Archives

Category: Business/marketing

The New Yorker thinks I'm bad at math (Tuesday, 23 May 2006 12:01 PM ): I'll have to start visiting the Periodicals section of the Butler Public Library.

The powder sugar on this donut puts a semi-protective barrier between your fingerprint and your nutrition (Monday, 18 April 2005 10:59 AM ): Hearing rumors that a certain ad campaign is being retired, Jonah Bloom of AdAge bids farewell to Miller's High Life man: In an era when much advertising feels fake, especially brewers’ ads, which tend to depict too-preened girlymen prancing around...

You like long walks on the beach too? (Tuesday, 26 October 2004 03:37 PM ): Another one of my entrepreneurial ideas has been taken: PersonalsTrainer offers to fix your personal ad so you sound more like you than you can manage yourself. However, the lead example offered on the home page is less than reassuring....

Running in the cold? So much of the suck. (Tuesday, 12 October 2004 08:38 PM ): NIKE dips a toe into viral marketing: please enjoy these odd little Flash cartoons promoting NIKE Sphere products. So bad they're good! They remind me of the stuff by OddTodd. A lot. Either he's finally found himself a job, or...

Number one reason I hate lists (Tuesday, 21 September 2004 11:02 AM ): The Wall Street Journal and Harris Interactive have conducted a survey of corporate recruiters, asking which are the "top MBA programs." The full results will be published later today, so we can save grousing about the criteria and the questionability...

Economics explained in human terms (Tuesday, 24 August 2004 09:49 PM ): OK, a bit of the dismal science here, but it's something that highlights an important point in the current presidential election, one that many people fail to grasp: what is "comparative advantage" and how does it affect outsourcing of jobs?...

Time to bring back the two Martini lunch (Monday, 26 July 2004 11:28 AM ): I've never liked vermouth. When I ask for a Martini I always say, "Skip the vermouth." So actually I don't drink Martinis: I drink very cold gin or vodka, up, with a twist. Sometimes I even order just that: "I'd...

Harder than naming children (Wednesday, 21 July 2004 09:38 AM ): All the good ones -- and many, many bad ones -- are taken: Car companies have a terrible time selecting new car names. General Motors found out last year that a forthcoming Buick sedan called LaCrosse, to be offered in...

How to sell expensive water (Thursday, 08 July 2004 03:08 PM ): Nice little case study on "anti-marketing marketing": the brilliance of Darius Bikoff and Glaceau Smartwater. Despite the success, despite the obvious attention to marketing principles such as design and differentiation, and despite even the national effort, Energy Brands seems to...

But how to phrase it in one's job description? (Friday, 02 July 2004 10:07 AM ): Even Businessweek says it's a good thing: Blogging With The Boss's Blessing. Increasingly, execs see employee blogs as a way to transform a transaction with a faceless behemoth into a personal relationship with an employee. Blogs are also hyper efficient...

Smart marketing (Tuesday, 29 June 2004 02:03 PM ): Some excellent material on the marketing & advertising blogs recently: Adrants argues for a new marketing role, that of "director of customer/consumer conversation/dialog." Rick E. Bruner of Business Blog Consulting offers tips for driving traffic to your blog, giving ideas...

But what does it have to do with the album? (Tuesday, 29 June 2004 11:38 AM ): The Wrapped Up in Books gameis surprisingly diverting, given its low-tech style. I like the idea of using a game to promote a music single, as Belle & Sebastian are doing. But couldn't they have come up with a game...

Year of Glad (Thursday, 24 June 2004 01:58 PM ): Let this be a warning to marketing reserach groups that run focus groups, and to the companies that hire them: the people you target are onto you: In one group for Johnnie Walker Black, it was obvious the marketers wanted...

What's in a name (Friday, 28 May 2004 10:55 AM ): From brandchannel.com, a nice overview of issues in naming and branding, especially managing corporate brands alongside product brands. Most brand consultants agree that the common factor to successful nomenclature is clarity. “Consumers have to understand you before they can appreciate...

News flash: People would watch your TV spot if it were interesting (Friday, 28 May 2004 09:55 AM ): Recent surveys indicate that, despite advertisers fears of having their TV spots skipped over, users of digital video recorders (DVRs, like TiVo) pay attention to ads they are fast-forwarding past. More than twice as many survey respondents said they always...

