The Big Fat Marketing Blog

If you’re the type of person who knew that Friday, April 30, was National Hairball Awareness Day, then Feline Pine wants your attention. And they’re trying to get it by making you just a bit suspicious that your cat is plotting against you.

That’s the explanation behind a series of roadside billboards and sidewalk stencils purporting to come from a mysterious organization Cats Against Clay, and reaching a new peak in a full-page ad in the New York Times promising a struggle against some unnamed feline injustice. “Cats will have the last word,” the ad read. “Victory.”

The billboards, stencils and print ad are the leading edge of a stealth campaign for kitty litter brand Feline Pine, which bills itself as better for cats and for owners because it’s dust-, perfume- and chemical-free. And the URL in the ads leads to a Web site that seems to have angry postings from a variety of cats threatening various types of household retaliation if their “demands” are not met. more

“People who buy purebred dogs really burn me up. Always adopt.” That ad copy from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) seems innocuous enough, no? But what about after you learn that PETA paid $200 for it to appear on a dying man’s cremation urn?

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The Postal Regulatory Commission has started the long process of holding hearings about the postal service’s proposal to cut Saturday mail delivery and already we hear the USPS complaining the Commission is taking too long and that such delays will further lead the USPS to insolvency. The USPS anticipates losing $238 billion over the next decade. more

It was reported yesterday that women’s apparel merchant Talbots and its telemarketing firm SmartReply had agreed to pay penalties of $161,000 for violating the Federal Trade Commission’s opt-out requirements for robocalls.

This was shocking—not that the companies had failed to give consumers proper notice of their right to opt out of receiving telemarketing calls, but that Talbots was using robocalls at all. Is this what the struggling brand needs? more

There are so many brands running so many contests—video, essay, photo— that are all just carbon copies of each other. It’s all vanilla, all the same, just a different brand name inserted into the rules.

So when a brand took a standard contest and added a big WOW factor it really stood out.

Papa John’s International is offering customers a cut of the sales if they come up with a new popular menu item. A cut of the sales! And, the challenge will wind down to three finalists who each get a $1,000 marketing budget to push their specialty pizzas. Now that’s an eye catcher. The contest has barely been open 48 hours and already more than 1,000 entries have come in along with lots of conversation about the challenge.

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As myriad businesses have learned, e-newsletters that emphasize editorial content over selling copy can be a handy tool for increasing customer engagement, retention, and sales.

In its white paper “Five Steps to Newsletter Success,” VerticalResponse offers some advice. Since seeing is believing, I thought this would be a good chance to riffle through my inbox and pull out examples of e-newsletters that are heeding said advice—and those that aren’t.

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