The Big Fat Marketing Blog

Long ago, movie heroes wore fedoras, heroines all had accents straight out of Vassar, and smoking was code for sophistication. The days of Paul Henreid lighting two cigarettes, then handing one to Bette Davis, are long gone. Today directors tend to shy away from depicting explicitly inhaling unless they’re trying to set a rebellious, take-no-PC-prisoners tone. Where would Quentin Tarentino be without his Red Apple brand smokes?

But the flap over the use of cigarettes in the chick flick “He’s Just Not That Into You” involves a few new wrinkles in how the media use tobacco. For one thing, no one in the movie is actually seen smoking. One of the stories does turn on smoking cessation as a plot point, however, when Jennifer Connelly leaves her husband in part because he has lied about quitting smoking. more

I am a fan of great public relations. It can be a very measurable medium, especially when launching a new or improved product. Ask Steve Jobs. It’s how he launched the i-pod, and i-phone. It’s how Jeff Bezos launched the Kindle and the Kindle 2. Personally, I have used PR to help many clients, especially B-to-B clients. The key is to make sure you re-purpose the coverage you receive. more

I am a fan of great public relations. It can be a very measurable medium, especially when launching a new or improved product. Ask Steve Jobs. It’s how he launched the i-pod, and i-phone. It’s how Jeff Bezos launched the Kindle and the Kindle 2. Personally, I have used PR to help many clients, especially B-to-B clients. The key is to make sure you re-purpose the coverage you receive. more

We’re watching more video online these days; according to comScore figures, a record 14.3 billion Web videos of all types in December 2008, up 13% from just the month before. Cable nets time Warner and Comcast are reportedly in talks to serve up cable programming over the Web to subscribers who get both TV and broadband. And two separate reports from The Nielsen Company find that (a) Americans viewing video on the Internet watch three hours per month that way, and that (b) the most popular Web video fare in January of this year was full-length episodes of “Lost,”, “Saturday Night Live” and “Grey’s Anatomy.”

So we’re rapidly getting used to the idea that we can watch what we like when and over what device we like, thanks to both the spread of broadband through the land and changes in our audience behavior. more

We’re watching more video online these days; according to comScore figures, a record 14.3 billion Web videos of all types in December 2008, up 13% from just the month before. Cable nets time Warner and Comcast are reportedly in talks to serve up cable programming over the Web to subscribers who get both TV and broadband. And two separate reports from The Nielsen Company find that (a) Americans viewing video on the Internet watch three hours per month that way, and that (b) the most popular Web video fare in January of this year was full-length episodes of “Lost,”, “Saturday Night Live” and “Grey’s Anatomy.”

So we’re rapidly getting used to the idea that we can watch what we like when and over what device we like, thanks to both the spread of broadband through the land and changes in our audience behavior. more

Frito-Lay is redesigning many of their salty snack bags to better appeal to women, who actually snack MORE than men, and not on the same salty stuff, either. To figure all this out, and capitalize on the trend, they turned to neuromarketing–literally getting into the heads of their customers.

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