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To the Glorious Fourth!
This Opinionated Marketer is taking The Glorious Fourth off, but not without a brief comment on the flag. If you spent millions of dollars on logo design, branding, image, or whatever you want to call it, could you really come up with anything more beautiful than what we already have?
Happy Fourth of July to [...]
Memorial Day 2008
This Opinionated Marketer’s taking the day off to head to the cemetery to plant some geraniums.
Happy Memorial Day to all, especially to the veterans of wars long since passed, or still being waged.
Deadly sins of email
My inbox is a constant source of cautionary examples. In this case, it’s a textbook case of how not to send email to your customers.
I got this message from METRO, Houston’s public transit agency (click to enlarge):
Here’s what they are doing right: they are asking customers (I’m a registered owner of their stored value fare [...]
Naming is hard: a curtsey for some success
Naming a company (or product or web site) is a high-stakes, difficult task. Everybody wants that ideal name: you know, the one that’s short, memorable, and perfectly expresses what you do, the one that will make people nod and say, “I get it!” Oh, yes, and the one that nobody else is using, and whose [...]
Advertainment? Entertisement? Let’s call the whole thing off.
What do you do when people get really good at ignoring ads? You make the ads into entertainment:
NBC Universal Digital Studio will work with a division of Omnicom Group Inc. to create programs that help advertisers sell their products, the entertainment giant announced in a statement Thursday. The programming will be broadcast on NBC [...]
Little guy customer service, revisited
It’s so refreshing when you a see a company get things right. The other day I wrote about how large companies are usually the wrong place to look for models of customer service. Just after that, I experienced another example of a small company beating the pants off of the big guys in quality of [...]
FlexPetz turns a market dynamic upside down
The most interesting thing (in marketing terms) about FLEXPETZ, a company that lets customers rent a dog for a day, is how it turns a market on its head.
The market for pet services in the US is enormous, and all over the country, dog owners (including me) pay people to take care of their pets: [...]
Bootstrapper
I’m not just saying this because they put Opinionated on their list of “The Top One Hundred Free Lancer Blogs,” but freelancers should definitely check out Bootstrapper. Lots of nice tips, lists, resources, and the occasional odd-ball, general purpose, time wasting, highly entertaining post for those occasional moments when a freelancer just needs to take [...]
Anti-social (media, that is)
How about a big shout out to Mary Schmidt for her wise counsel about how to reach people. (Big hint: Noises off!) Here’s what she has to say - and you’ll do well to listen to her…
Turning up the volume doesn’t work. We just turn down our volume control…or leave the room (mentally or physically). [...]
Note on Pragmatic Marketing Rules - Feb 11
While I usually post my Pragmatic Rules on Monday, this week I’ll have Rule #17 on Wednesday. (I wrote it on another computer and thought I had the file with me. I didn’t. I will be able to retrieve it by Wednesday - and about another half dozen posts that have gone missing. I better [...]
