Imagine a complete stranger walking up and demanding your name, phone number or other contact info. Whether it’s on the sidewalk or at a party, that degree of pushiness, especially by a complete stranger, would be totally unwelcome. And yet marketers do it all the time. I’m talking about those pop-up windows that ask for […]
Yearly Archives: 2009
Marketing brainstorm #316
Question: Why don’t toilet paper and paper towel manufacturers put their brand/logo on the tube INSIDE the roll? As it is now, when the roll is empty, you can’t find out what brand it was. It’s frustrating if you want to be sure to buy (or NOT buy) that brand again. photo credit: powerbooktrance
Coming soon: Bigger, louder, more obnoxious ads
Hate those awful online ads ? You know the ones I mean. The ones that blink and spin and move around and morph into different shapes? Brace yourself. They’re about to get even worse. “The Online Publishers Association has created a series of new standards for really big, intrusive, bash-you-on-the-head sorts of advertisements, which you […]
Maybe it's only the death of BAD advertising
Has the American consumer become immune to advertising? Has marketing become a waste of your time and effort? “Bullshit,” in the words of the Ad Contrarian, a/k/a agency owner Bob Hoffman. “Here’s what the consumer has become resistant to: generic, undifferentiated products supported by smug, benefit-free advertising.” FTW! Nailed it.
Web hosting: who's best?
That’s the question a weekend New York Times article sought to answer. The fact is, there’s no clear-cut answer. But for us non-superstars of the Internet, my favorite Web hosting company is NearlyFreeSpeech.Net. Why? Their pay-as-you-go, pay-for-only-what-you-use hosting plan. Like many people, I own a bunch of domain names, most of which are nearly dormant, […]
Beat writer's block — with a kitchen timer?
For me, it’s not really “writer’s block.” It’s more like a reluctance to apply the seat of my pants to the seat of my chair. Sound familiar? In his awesome book, The War of Art, Stephen Pressman nails it on (practically) the first page. “There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, […]
Perceptions and price
“Sometimes, the easiest way to make the consumer happier with a purchase is to increase the price.” – Jonah Lehrer, The Psychology of the Sale