The Big Fat Marketing Blog

It’s always interesting to check out a conference for the first time, and it’s always fun to come to Las Vegas. (Though I’ve also found it’s even more fun to leave Las Vegas.)

So I was happy to be covering the Merchant Risk Council’s E-Commerce Payments & Risk Conference on March 16-18. The only problem? more

Postmaster General John E. Potter testified today before a Senate subcommittee and said moving to five-day mail delivery is “absolutely necessary to ensure financial viability” of the U.S. Postal Service, “both now and into the future.” more

Marketers in the States by and large assume that when it comes to leveraging the various channels and media open to them, the U.S. is number one, and brands in all other countries are busy playing catch-up. But one channel where Stateside marketers have to play catch-up is Twitter. Based on anecdotal evidence, I’d say the Brits are much more creative in exploiting this particular channel.

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Remember this blog post from about seven months ago, the one about Constant Contact constantly contacting me? Well now I’m trying to cancel my Constant Contact account, and I can’t unless I do it by phone… and I’ve been on hold for about a half an hour now.

What makes this even funnier is that a blogger complained about this four years ago, and Constant Contact doesn’t seem to be listening. You would think a marketer that deals with communication would be on the lookout for bad things being said about it, and strive to make customer-centric changes. more

Ah, geolocation. Ask just about any marketer: It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. When are we going to admit that geolocation is not very effective? Maybe when more writers and bloggers speak up and say they are sitting at their desk, about 1,200 miles away from the deal that’s reached their computer screen.

My office is in Stamford, CT. I’m on our company’s Overland Park, KS-based server. That’s 1,251 miles if I drive 20 hours four minutes on I-70, or 1,350 miles if I drive 21 hours 25 minutes on I-64.

So these offers designed to drive me into businesses in Overland Park or nearby Kansas City are really not going to be very effective. All they’re going to do is tell me what I already know: Geolocation sucks. more

When thinking about rappers, Jay Z and Lil Wayne come to mind, not two guys from Bounty paper towels rapping about an experiment to see if 11 billiard balls can hang on a wet paper towel before the towel goes the way of the corner pocket.

But there they are in a YouTube video, looking a bit like they’re headed to perform surgery on Bart Simpson. But they’ve got the moves, the car, the rap, the chains and … the girls.

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