The Big Fat Marketing Blog

With no trendy toy like Tickle Me Elmo to drive sales, retailers are having a tougher time than ever driving shoppers into stores. The Boston Globe has an interesting story on what the lack of one big “it” gift means to merchants.

Are you a fan of Archie McPhee? You probably are if you have a thing for stuff like rubber chickens, punching nun puppets, and bacon-flavored dental floss.

And if you want to know how the novelties merchant got its start, you can read “Who Would Buy This? The Archie McPhee Story” by company founder Mark Phallow. more

Once in a while, spam makes it to my Yahoo inbox. Now in this case, it’s spammers leaving messages within Yahoo Groups I belong to and haven’t removed myself from, even though I haven’t accessed the groups in umpteen years.

Unless the spammers know something that I don’t, like that fans of the Arena Football League dig older chicks. Really old chicks. more

Once in a while, spam makes it to my Yahoo inbox. Now in this case, it’s spammers leaving messages within Yahoo Groups I belong to and haven’t removed myself from, even though I haven’t accessed the groups in umpteen years.

Unless the spammers know something that I don’t, like that fans of the Arena Football League dig older chicks. Really old chicks. more

Forty percent of women would choose Barack Obama as their ideal dinner companion. The president-elect beats out Brad Pitt, the dream dinner date of only 20% of women. But if Michelle Obama plans to tag along in that dress she wore election night, almost two thirds of women say she can just stay home.

Those controversial findings are part of the end-of-year round-up of survey results amassed by www.BettyConfidential.com, a start-up Web portal that regularly takes the temperature of its female readership with online surveys. More predictably, 91% of respondents told the site that they will be cutting back on their holiday shopping this year—although they will be letting themselves indulge in the comforts of beauty products (18%), mani/pedicures (18%), and chocolate (16%). more

You know things are tight when marketers start reusing old creative.

It’s a sign of the times, and a cost-saver for sure, and maybe not even a bad idea when you think about it. After all, clients get tired of the creative loooooooong before consumers do. It’s just that repurposing creative stands out in a marketplace that puts a premium on fresh, differentiated content.

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