The Big Fat Marketing Blog

I just read a very interesting story on a team, investor C. Dean Metropoulos and his sons. Their specialty is bringing old brands back to life. They’ve done it with Bumble Bee Tuna, Gulden’s mustard and now appear ready to do it again with PBR.

more

Is Moya Greene, the incoming chief executive of the UK’s Royal Mail, going to push the service toward privatization?

more

I’m just back from the Retail Marketing Conference, the Direct Marketing Association’s redo of the ACCM show. How was it?

Don’t ask me—I spent most of my time in rehearsals or presenting. And much of the feedback I heard tended to state the obvious: shockingly small turnout, quiet exhibit hall, not enough catalog content, etc.

But I did also hear some of the sessions were good, and the plus side of being small is that it was pretty easy to find people you were meeting up with. And my MCM Awards cohost, e-commerce guru Amy Africa, almost made everyone forget the sparse attendance and the fact that we were crammed into a long, skinny ballroom with bad acoustics. (Well, the folks in the back who couldn’t hear anything probably didn’t forget.) more

I recently wrote a story for Chief Business Marketer about Cisco Systems’ efforts to leverage social media marketing tools. The company, one of the most well-known high-tech brands in the B-to-B space, sponsors numerous blogs and has a presence on every social media site you can imagine.

It was interesting then to hear LaSandra Brill, senior manager of global social media at Cisco, say that the San Jose, Calif., company was still in the process of figuring out how to best measure the effect of its social media marketing efforts. Shouldn’t you have a clear-cut way to quantify such programs in mind from the very beginning?

more

Another day, another change in the Facebook privacy policy. Can anybody keep up, and is this good news or bad for merchants and marketers? Thankfully I checked out my personal e-mail while I was on the road yesterday, and the Twitter feed of TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden. more

Here’s a quick video we shot Wednesday at the Retail Marketing Conference in Orlando. Tom Funk, Vice President, Marketing for e-commerce consultancy Timberline Interactive, gives Multichannel Merchant his view on the role of social media in e-commerce. Does Funk, author of the book “Web 2.0 and Beyond: Understanding the New Online Business Models, Trends, and Technologies,” think Facebook, Twitter and other social mediums are a channel for sales or for customer service?

I guess you better click if you want to find out!