The Big Fat Marketing Blog

Tons of comments on this article I wrote and posted Monday on the Multichannel Merchant site: Twitter Better for Nonsense than Business Sense.

The premise: More than 40% of all tweets are considered “pointless babble.” Twitter may not be all about self-promotion, as the surveyor had thought. Heck, MCM editor Melissa Dowling pointed that out in this post last month.

With the exception of one comment (which may be by someone who has a personal vendetta against Pear Analytics, the company that did the study on Twitter content), everyone brings a valid argument to the table. more

It’s not because they signed Brett Favre, the on-again, off-again NFL journeyman quarterback who has brought his three-ring circus of self importance to Minneapolis. It’s because the Minnesota Vikings are letting the world know via its Website, in many different ways, that the future Hall-of-Famer will be under center this fall.

But as annoying as it is, it may be a very good marketing move for the Vikings… even if it seems the only people other than the team who are thrilled about Favre’s latest un-retirement are the team’s ownership, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, and Reebok. more

I was talking Monday evening at the eTail opening reception with Kevin Ertell, VP-retail strategies for ForeSee Results, and Brad Wolansky, VP-global e-commerce for The Orvis Company, and the conversation quickly steered to social media.

The question: How can retailers effectively leverage Facebook, Twitter and other social networks? Are merchants going to force-feed its customers with offers a few times a day? Or will their message get lost in the shuffle of other status updates and Twitter feeds? more

Good news for 1-800-Flowers - it debuted its online store on Facebook today.

Bad news for 1-800-Flowers - its press release does not tell the world how to access its online store on Facebook.

So if you go to Facebook and search 1-800-Flowers, here’s what you’re going to see: more

It takes Bezos six minutes to cut to the chase about the deal, but is worth watching.

Breaking news this afternoon: Amazon spent a boat load on shoes. Yep, Amazon spent more than $850 million on Zappos.com.

Sounds like a dot-com deal of yore, especially when you consider recent bankruptcy deals like Golden Gate Capital’s purchase of Eddie Bauer or Golden Gate’s on-the-cheap deal for J. Jill.

Why did Amazon shell out so much money, and why was Zappos willing to make the deal? Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh summed it up in this e-mail to his employees: more