You say you want marketing news and commentary? Well, you came to the right place. The Big Fat Marketing Blog is updated daily by the editors of Chief Marketer, Direct, Promo and Multichannel Merchant. Opinions? Oh yeah, we got em'. Don't say we didn't warn ya'.
Are you a fan of Archie McPhee? You probably are if you have a thing for stuff like rubber chickens, punching nun puppets, and bacon-flavored dental floss.
And if you want to know how the novelties merchant got its start, you can read “Who Would Buy This? The Archie McPhee Story” by company founder Mark Phallow. more
Once in a while, spam makes it to my Yahoo inbox. Now in this case, it’s spammers leaving messages within Yahoo Groups I belong to and haven’t removed myself from, even though I haven’t accessed the groups in umpteen years.
Unless the spammers know something that I don’t, like that fans of the Arena Football League dig older chicks. Really old chicks. more
Forty percent of women would choose Barack Obama as their ideal dinner companion. The president-elect beats out Brad Pitt, the dream dinner date of only 20% of women. But if Michelle Obama plans to tag along in that dress she wore election night, almost two thirds of women say she can just stay home.
Those controversial findings are part of the end-of-year round-up of survey results amassed by www.BettyConfidential.com, a start-up Web portal that regularly takes the temperature of its female readership with online surveys. More predictably, 91% of respondents told the site that they will be cutting back on their holiday shopping this year—although they will be letting themselves indulge in the comforts of beauty products (18%), mani/pedicures (18%), and chocolate (16%). more
You know things are tight when marketers start reusing old creative.
It’s a sign of the times, and a cost-saver for sure, and maybe not even a bad idea when you think about it. After all, clients get tired of the creative loooooooong before consumers do. It’s just that repurposing creative stands out in a marketplace that puts a premium on fresh, differentiated content.
That’s the attention-seeking idea of the Weatherproof Garment Company. After sending out 100 letters to companies and getting no takers, they decided to run an ad in The Wall Street Journal to further “publicise” the concept, offering each buyer 3 seconds of time in the spot for $300,000. I think the press they are getting alone will cover the costs for the print ad, but will they sell more clothes?
In the past they tried, through a press release, to buy 2-seconds of Super Bowl commercial time (which they retracted) and have also tried to put a jacket on well known New York street performer Naked Cowboy to get noticed.
The most compelling subject line I’ve ever seen? “You’re fired.” I’ve been sacked in strange ways, but never by e-mail, and you can be damned sure I opened it.
But it turned out to be Les Gore’s Recruiting Report, and the article was on how to discharge a subordinate. Les, a direct marketer recruiter, sent it to me unsolicited, but I read it because it was interesting in a ghoulish way—like reading about how to administer a lethal injection. And I subscribed to the e-letter.
Well, Les has returned to that topic, and it’s a timely one given the layoffs going on. more
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