What’s in it for me?

There has been a lot of fuss about Kelly Blazek’s response to an unsolicited email and whilst her response may be a little harsh, there are a couple of valid issues here that are going unaddressed, One thought is that Politeness – in all directions – is a rare commodity.  If you do something for me,…

Reinforcing my concerns with Lists….

Hardly had I posted the blog entry on working with email lists, which talked of the virtue of working with ‘warm lists’ through partners, than I get an egregious example of how NOT to do so! I run (in a different life) a fairly successful Meetup.com group for photographers.  We are closing in on one…

Be honest with your customers

Tivo, which I used to love a lot more than I do nowadays, recently sent me an email and asked this: Why ask me to answer one quick question, then give me 4, three of which are mandatory? Don’t take the mickey out of your customers, transparency and honesty are important.  And though this might…

Would you buy a used email list from this man?

In my last post, I talked about email lists and my motivation – a good friend and her complaint about the amount of spam trying to persuade her to buy email lists. “I know you are against buying lists, but why?” she said.  I don’t have the amount of time we had at lunch, and…

This is how to do advertising…

I love smart advertising, smart means that I WANT to watch it, not have to be forced to ingest it. Does your advertising get searched out?  If not, how could you change it so it does?  For context, here is the original Mercedes Benz advert. You should watch this first – and it is a…

I could not have put it better, thanks Andy

I got a New Year (notice the singular!) email from a friend “Write about why not to buy email lists, I’m swamped with spam offering them.” This results from a lunch conversation about the value of, inter alia, PR and email lists in today’s world. I have strong views on both, but Andy Sernovitz beat…

Selling Bricks

Apple are the master storytellers and they DO do it with video more than most other organizations (and yes, I am a fan boy, I’ll be picking my iPad up at 9AM tomorrow). … The (rumored) sales Figure was over $75million in the weekend it was available to order.    So let’s hope that OgilvyOne do a bit more to develop sales skills in the wider world than a flashy piece of PR.

Wow Marketing

We chatted, and by the time I’d finished, I came out with a new Garmin Edge bike computer (I’ll write more about the horrible experience with Garmin’s site later). … This week in the mail I get this: Wheels of Justice mailer 1 WoJ2.png What a fantastic piece of reinforcement of my purchase and a personal way to emphasize their personal service and support.

Golden Rule – again

I’ve talked a lot about the Golden Rule – ‘treat others as you wish to be treated’ (what my mum used to quote, from the Water Babies I seem to recall “Mrs. Do As You Would Be Done By’) – because it seems to me to be the fundamental ethical plank for all businesses. Or…