Archive for July, 2009
Quality is job one
Over on Pink Slip, my main blog, I clicked through on a recent comment to the URL. I did so out of curiosity,even though I knew that the comment was not genuine, but was just there for the possibility of stirring up some business. (Spam-mish, but not quite spam.)
Anyway, when I got to the website, [...]
What to do if the product’s just not differentiated
I have a client that’s in a very crowded and fragmented market space. The market is old enough to have dozens of vendors in it, but young enough not to have yet consolidated into a few big guys offering all things to all men, and the smaller, niche satellite players that will continue to plug [...]
You might not want to throw in an AK-47 with purchase (but there’s a marketing lesson in here)
The other day, over on Pink Slip, I posted about a Missouri car dealer who’s giving away vouchers for AK-47’s for every new car he sells in August.
Now, as a peace-loving, city girl, I might raise both eyebrows at this type of promotion. And as a B2B marketer, it is supremely unlikely that I’ll [...]
Sales and marketing: why can’t we all just get along?
I had dinner the other night with an old friend and colleague. At present, she’s the virtual VP of marketing at a start up, and is butting heads with the actual VP of sales.
Nothing we haven’t seen before, I’m afraid. (If prostitution is the world’s oldest profession, then the world’s oldest intra-company battle has got [...]
The Apple vs. Microsoft ad war
According to a piece I saw over on Huffington Post (eke! someone may be able to suss out my politics!), Apple is coming after Microsoft, claiming that they’re ads on the under $1,000 PC’s - the “Laptop Hunter” campaign - are misleading.
The battle between Microsoft and Apple seems to never end. PC World reports that [...]
Michael Estrin on "the perfect corporate blog"
Over on iMedia Connection, Michael Estrin has an excellent post on achieving corporate blog perfection. (Ommmmmmmmm.)
I’m not going to steal all of his blogging thunder - go read the full post yourself. But to give you an overview, his 9 commandments are:
Smile - have a friendly, personal touch that isn’t a cut and paste of [...]
Get on your soapbox: HSBC’s interesting promotion
HSBC bills itself as “the world’s local bank.” Whatever the truth to it - and I have no idea what it feels like to be an HSBC banking customer - it’s a catchy tagline. And in the era of bank behemoths gobbling up all those friendly and familiar Dollar Bank of Podunks, it’s nice to [...]
If you’re going to spam, at least do it right
Like every other blogger, I get my fair share of spam comments - ‘Great post! Keep up the good work! So what if I have nothing to say about what you’ve written! If you want to buy a rug, or book a trip, or get some satisfaction, click here…’
Usually, I dispense with spam-mentary immediately, but [...]
Word of warning
A colleague recently attended the SIFMA (securities industry) show in New York. He was standing in front of an empty 10 by 10, when he was approached by a roaming, looking-for-work consultant who told him, “You need marketing help, and I can provide it.” She had assumed that he worked for the outfit which had [...]
A losing proposition
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how half the battle with direct mail or e-mail is getting someone to open up the piece and seeing what you had to say.
Well, I just got a direct mail piece that won half the battle, but abysmally failed the other half - and irritated me [...]
