You say you want marketing news and commentary? Well, you came to the right place. The Big Fat Marketing Blog is updated daily by the editors of Chief Marketer, Direct, Promo and Multichannel Merchant. Opinions? Oh yeah, we got em'. Don't say we didn't warn ya'.
Now, more than ever, media coverage matters. Even though we supposedly control the flow of information we absorb, we still care most about what’s being discussed on the air/blogs/podcasts/streams. I thought about that this morning when I read in the papers (yes, actual newsprint, three of them, in fact) that Sirus/XM is on the verge of bankruptcy, and their $500 million dollar man, Howard Stern, is contemplating retirement.
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The most dismal retail season in the past 40 years (according to the incessant slow-news-day reports I keep hearing) reminds me of what an old account guy told me many years ago: You can’t save your way to prosperity. That sage advice is becoming more apparent, as consumers have shunned the dramatic, metaphoric pants-dropping by America’s retailers. 30, 40, 50, 60 percent off . . . it hasn’t mattered much, and in some cases has instead served notice that the stuff was way overpriced in the first place.
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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.
We can’t pay attention to anything much longer than a couple of minutes anymore. I watch my teenage kids rabidly surf their ipods and, sometimes, the car radio, with a weird mix of devotion and impatience. Even when they find a song they absolutely love, they bounce out of it within a minute or so because it doesn’t hold their interest.
And this is music they love!
I read recently that Playgirl magazine is folding. The last issue is the one that is on the newsstands now. I don’t know, exactly, why this news bothers me, but it does.
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You know how you get a song stuck in your head, and you can’t delete it, no matter how hard you try? And it’s never a good song. It’s always something annoying, like Uptown Girl, or Jingle Bell Rock. Or something by Cindy Lauper. That happens a lot.
But lately, because I watch a lot of sports on TV, I am tortured by the simple, three-word jingle that I hear at least 5 times every night, and more on Sunday: Saved by Zero. (See? There it is, banging around your head right now.)
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