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What's Wrong With This Picture? The Stauer Chronographby Barry Densa
We've all seen them—those disastrous ads that make us cringe as marketers. Here is a detailed critique of one ad—gone terribly wrong—that'll help you avoid a host of pitfalls in your ad copy.
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Seven Reasons Why Leading With Price Will Kill Your Advertising, Your Branded Offers—and Your Companyby Dan Hill
Leading with price in your messaging suggests your brand has nothing else to say or show for itself. And that's not good for a host of reasons.
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Six Smart Tactics for Dealing With the Economic Downturn
by Michael BarrThis is no time for business as usual. To keep the customer and win the sale, a marketer has to outsmart the competition. But how do you motivate your customers to spend their marginal purchasing dollars on your product instead ...
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Use Search Queries to Save Money and Increase Conversionsby Craig Danuloff
Search queries, the exact word or phrases a person types, are a vital clue into the objectives of the searcher and how valuable that person is to your business.
Is each searcher relevant to you? Are all the search queries equally ...
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Endurance Training: Five Brand-Building Exercises
by Kimberly SmithWhen the slow season strikes, devote some energy to pumping up your brand. These five exercises will show you where to start to best position yourself for the inevitable upturn.
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Most Super Bowl Ads Aimed at Males; Most Money Spent by Femalesby Gerry Myers
A few basic thoughts advertisers should consider for the 2010 Super Bowl:
• Who watches the Super Bowl? Approximately 100 million viewers, with more than 40 percent of them women.
• Who spends the most money as a consumer? Women spend approximately ...
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Code Blue: A First Aid Kit to Revive a Failing PPC Campaignby William Leake
Perhaps your spending has spiraled out of control and your conversions haven't budged. Or, like many of us, maybe your performance is fine but your budgets have been slashed, forcing you to produce the same results with less spend.
Before you ...
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Make Your Marketing Budget Work - Halve Itby Martin Lindstrom
What's the trick to starting afresh? Be prepared to seriously start over and establish strategies to keep your brand from falling into that rut to nowhere.
Here are some ideas to kick-start your new approach.
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Present the Unexpected but Stay on Purpose: Lessons From The Apprenticeby Kathy Parsanko
If you saw the last episode of The Apprentice, you know that two teams of celebrity contestants were asked to create a campaign to help launch a new product, Dial Yogurt Body Wash. The task was to come up with ...
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Unreal Marketing: Violating the Axioms of Authenticityby James H. Gilmore, B. Joseph Pine II
As a marketing professional, do you proclaim your offerings to be real or authentic? If so, you may find your customers calling them (and you) fake. So stop it: Don't just say you're real; be real.
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MarketingProfs 'Classic Truths': Sex! Why Getting Your Attention Isn't Always Enoughby Debbie MacInnis
Lots of companies create interesting and attention-getting ads with the brand name or major takeaway buried somewhere therein. So what happens? Consumers remember the great ad. But for the life of them, they have no idea what it was for... ...
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What Is Advertising's Most Important Word?by Jerry Bader
What is advertising's most important word? The simple, innocuous word "like": a nondescript word that carries with it all the conceptualization power you need to create a business identity, to form a brand personality, and to position your product or ...
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Breaking News: Advertising Is Dead!by Barry Densa
Advertising is dead. Consumers have been over-advertised to and over-sold.
So what's a marketer to do?
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Marketing to Women—We've Come a Long Way Baby... (Maybe)by Marti Barletta
Savvy companies like Dove, Ponds, and Nike know that women are empowered, and those companies have shown us how powerful the images and stories of real women are.
What's next on the Marketing to Women horizon?
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Have We Lost the Ability to Write Comprehensible Copy?by Michael Antman
Everyone has heard the common complaint that America is becoming less literate, but the onus for this alleged circumstance is nearly always placed on the reader (or, rather, non-reader) instead of where it often belongs: the writer.
Many professional writers seem ...
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Truth Is the New Lieby Mark Shipley
In the old days, marketers could use hype and exaggeration to get noticed and people would simply accept it. Not anymore. Today, if you want consumers to pay attention, you had better be truthful.
And if you want them to ...
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The Demystification of Idea Generationby Mike Heronime
Numerous people have studied the process that creative people go through to develop their ideas. Most of these students of creativity agree that ideas come from a subconscious process that takes two relatively unassociated thoughts and combines them together to ...
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Why a Killer Videogame Is the U.S. Army's Best Recruitment Toolby David Verklin
Before it was released on July 4, 2002, many expected the $7.3 million game would join the ranks of the $436 hammer and $640 toilet seat as a study of excess. Few predicted "America's Army" would become the artillery's most ...
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The Five (Wrongheaded) Complaints Against Advertisingby Jerry Kirkpatrick
The complaints against advertising are seemingly endless, limited only by the creativity of its critics. But advertising is fundamentally benevolent, the author says.
Advertising is a communication technique that attempts to influence the behavior of others—no more nor less so ...
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The (Shiny and New) Way to a Woman's Heartby Marti Barletta
Mother's Day is almost here, a day filled with fresh flowers, delicious dark chocolates, fancy fragrances, and gem-filled jewelry. But is that really the way to a woman's heart? What'll really make her swoon is sleek, metal, shiny, and fast. ...