In Honor of National Punctuaion Day: The Proper Use of an Ellipsis

September 24, 2009

Sometime earlier this year I came across a reference to today being National Punctuation Day and quickly put a reminder in my calendar. It kind of sounds like National Underwater Basket Weaving Day or some other nonsensical holiday but for the amount of time I spend answering questions about proper use of punctuation, I decided it was a prime opportunity to share. For the un-indoctrinated, an ellipsis is those three dots you see in punctuation and not the oval you…  (Read on)

Inappropriate Advertising in the Miami vs. FSU Football Game

September 9, 2009

You don’t have to be a football fan or even an FSU alum to appreciate the really poor taste exhibited by the media buyers for Monday night’s game on ESPN. What were they thinking allowing a movie about the murdering of sorority girls sponsor a game at a university where not so many years ago Ted Bundy took lives from the Chi-Omega house? I’m fairly certain that the media buyer probably didn’t attend FSU and didn’t understand the insensitivity of…  (Read on)

Respecting the Opt Out List

August 31, 2009

In honor of the death of John Jay Daly, former president of the Direct Marketing Association and  founder of the program that allows consumers to opt out of direct mail marketing campaigns, I thought it be valuable to revisit the topic of email and direct mail marketing preferences. The most prevalent misinformation about e-mailing lists is that they are readily available and cheap. When businesses started abandoning dmail in favor of email, most of them argued that it would be…  (Read on)

Common Problems in Marketing Plans

August 18, 2009

WSJ published a great piece early this summer entitled How to Write a Good Business Plan that starts off pointing out why a down economy is a great time to start a new business (lower costs, less competition) and then goes on not to tell you about the right way to do everything but some of the pitfalls to avoid. I had fun with the piece but was drawn mostly to the table (at the end of the online version)…  (Read on)

Increase in Advertising Spending = Recovering Economy or Desperation?

August 11, 2009

About six months ago I started encouraging clients to take advantage of the pull back in advertising spend to make their dollar go further by taking advantage of greatly reduced rates. My clients don’t do a lot of display but the same mantra held true for most of the available media at the time. Over the summer I noticed an uptick in marketing spend in my business serving the SMB space and subsequently confirmed the same was true with my…  (Read on)