The Big Fat Marketing Blog

Chuck Teller, executive director of Catalog Choice, is proud of his 3 ½-year-old program and believes in the service it provides.

Launched in the fall of 2007, Catalog Choice is an online service that allows people to create a list of catalogs from which they want to receive no or less-frequent mail. The nonprofit then notifies the merchants of the opt-out request or makes a suppression file available that merchants can download from the site.

Many have viewed Catalog Choice as an adversary of direct mail. But Teller insists his program helps catalogers clean unresponsive names from their files and broker better relationships with customers who want to buy from them.

How is Catalog Choice good for direct marketers?

In 2007, Catalog Choice invented the title-specific choice program. Before the launch of Catalog Choice, there was a single preference file - the DMA Pander file, Teller says. “This has millions of names, many of whom do not want to opt-out of specific titles. By giving consumers choice at the title level, companies now only get the opt-outs that are specific to them. This is a superior model for consumer choice and company list management.” more

If you thought the harsh winter weather was a hardship for you, try being a direct merchant of perishable products. Delayed shipments means spoiled products, which means replacement shipments–which not only cost money, it often results in depleted inventories.

That’s what prepared foods merchant Magic Kitchen had to deal with. Its frozen means thawed when orders were stuck in transit delays so they couldn’t be used. Replacing those shipments caused the company to run out of stock.

How did Magic Kitchen handle it from a customer service standpoint? more

You couldn’t say it’s accidental. No one gets almost 9 million views for a YouTube video in the space of about six weeks by accident. But in the case of “A Day Made of Glass”, a video currently packing them in on the Web, glass and ceramics manufacturer Corning Inc. didn’t set out to win a viral video victory. That’s more like a happy side effect to the real purpose of creating the clip.

If your last name is Bieber or, well, Gaga, 9 million views for a video is an off morning. Those folks regularly see their single-video views reach the 1 billion mark. But for a manufacturer that doesn’t even make anything that gets sold directly to the public (the CorningWare cookware line was sold off and relaunched by another maker in 2001) that kind of Web audience constitutes a blockbuster hit. more

I have penned on this blog and in other articles on the pros and cons of having a celebrity spokesperson. The issue was raised again this week as the voice, errr, Quack of the Aflac duck was canned over his comments on Japan and its recent double whammy earthquake/tsunami.

Here are the details courtesy of the New York Times.

Use celebrity talent at your own peril.

This could be your big break, as now “Aflac is conducting a nationwide search for a new actor to play its beloved duck.”

Get quacking.

Sure, it’s not as much of a shopping holiday as Christmas or Valentine’s Day, but for the segment of your audience that is Irish (or just likes to wear green and lift a pint), St Patrick’s Day is a cause for celebration. And any cause for celebration seems to have some sort of a marketing component these days, so we’re off.

My inbox wasn’t stuffed with St Pat’s offers, but there were a few of interest. Living in Massachusetts, I couldn’t just search my inbox for the word “Patrick”—that also generates NPR news updates about our governor. more

Recently, my wife and I were looking to buy a dishwasher. Unlike a recent experience when we were trying to buy a vacuum cleaner at Sears, this time things worked out quite well.

At first, we were hesitant to shop for a dishwasher at a Home Depot near us in Connecticut. We had never bought a kitchen appliance at Home Depot and didn’t know what to expect.

As it turns out, our experience at Home Depot was excellent. The salesman spent a significant amount of time with us, explaining the differences among a few models we were looking at. After we settled on the one we wanted to purchase, the salesman filled out a fair amount of paperwork, including a delivery contract form.

We were told to call the delivery company to schedule a time for them to come by and install the new dishwasher and take the old one away. We weren’t in any hurry to have it delivered, so we scheduled an appointment about 10 days out. more