The Big Fat Marketing Blog

It seems like GM is finally understanding the power of incorporating long-used, proven tactics of direct marketing in its advertising. While on a business trip to Detroit this past week, I saw a story that reported that GM’s 60-day, try it before you buy it money back guarantee is working so well that they are extending it into the first part of 2010.

As a direct marketer, you already know the drill: The stronger, more convincing your guarantee is, the less you have to use it. The story also reported that due to the promotion, year-over-year sales have increased for the first time in many moon cycles.

It’s about time that general advertisers recognize the power of direct. Let’s see if it’s short lived or a long overdue shift in thinking.

It seems like GM is finally understanding the power of incorporating long-used, proven tactics of direct marketing in its advertising. While on a business trip to Detroit this past week, I saw a story that reported that GM’s 60-day, try it before you buy it money back guarantee is working so well that they are extending it into the first part of 2010.

As a direct marketer, you already know the drill: The stronger, more convincing your guarantee is, the less you have to use it. The story also reported that due to the promotion, year-over-year sales have increased for the first time in many moon cycles.

It’s about time that general advertisers recognize the power of direct. Let’s see if it’s short lived or a long overdue shift in thinking.

We all like having our birthdays associated with a famous or successful name. Even those of us who think astrology is the bunk suspect that maybe, just maybe, proximity on the calendar means that we’ll inherit some of those admirable qualities.

I’ve never felt particularly fortunate in the people who share my birthday, which came recently. I’ve got friends and relations whose natal days coincide with Abraham Lincoln, Golda Meir and Sandy Koufax. I’m co-birthed with Johnny Carson, Weird Al Yankovic and Gummo Marx—you know, the painfully unfunny brother. Not the kind of greatness you might hope for. (At that, I definitely fared better than one of my sisters, who shares a birthday with a Mr. A. Hitler.)

So I was very pleased to see that if I don’t have a famous person sharing my little square of the calendar, I’m at least darn close to some really major tech milestones that were celebrated recently and that have come to play an important role in my—and everyone else’s–life. more

We all like having our birthdays associated with a famous or successful name. Even those of us who think astrology is the bunk suspect that maybe, just maybe, proximity on the calendar means that we’ll inherit some of those admirable qualities.

I’ve never felt particularly fortunate in the people who share my birthday, which came recently. I’ve got friends and relations whose natal days coincide with Abraham Lincoln, Golda Meir and Sandy Koufax. I’m co-birthed with Johnny Carson, Weird Al Yankovic and Gummo Marx—you know, the painfully unfunny brother. Not the kind of greatness you might hope for. (At that, I definitely fared better than one of my sisters, who shares a birthday with a Mr. A. Hitler.)

So I was very pleased to see that if I don’t have a famous person sharing my little square of the calendar, I’m at least darn close to some really major tech milestones that were celebrated recently and that have come to play an important role in my—and everyone else’s–life. more

Step right up and get your greeting cards at the local post office. Wait a minute, did you say at the post office?

Yep. For more details about how the U.S. Postal Service hopes to cash in on greeting cards, read this article from the Washington Post.

When I was a kid, Halloween lasted one day. Now that I have kids, between multiple parties, costume parades, trick-or-treating at my husband’s office and other activities it seems to last a week.

Feeling Halloween’d out when you haven’t even carved your pumpkin yet is a scary feeling. What scares you at this time of year?

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