The Big Fat Marketing Blog

So J.C. Penney is getting out of print catalogs next year. Really. Even though the general merchandiser has already learned this year, after dumping its big book title in 2009, that when you stop mailing catalogs, your sales go down. Really.

Instead of catalogs J.C. Penney in 2011 plans to distribute “look books.” These booklets won’t show much merchandise, and with products what they do promote, they won’t include the item numbers. Really. more

Just the other day, while wondering where I could find striped placemats, I said to myself, I wish Cath Kidston would launch in the States. A British cataloger/retailer of homey (or as they say in England, homely), ’50s-inspired textiles, Cath Kidston has no real U.S. equivalent, which to my mind would make it an ideal candidate for expansion here.

And what do you know: The very next day I received an email from Cath Kidston Ltd: “Welcome to our new US website!” So of course I immediately clicked through to the U.S. site—and alas, was disappointed.

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In anticipation of the premiere of NBC’s new comedy Outsourced last week, there was a lot of noise that the show would by unfunny and offensive. But actually, it WAS funny, and I have yet to talk to someone who thought it was offensive. (How can you be offended by Outsourced when Jersey Shore is a hit?) more

One of the latest entrants into neuromarketing – the science of breaking through a consumer’s conscious filters and selling directly to the subconscious – is A.K. Pradeep, the CEO of research whose book “The Buying Brain” has just become available for purchase.

Pradeep is hardly alone in this field: Martin Lindstrom has studied using fMRI – functional magnetic resonance imaging – to measures the flow of blood into specific areas of the brain responses in response to marketing stimuli for years.

But for all Lindstrom’s showmanship – which is considerable – he has yet to release a mock hip-hop video extolling the virtues of neuromarketing. more

This past weekend, my family had the pleasure of attending Yo Gabba Gabba! Live, where we got a mighty helping of fun kids music, with a big ol’ side dish of marketing from Kia to boot.

Why would the automaker want to hitch its bumper to this kids’ property in particular? There’s several reasons, the main one being that the parents at Yo Gabba Gabba shows are just as engaged as their children.

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Being in the business I understand the hazards of misspellings. We all rely on copy editors—and our own—keen eyes to keep us out of trouble. But as pressures mount toward deadlines and eyes blur things can go wrong.

Some blunders are worse than others. Let’s take the case of the “how did THAT happen?” spelling error that somehow slipped through on a billboard in Fort Wayne, IN. The “l” got dropped from “public” and the billboard blared: “15 Best Things About Our Pubic Schools” with a plug for the South Bend Web site. more