Recent Articles
May 12, 2008
You may have noticed that the Private View element in The Work has recently been expanded, to allow the creatives that generously give their time to critique the work we run in the feature a little more space to show off their insights.
May 05, 2008
I spent two evenings without Internet or American Idol last week, thanks to the "catastrophic failure" of my Verizon FiOS equipment. Checking my Gmail at work, the two evenings added up to 140 non-spam messages. Of the daunting 116 commercial messages, 112 came as a result of my having opted in.
April 28, 2008
When a company begins an announcement with the words, "To further enhance a great customer experience..." what frequently follows is a statement that might suggest otherwise. Dell began its announcement of its new premium support option thusly, and as it outlines the inarguably great benefits — paying customers can talk to the same, North America-based technicians every time they have a problem — it is an unfortunate reminder of how quality assistance can often be lacking from many companies' customer service arms.
April 21, 2008
Now that Tax Day is behind us, retailers are waiting to see if the government's stimulus checks will be spent, or socked away. Many retail brands have already been campaigning creatively to persuade Americans that it is their duty to their economy to flood the money into stores.
April 07, 2008
With the confluence of postal increases, consumers' green advocacy and soaring paper costs, it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that insert media is one of the print-rooted areas that are currently under attack.
March 28, 2008
It's a reality now that marketers and their DM partners are feeling the effects of shifting, even declining, budgets, and many are nimbly making tweaks to their business models. InfoUSA is like many others who are grappling with the slowing growth of the direct mail business, and it has worked to build up its technological capabilities, enhancing the power of its database offerings.
March 14, 2008
I've had several interesting conversations over the past couple of weeks pondering a tricky subject: What is the definition of a DM agency? It used to be easier to define. Mostly, they were defined by what they were not — the branding ad agency, which controlled and advocated for broadcast spend. These were the data guys, who liked to send stuff through the mail.
March 07, 2008
Browsing the blogosphere in the wake of Costco's announcement of increased profits and same-store sales, I'm reminded — if there were ever any doubt — that customer satisfaction and loyalty is so often directly proportionate to customer service values.
February 29, 2008
Given the faith that so many people are holding in the robustness and growth potential of Internet advertising, it's somewhat understandable that the news of Google's decline in paid clicks, according to last week's ComScore report, had many observers adopting a falling sky mentality.
February 22, 2008
Two pieces of research came out last week that attempted to quantify some of the impact the credit crunch has had on the direct marketing world. Synovate's Mail Monitor subsidiary cited a 14% year-on-year decrease in credit card direct mail volume in Q4 2007. And Mintel Comperemedia brings in a more nuanced point that the annual decrease in credit card solicitations to non-customers from 2006 to 2007 is 11%, but loyalty-based offers sent to current customers actually increased by 16%.