Am I the only sports fan to notice how more and more TV analysts in the niche are talking about individual athletes’ and sports teams’ as “brands”? Of course, they have always been, quote-and-unquote, brands. That’s real-world talk among marketing professionals.

But to protect the fans (or “customers”) from the game of marketing, this stuff was not supposed to be discussed in public. At least, that is the way it used to be. Yet, times have changed. Continue »

Last year, numerous email marketers used Halloween to spike their open and clickthrough rates and drive sales. But the most important thing that industry observers saw in their inboxes was that this mini-season isn’t just for seasonal marketers with tight product niches. Continue »

We love debating words in the office. We discuss whether an ad was “changed” or “manipulated” or if a marketer “destroyed” or “smashed” previous records. And we try hard to write in the language of marketers.

We particularly love to debate “marketing-speak.” Marketers like making nouns into verbs, or adjectives into nouns. It’s our job to decide where to draw the line. Here’s a quick list of some of our favorites:

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