For years, consumers have sought ways to avoid and filter out advertising. And advertisers have fought back with ways over, around and through the filters. Here are two recent developments in the battle: Product placement: as TIVO has damaged television advertising by allowing viewers to fast-forward past commercials, product placement has become an increasingly important […]
When I lived in New York (1986-1994), the Kew Motor Inn in Queens was a regular radio advertiser. The Kew offered “short-stay” rates — if you were looking for a discreet, 2-3 hour staycation with someone special, The Kew Motor Inn had a theme room for you. The commercials often ended with a short jingle. […]
While sitting in the reception room of a local med spa (a sales call, I assure you), I picked up a brochure for a product called Radiesse. The key word here is “correction”. They could have said “filler” (in fact, they do, in the inside copy). Or “smoother”. Or “eraser”. But “correction” gives the process […]
This is the third piece of increasingly shrill mail we’ve received from Comcast in the last few weeks. The previous two envelopes had this on the outside: IMPORTANT! ACTION REQUIRED TO ENSURE UNINTERRUPTED ACCESS TO ALL YOUR CHANNELS. The gist of the message inside was that in order to continue receiving all of the channels […]
From Dan Kennedy’s recent book No B.S. Marketing to the Affluent: An excellent lesson in selling a gift of any kind comes from the mail-order jeweler Karets and Facets, which target-markets to the mass affluent. A page of outstanding sales copy from the company’s catalog… is headlined “Guaranteed Gasp or Your Money Refunded.” This company […]