmentation and targeting that were difficult and expensive to do in the past have become cheaper and easier for organizations of all sizes. And what’s most interesting about this is [...]
Cherry M&Ms? Green is the color of love? Has M&M Mars lost its mind?
If I were going to be marooned on a desert island, or stuck on top of Mt. Washington for the winter, and I could only take one candy with me, it would probably be M&Ms - melts in your mouth, not in your hand - hands down.
So I’ve watched their product tweaks and brand [...]
