Recent Articles
June 16, 2008
Thanks to an uncertain economy — in which companies are closely evaluating all areas of their marketing budgets and demanding controllable, accountable and measurable media — search engine marketers are standing firmly on center stage. More than $12 billion was spent on search last year, and that number is expected to more than double in the next three years.
June 16, 2008
I may be at risk of upsetting the ROI lobby with this statement, but I have to tip my hat to the marketers who took the plunge into the social media world, and failed. The Wall Street Journal last week analyzed the year since Facebook opened its development doors, reporting that more than 250,000 developers have taken the bait.
June 02, 2008
While the growth and profile of mobile marketing continues apace, its progression has been marked both by caution and uncertainty on the part of advertisers, and by periodic revolutions on the technical and infrastructure side.
May 26, 2008
The talent crunch in the direct marketing world is unfortunately afflicting companies of all shapes and sizes. While the effects of operating with an incomplete staff lineup are widespread, they can have a particularly detrimental effect on how the company is perceived from the outside. And with customer service as the first frontier of a company's reputation, getting it wrong can be fatal.
May 19, 2008
As members of the catalog industry gather this week at the ACCM conference, comparisons will be made to the mood at last year's event. The industry had just been socked with a major postal increase, and there was a genuine fear that without making substantial changes, many catalogs would crumble.
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.