How did that movie win an Oscar?

If you have ever wondered how some movies end up getting Oscars and others don’t, the answer just may be public relations. There are people devoted to publicizing movies to Oscar voters. This pretty much guarantees that smaller budgets will not likely get Oscars unless they are “sleeper” hits that everyone watches and loves. It [...]

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Macy’s pulls out all the stops

Macy’s is probably one of the nation’s largest retail advertiser.  During the year, it probably runs a few full page ads a week in all major newspapers. With Christmas, a make-or-break time, coming up, Macy’s seems to have pulled out all the marketing stops.  At least in the Washington Post, it has been running several [...]

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How not to do p.r.

Public relations practitioners are generally good about getting their pitch across. There are those who do it with a soft touch, and then there is this story I had to share with you: http://tinyurl.com/3ka5h8 I found it through Peter Shankman’s twitter feed, regarding a woman who calls herself a PR person, but is really a [...]

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Selling Whoppers or selling stupid?

A couple of nights ago, I saw an ad in Burger King’s new campaign “Whopper Virgins.”  The ad, which is shot in a documentary style, and takes us around the world to tiny villages (mostly in Asia) where “people who have never tasted a burger before,” are asked to sample a Whopper and a another [...]

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Why getting feedback is important

If something is wrong with your product, don’t you want to know about it? I think you do (and if not, you should!). Well, many marketers sometimes “forget” to include an essential piece of information: an address and/or telephone and/or email address that can be used for feedback. Some marketers don’t want to be deluged [...]

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Brand versus Price

How important is price when you are shopping? Do you ever buy store brands (also known as private labels) to save money? If you are like many Americans, increasingly the answer is yes, price is important. More and more, private labels are gaining market share, as is reported in this  New York Times article. As [...]

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USP: English that you can understand!

You’ve got to hand it to Dell. It has figured out what its customers want–customer service that is understandable, and responsive. This customer service is not what its currently offers, since most likely if you call Dell you will end up talking to Raj in Bangalore or Juan in the Philippines (and by talk, I [...]

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Why is writing so hard?

And writing clearly even harder? As a writer, I make mistakes and my stuff has typos. Occasionally, I use the wrong word. But most of the time, I catch these mistakes. However, most people seem to have no idea. Recently, through my work,  I encountered the frequent misuse of the following words:  effect/affect and ensure/assure. [...]

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Now it’s robo-calls

I am sure that you heard of the Republican National Commitee’s robo-calls during the 2008 election. People were very irritated to get them. And why wouldn’t they? After all, it is bad enough to get an unsolicited call but then to pick up the phone to be greeted by a robotic voice? You can’t talk [...]

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The power of branding

I’ve had lots of occasion this past week to think about branding as I led writing groups for a business school class on marketing. The undergrads had to write a marketing paper dealing with some sort of marketing strategy. Most of them wrote about “brand extension,” where a new product is introduced under the existing [...]

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