Business Management
It’s trendy today to say that traditional marketing doesn’t work anymore. The
“new marketing” gurus tell us that, instead of “marketing speak”
(traditional sales materials), we should use one of two things to do
our selling. But … isn’t there some point where you have to leave the cozy world of
publishing free content and chatting — and actually get down to some
selling?
Novelist Ian McEwan doesn’t like the fact that you can post your opinion of his books on Amazon.com. “I don’t have much time for the kind of site where readers do all the
reviewing,” says McEwan in an interview with Time magazine (6/18/07, p.
6).
The voice-over in a recent KFC commercial for their thighs and drumstick bucket says the chicken now contains “less” transfat. Less than what? Less doesn’t mean anything unless you say what it has less fat than.
My colleagues Michael Stelzner and David Scott Meerman are, like me, advocates of marketing with content. But a recent article suggests that our approach is all wrong.
The hidden danger in political advertising centered on a candidate’s
ideology is that voters will misinterpret it, disagree with it, or both.
The cover story in this month’s issue of Training & Development magazine is “Metrics and Measurement: Do They Matter?” The article argues in favor of measuring success in sales training and performance … vs. (I would guess) NOT measuring it. The fact that the headline is phrased as a question implies that there
are people who are AGAINST measuring the results generated through
sales training.
After nearly 3 decades in marketing, I’ve come to the conclusion that the easiest job in marketing is market research.
A woman on a talk radio show admitted to stealing sugar packets from her local Starbucks. But she expressed no shame. Indeed,
she felt the theft was justified by the outrageous prices Starbucks
charges for a cup of coffee, calling her pilfering a “condiment
subsidy.”
I am obsessed with not wasting time and being as productive as I can. After all, my income is directly linked to my ability to produce quality work at a rapid rate.
My theory has long been that the replacement of the telephone and
face-to-face meetings by e-mail has increased the average American’s
writing skills considerably, especially in business. But journalist Janet Malcolm thinks just the opposite is true.
