I am a huge fan of the AMC television series Mad Men — a drama about the ad men and women of Madison Avenue in the 1960s. That’s why a blog post about the shutdown of Mad Men Twitter feeds caught my eye.
Apparently, fans were posing as Mad Men characters, creating Twitter profiles for them, and posting regular Twitter updates. AMC asked Twitter to shut down the feeds, which angered fans. Read more…
Discounts abound at eretail sites this holiday season. The New York Times dubbed the price slashing “holiday price wars” in an article on November 19. The article’s desperate tone underlines what many of us already know: The holiday shopping season is going to be rough.
Every consumer is looking for a discount, which doesn’t bode well for premium brands. Price drops and coupons can diminish a brand’s boutique image. But some marketers are finding a way around this quandary. Read more…
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. Read more…
The BlackBerry Bold has been unveiled, and many folks compared it at launch to the iPhone. For what it’s worth, I think that’s a good thing for BlackBerry marketers. Because, no matter the brand, smartphones are not going anywhere.
There will be more brands entering this particular technological fray; some might actually outdo both the iPhone and the BlackBerry Bold. And they will drive the wireless market further into the future. Read more…
I have been signed up for Barack Obama and John McCain’s email messages for well over a year. And my fellow Americans (sorry, I couldn’t resist, ‘Mac’ fans), I was let down by what I did NOT see on Wednesday or Thursday.
Neither candidate had sent out an email to their subscriber list since the election results were in thanking them for their support. Obama’s Internet strategy has been pretty brilliant, so this glaring blind spot in ‘customer care’ was nearly shocking from his camp.
I first recognized this yesterday, a day after Election Tuesday. At that time, I was willing to cut campaign managers David Axelrod and Rick Davis some slack. A Tuesday night or Wednesday morning email would have been best. But they and their teams had to be unbelievably tired and distracted. The last thing they were probably thinking about was another email send.
But I thought: They really should be sending a ‘Thank You’ message on Thursday…any point after that would be kind of an embarrassment. I mean, both campaigns wisely used email to gather support. Whether it was donations, volunteering, soliciting help with phone banks, etc., each candidate was acquiring the resources of hard-working people via those messages.
By not sending their lists ‘Thank Yous’ in a timely fashion, they sent an altogether different kind of message: “We don’t need you anymore.”
That’s unfortunate for both the Democratic and Republican brands. While the bad marketing on both parties’ watch will not matter in 2012, why take the risk of turning off your best supporters? It makes zero sense.
Especially when you consider that both camps constantly sent emails this year. Several a week.
One more. That’s all they had left to do.
User-generated content started being a hot topic a couple of years ago. It’s not that marketers are truly ignoring it, but I think it’s fair to say that the buzz has fizzled a bit.
Perhaps this has something to do with an economy that’s been sticking its tongue out at the public for about a year now. Ya think? Read more…
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. Read more…
Getting “free stuff” makes me feel good about a brand. Many of us feel the same way. And all we have to do is give up a phone number or a mailing address.
I think it’s safe to say that Twitter-mania has arrived. In every other interview I do, someone mentions Twitter. Doing a keyword search for “Twitter” in my RSS reader, I found thousands of blog posts about it.
But how does this micro-blogging site help marketers and PR professionals?
