Direct Marketing

One of the great things about going on vacation is it gives me a chance to look at marketing from the eye of a relaxed consumer, and listen to what other consumers—namely my kids—think about campaigns they see.

During our week in Maine, our eyes were looking skyward when we saw a small plane pulling a banner advertising the $3.99 ham and eggs breakfast special at Rosa Linda’s in Saco, ME.

My seven-year-old son was curious about the ROI of this marketing effort. Or more specifically, he wanted to know (a) what it cost to have a plane fly your message over the beach every single day, (b) why this restaurant wanted people to know what their breakfasts cost, when we always seemed to be closer to lunchtime when the banner flew over, and (c) why did people eat ham for breakfast? more

Nobody succeeds all the time. Everybody fails some of the time.

Good marketers succeed more than they fail … but when they fail, they still are winners. Why? Because good marketers leave their ego at the door and look at failure as an opportunity to learn and thus improve.

What can you learn from failure? more

It’s a story told thousands of times, all over the world, as I’ve come to learn over my many many many years of travel. While it may hold true for traditional advertising it’s an absolute truth for those deploying experiential methodology and using traditional media and less-traditional medias to effectively engage consumers.

I’ve been fortunate to be on three sides of the fence.:) more

Kant once asked a very simple question – Does technology enable or disable man? I think that we are absolutely at THE point where the personal decision is upon all of us all to make one very important decision.

Control the technology or let the technology control you? more

It seems Google, a company I greatly admire, has a conundrum on its hands: what to do with the treasure drove of data it has at its disposal.

The key issue, of course, is over-stepping privacy boundaries which can lead to consumer mistrust and adversely impact revenue and profits. People do not like to do business with companies that they do not trust. more

There are certain physical acts males enjoy. Some of these are focused on striking one inanimate object (baseball, football, golf ball) with another (a bat, a shoe, a club). Others involve consuming items the approximate size of a sports coupe’s engine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan’s_Hot_Dog_Eating_Contest).

Similarly, there are certain physical acts males do not enjoy. A stereotype lumps the hunter-gatherer aspects of shopping into this category, and a new study from Experian Marketing Services affirms this.

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