Healthcare reform and signs of economic recovery have insurance marketers retooling their direct marketing efforts to drive relevant messaging to consumers and prospects.

Hiscox USA found that when it sent its direct mail was almost as important as the recipient.

The American Red Cross launched a multichannel year-end campaign to allow consumers to buy regular gifts for loved ones through a gift catalog that places these items side-by-side with gifts and services for those less fortunate.

Direct mail has long been the prime channel for nonprofit organizations looking to raise funds, but as charities move into 2012 and beyond, marketers say marrying these messages with outreach through other media is becoming an essential part of the nonprofit marketing mix.

For five years, dealership Ball Automotive Group shirked in-mall advertising as a means to lure consumers for a test drive.

Some marketers may balk at the expense of Volkswagen's videogame for Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox to support the launch of the 2012 Beetle. However, Volkswagen of America EVP and chief product and marketing officer Tim Mahoney says the game — which mirrors the campaign's 
TV spots, showing consumers driving around in a Beetle and giving passersby high-fives — "seemed ideally suited to reinforce 
the TV spot."

As Americans gear up for the holiday travel rush, there's a chance the guy in the next seat didn't just book a cheap flight online — he may have booked a whole luxury getaway at a discount.

Alex Boylan, a winner of CBS' "The Amazing Race," thought up the idea of traveling around the world with no money and recording the experience for a series of Web episodes.

As the first Boomers have begun to hit 65, the generation that turned so many institutions on their heads is poised to do the same with retirement. Consumers born between 1946 and 1964 are more active, better educated and living longer than their parents, with Boomer women leading the way.

Marketers like to portray retirement as a permanent vacation, cocktail in hand. But after the recession, as worries about what would happen with savings kicked in for many Boomers, it became clear to Merrill Lynch Wealth Management that consumers wanted straight talk and real solutions.