The Big Fat Marketing Blog

Whatever messages emanate from the Vatican these days will likely be streamed on YouTube in what is a landmark departure from the traditionally austere veil of selective communications that has characterized the Church’s practices. The stated reason Pope Benedict becomes a YouTube celebrity is an intention to broaden his reach and better control his image on the new channel, http://www.youtube.com/vatican.

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If President Obama could endorse products he’d probably become the richest man in the world in a very short period of time. But since he cannot, others have been perfecting the art of profiting from his words and likeness.

This was never more apparent than during the course of the inaugural festivities in Washington, DC, where about 500 enterprising street vendors were the latest recipients of Obama mania. Pins, flags, calendars, T-shirts and mugs were standard fare sold on every street corner and by vendors lined up along the streets near the major events at The Mall and along the parade route. Everyone was buying, sporting pins on their hats, flags in their pockets or woolen Obama hats to fend off the cold.

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I like a freebie as much as the next person, but is Starbucks’ free coffee offer in exchange for community service worth the perk? I’m not so sure.

Starbucks will give out free “tall” coffee Jan. 22-25 to customers who fill out pledge cards in stores to donate five hours of their time to a volunteer opportunity of their choosing. The campaign, called “I’m In,” is the company’s attempt to boost volunteerism is wake of President Barack Obama’s call to renew community service efforts. more

The New York Mets have mastered the knack of dashing their fans’ hopes for a World Series flag with September swoons in the past two seasons, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that they’ve found a way to dampen opening day fever about their new ballpark.

Bowing to the aesthetics of Citigroup - the bailed-out bank that’s forking over $400 million over 10 years for naming rights to the Mets’ Citi Field - they’ve unveiled the dullest uniform patch ever conceived by the mind of corporate America. Instead of highlighting the facade of Ebbetts Field that they’re recreating to replace Shea Stadium, the Mets accepted a Citigroup-style patch with “Inaugural Season” in white letters aslant on a blue square with “2009″ in horizontal white letters in an orange box across the bottom.

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Look, we’re all under stress. On the personal front, our 401Ks are MIA and our home valuations have put an unfortunate new spin on the phrase “sweat equity.” Meanwhile our workplaces are pressure cookers, with bankruptcy filings, layoffs and salary freezes. (Not here at Promo, of course. We still keep a basket of benjamins by the coffee maker for lighting our lunchtime Cohibas.)

The point is, we as a public are getting cranky, and we may be less prone to put up with some of the things we found fun in 2007 or at least tolerable last year. And that seems to have been part of AT&T Wireless’ miscalculation in firing out text messages to “a significant number” of its 75 million user base, reminding them to tune in to the Tuesday night launch of the eighth season of “American Idol” on the Fox Network. more

Maybe finding just the right marketing campaign can overcome any sales resistance. There are certainly those who believe that the right combination of words, images and offers can sell anything to almost anyone.

But Hyundai Motor America isn’t of that school of thought. The U.S. division of the South Korean auto maker thinks that when economic times get so uncertain that people are worried about keeping a roof over their heads or food on the table, they need more to motivate them to buy a car than an “employee sale price” and the usual TV shots of the Pacific Coast Highway in the rain.

Facing up to the reality of hard times for its buyers over the past weekend, the company introduced the “Hyundai Buyer Assurance Program,” which basically says that if you lose your job or otherwise undergo “an involuntary loss of income” within a year of buying one of their cars, you can bring it back penalty-free as long as the depreciation is less than $7,500. more