And now a word from our sponsor (Thursday, 27 May 2004 09:58 PM ): As you will have noticed, I have added advertisements to My Brilliant Mistakes. It's an experiment: I'm curious whether any revenue will result. But I find I'm now more interested to see what ads Google selects to display. As they...

It's so crowded that no one goes there any more (Monday, 24 May 2004 11:42 AM ): In this week's NYT Magazine, Magazine > Consumed: Poultry-Geist" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/magazine/23CONSUMED.html">Rob Walker notes the inherent contradiction between the public's professed distaste for advertising and its love of certain, sneaky marketing: So, if we're all so sick of advertising, why are millions...

You have less than two months to come up with something amazing (Thursday, 13 May 2004 10:26 AM ): Aspiring advertisers and those with creativity to burn, take note: Maisonneuve Magazine has announced the Digital Curiosity competition, a chance to win fame (if not fortune). WHAT: The sweetest commercial competition around WHO: Americans and Canadians WHERE: Maisonneuve Magazine WHEN:...

They still remind me of little clown cars (Tuesday, 11 May 2004 09:23 AM ): Have you seen the booklets that pretend to be reports about a British engineer who makes robots out of Mini Cooper car parts? A friend gave me one yesterday, and coincidentally today the Business > Media & Advertising > Advertising:...

Trademarking for the other four senses (Tuesday, 04 May 2004 01:59 PM ): brandchannel.com looks at the history of trademarks and highlights the difficulties of "Trademarking Sounds, Sights, Smells and Touch": The representation of nontraditional marks remains a problem to this day. According to Allan Poulter, a partner in the British law firm...

Learning from the big boys: Sun's business blogging policy (Tuesday, 04 May 2004 10:10 AM ): If you're thinking of using weblogs to generate activity on your business website -- through either a single business blog or multiple "personal" blogs by employees -- check out Sun Microsystem's recently posted Policy on Public Discourse. It's short and...

Selling more than chicken (Friday, 30 April 2004 10:28 AM ): In on-going Subservient Chicken coverage, here's a concise and well-explained analysis by Joseph Jaffe on the brilliance of the campaign: The one question that seems to be continuously asked is, "But did it sell chicken?" This is completely the wrong...

Aussi, nous sommes désolés pour Euro-Disney. Mauvaise idée. (Thursday, 29 April 2004 11:13 AM ): Oh, how I wish I'd thought of this inside joke/buzz marketing stroke of genius: Labels on most of the backpacks, messenger and laptop bags made and sold by Tom Bihn have his company's contact information along with washing instructions in...

Sir Mix-alot (Monday, 26 April 2004 03:00 PM ): How to create support among your existing fans for your new work, exhibit A: David Bowie invites fans to remix his new songs with his back catalog. Singer David Bowie (news) has invited his fans to mix two of his...

And now, a word from our sponsor (Monday, 26 April 2004 01:38 PM ): Some articles related to changes in consumers' acceptance or rejection of marketing and advertising: MediaDailyNews reports that "[a]bout half of consumers surveyed say they've noticed brands involved in product placements in movies and television, according to a recent Mediaedge:cia study."...

How to make your brand laughable in one easy step (Friday, 23 April 2004 01:45 PM ): This website seems to be intended to help franchisees create McDonald's promotional materials. But it's quite easy to use it in other ways. In actuality, I expect that the wording of the banners must be approved by someone before anything...

Blogging for dollars (Wednesday, 21 April 2004 11:28 AM ): Good ideas, ripe for the picking: Building a Blog Marketing and Media Company, a blog-focused business concept by WebWord. Here's the core concept: The core idea is that there aren't any companies focused on blog marketing. There is a hole...

More Subservient Chicken (Thursday, 15 April 2004 03:25 PM ): The Wall Street Journal today has an article discussing the Subservient Chicken website created by Burger King (discussed here previously after Adrants wrote about it). If you're a subscriber to the WSJ, here's a link. The results in only two...

"It's not going to work" (Tuesday, 13 April 2004 11:08 AM ): Ad Age reports that "a growing number of marketers want to persuade the nation's print magazines to open the text of their editorial pages to product placements." I'm not particularly swayed by the moral arguemnts on either side of the...

