The Big Fat Marketing Blog

Every now and then we write about a promotion or a deal that gauges our interest. And sometimes we want to just go Elf ourselves… This one is both.

I’m awaiting a follow-up call with Bob Thacker, the senior vice president of marketing and advertising for OfficeMax, about ElfYourself 4.0. The 4.0 we’re just throwing in because, really, it’s the fourth year Office Max is allowing users to turn themselves into elves for the sole purpose of entertaining yourselves (and your friends). more

Everyone seems to have a survey, and a lot of them are truly self-serving. And in these days where you can boost your page views by submitting something to a press release service and hopefully have it pop to the top of the Google rankings, it may be a cheap SEM investment.

Either that or you’re just going to get goofed on.

Like this meat merchant, Stock Yards, which sells beef through catalogs and the Internet.

Wesley Ball, Stock yards’ director of retail business, surveyed 1,000 Americans 18 years and older online and found out they’d prefer steak as a business gift than other items. more

As if retailers didn’t have enough problems in this economy? more

One of Multichannel Merchant’s most-read stories, at least according to the “Most popular articles” box on our Website, is The 10 BEST Catalog Covers. It’s a compelling headline and a great article. There’s only one problem: It’s from June 1999.

What’s the problem with that? Well, aside from the fact that there’s been a decade of great catalog covers since the article ran, it was published before we were putting images on our Website. And because we don’t have the high-res art available any more, the article appears without pictures of the covers. more

Home Depot’s vice president of specialty channels, Michael Cooper, had a light-hearted moment a few months ago at e-Tail in Baltimore.

In talking about the challenges the home improvement retailer had experienced trying to become a multichannel retailer, Cooper said this about Home Depot’s infrastructure:

“We’re going to come into the ‘90s, allow [online] returns in the stores, and allow store gift cards to be used as tender online,” Cooper said lightheartedly before he explained why the project is going to take some time.

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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.