I recently saw this ad from Discover Card, one of the major advertisers in, let’s say, the country.

Now, one would think they hired a marketing firm or ad agency to design this ad. And the best they can come up with was a FORTUNE COOKIE? Maybe I’m mistaken… perhaps they hired the receptionist’s nephew.
Fortune cookies [...]

Saw a video this weekend about the “dangers” of groin-to-groin front hugs among teens. We’ll go out on a limb here, and guess most mature people think there are better topics to rally against than the front hug. Of course, this group offers an alternative called the “Christian Side Hug.” (Believe me, I am NOT  [...]

Email is based on the exact opposite premise of direct mail: with direct mail you can assume the recipient wants it unless they opt out. With email, you have to assume the recipient doesn’t want it, until they opt-in!
Ignoring that simple rule will get you blacklisted in the reputable world of email faster than you [...]

Not that I’m surprised, but businesses are now paying people to post positive tweets about them, even though the tweeter has never used the product or service. To me, it’s against everything social media stands for. (Which is: a way to avoid advertisers!) Being a marketer myself, I believe this is totally against social media’s [...]

Back in the “olden days” of marketing (the 1990s not the 1890s), it was much easier to reach your audiences than it is today. So the question becomes: is it even possible to efficiently reach everyone you want to? Probably not, unless you’ve got an enormous budget. So what’s the alternative? To “cherry pick” the [...]

When I read that headline, it got my attention!
Laura Ramos from Forrester Research wrote on her blog, (read it <here>) something interesting. Her simple observation was: Buyers are more likely to use information from friends and associates than from marketing messages and sales people. While she focuses on those marketing high technology products and services, [...]

If you’ve never read Steve Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s Freakonomics book, it’s really interesting.
It explains what school teachers and Sumo wrestlers have in common, and how the KKK and Realtors have both been “undone” by the same forces.
Now, a new book by author Dan Hill called Emotionomics explains how we make decisions. He says only [...]

I believe human creativity is a much bigger factor in how well things are done vs. technology.
For example, it’s understood that fixing global warming can’t be done by technology… it’s gonna take humans to make the difference, or use technology in a creative way.

Another example: give a website project (ad, email campaign, etc.) to 10 [...]

We believe in the 5-second rule.
No, not the food on the floor, but the fact you only have 5 seconds you have to get someone’s attention. If you don’t get it in that time, you won’t get it at all. That’s why we craft marketing campaigns that get noticed: in 5 seconds or less.
If your [...]

Why? Because you can hardly get by one day without some kind of rationalization.
It’s proven that people decide by emotion, then rationalize to justify whatever they feel strongly about buying (which is why so many people drive BMWs and Mercedes instead of Hondas).
It’s the same process people go through in any buying situation: people feel [...]