Its version of the Chicken Dance is nothing like I expected (Monday, 12 April 2004 09:07 AM ): New ideas in viral marketing: Burger King presents Subservient Chicken. Easily the weirdest thing I've seen a major food corporation do, and that's even counting the Quizno's singing rat commercials. This is one ugly chicken. And check out the duct...

Skin trade (Thursday, 08 April 2004 03:31 PM ): Adrants highlights past and present uses of forehead advertising. It sounds like something from a science fiction novel (and indeed a similar concept is used in Jim Munroe's novel about a hyper-marketed future, Everyone in Silico). One of the first...

Blogging is the new black (Tuesday, 06 April 2004 10:06 AM ): Rick E. Bruner reviews the latest research on bloggers and blog readers and wonders why more advertisers have not jumped on the opportunities presented by weblogs: Super-popular blogger Glen Reynolds, of Instapundit.com, leaves his traffic logs open, where we can...

How branding works (Tuesday, 06 April 2004 12:36 AM ): I meant to post this some time back: Scientists have new theories about how branding works: Read Montague, Director of the Human Neuroimaging Lab at Baylor College of Medicine, has now provided proof that branding plays with our brains. Last...

Juicy (Thursday, 25 March 2004 10:22 PM ): The launch of my new venture has taken most of my time lately. It is Fat Plum: We're beginning by offering workshops, private consultations on writing and publishing, manuscript reviews and edits, and so on. Soon we'll expand into writer-focused...

Jesus Christ: Flavor of the month (Monday, 15 March 2004 09:54 AM ): From the Detroit News: What a trend we have in Jesus. Even before "The Passion" hit screens, pop culture had reinvented the image of Jesus. Tabloid fashionistas such as Pamela Anderson, Ashton Kutcher, Ben Affleck and Lara Flynn Boyle have...

Nielsen whistling past the graveyard (Friday, 12 March 2004 10:45 AM ): Jim Meskauskas in MediaPost comments on Nielsen's plans to report on personal video recorder (PVR) households but not on their viewing of advertisements. As MediaPost reported last Friday in an article by Joe Mandese, agencies are asking that Nielsen provide,...

I'll drive that tanker (Monday, 08 March 2004 02:30 PM ): Advertising Age looks at actor/director/marketing-wiz Mel Gibson. To create this boffo box office, superstar director Mel Gibson employed a raft of guerrilla-marketing tactics, appealing to church groups and religious leaders to help him bring out the faithful. He traded heavily...

Impressive (Tuesday, 24 February 2004 08:43 PM ): In the current issue, the Economist considers several reasons why Matteo Arpe, the 38-year old head of Capitalia, Italy's fourth-largest banking group, is having such great success in modernising and reforming the traditionally corrupt Italian banking system. They mention his...

Think big (Monday, 23 February 2004 03:17 PM ): Following up on my previous posts on cultural standards in the U.S. and the U.K. and on bucking the established system, I recommend this interesting article that considers the risks inherent in not taking risks. It's focused on marketing, but...

You're soaking in it (Wednesday, 18 February 2004 06:53 PM ): Adrants laments the death of lasting brand positions in the course of noting that Jan Miner (Palmolive's Madge the Manicurist in the long running ad campaign) died on Sunday at age 86. Interestingly, Palmolive is not among the entries in...

Cats ask for it by name (Monday, 16 February 2004 01:50 PM ): From AdSlogans.com, The Advertising Slogan Hall of Fame. I like that the Brylcreem slogan is in the top 10: I don't remember a single Brylcreem ad (they may have been retired by the time I became aware of advertising) and...

Gaming the system (Saturday, 14 February 2004 04:12 PM ): A system error makes clear what everyone expected but couldn't demonstrate: Writers and their friends anonymously give their own works high reviews on Amazon. "Close observers of Amazon.com noticed something peculiar this week: the company's Canadian site had suddenly revealed...

We who are about to drink salute you (Monday, 09 February 2004 11:15 AM ): A fine collection of ads this week at AdAge.com's advertising roundup. The Beyonce/Britney/Pink ad for Pepsi is unfun--no loss that it's intended for the European market only. (And how uncomfortable must those metal bikinis have been in the sweltering, dusty...

Copyright © 2004 – 2007 Cynthia Closkey