Until the 2008 election campaign, politics was considered "cover death," a subject avoided rather than gravitated toward, at the celebrity weekly newsstand. Although President-elect Obama's coverage in the major newspapers and newsweeklies was important to his success, it was his presence in publications that speak to the under-30 set — such as Us Weekly and Rolling Stone magazines — that helped establish him as the favored candidate among young voters across the nation.

Old catalogs can have useful ideas for today's catalogers. Leo Burnett once said of good advertising, "Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read." Catalogs that do this can still define and transform brands, engage and reassure customers and create buzz.

When it comes to properly targeting your marketing mes­sage, understanding your audience — what it wants to know, how it wants to hear what it wants to know — is essential. So the first word that comes to mind when I think of the Motrin/Twitter mayhem of last week is "oy" — the traditional Yiddish term of dismay.

With postal and production costs rising and more consumers looking to online, some say that direct mail may be nearing its end as an effective marketing tool — but others disagree.

As the Web plays an increasingly strategic role in customer engagement, marketers are scrambling to better understand, measure and act upon information gleaned from this medium. It has been well-documented that we are in the midst of an information explosion, and the Internet has served as its fuse. Amidst the bits of data that companies try to reassemble on an ongoing basis, perhaps no area has proved as vexing as that of the data generated from the Web.

Are you getting the most from your e-mail marketing campaigns? The following questions will help you out. How do you welcome new subscribers to your program? Keep new subscribers out of your regular communication stream.

Kaizen has been a buzzword in the corporate world for decades. It's a Japanese philosophy of continuous, incremental improvement and is engrained in the cultures of top companies like Toyota. Volumes have been written on this subject, but simply taken on its surface it's very powerful and inspiring.

E-mail service providers (ESPs) are getting more and more hands on with their clients. Whether it is CheetahMail focusing on its client services, or e-Dialog detailing its role in strategy for each and every e-mail campaign, it seems like the ESP is becoming more like an ad agency for e-mail. Following this note, this week StrongMail Systems UK has announced a new branch of its company called StrongMail Strategic Services.

In my nearly 20 years as an executive recruiter in direct marketing, this is the third economic downturn that I've experi­enced. Recessions are never pleasant, but the good news is that we have never had a recession that isn't temporary. This one too, shall pass.

It is an indisputable fact that new move cre­ates new needs. From new furnishings to home renovations, new movers spend more than the average consumer — 20 times more by some accounts.