The Big Fat Marketing Blog

A few months ago I posted an approving notice about the Hyundai Assurance program, which offers to let car buyers who suffer a catastrophic reversal in their finances the chance to return a Hyundai they’ve bought within the past year and sell it back to the company, as long as the depreciation was under $7,500.

I thought it was a smart idea at the time. While other car marketers were—and still are—offering “employee pricing” discounts that no one really fully trusts, Hyundai went to the heart of the problem of customer confidence. more

Any brand endorsing Rihanna should drop her immediately. Don’t sit around and wait. Do it now.

I supported endorsements of the R&B singer after she became a victim of partner-related violence. It would have been wrong to drop her after she was allegedly beaten, strangled and bitten by her boyfriend musical artist Chris Brown.

But now she has reportedly returned to his side, sending a dangerous message that it’s ok for a girl to go back to a man after he hits her. If true, marketers need to hand out the pink slip and their PR reps should make a big deal about it. These companies need to send a strong public message to the millions of young female—and male—Rihanna fans and their customers that there is no excuse for violence against women. That it is wrong and there can never be an excuse for it.

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Long ago, movie heroes wore fedoras, heroines all had accents straight out of Vassar, and smoking was code for sophistication. The days of Paul Henreid lighting two cigarettes, then handing one to Bette Davis, are long gone. Today directors tend to shy away from depicting explicitly inhaling unless they’re trying to set a rebellious, take-no-PC-prisoners tone. Where would Quentin Tarentino be without his Red Apple brand smokes?

But the flap over the use of cigarettes in the chick flick “He’s Just Not That Into You” involves a few new wrinkles in how the media use tobacco. For one thing, no one in the movie is actually seen smoking. One of the stories does turn on smoking cessation as a plot point, however, when Jennifer Connelly leaves her husband in part because he has lied about quitting smoking. more

I’m what some marketer somewhere must refer to as a dinosaur shopper.

In the supermarket, I tend to buy the same brands I’ve always bought. I have a soft spot in my heart for items that no one else seems to pay attention to any more. Check my shopping cart any week to find out if they’re still making Social Tea cookies, Lorna Doones and Chicken in a Biskit crackers. The tuna and mayonnaise brands in my tuna salads are a family tradition, because anything else would be … just wrong. And I will go to my grave having only eaten one brand of peanut butter (yes, after checking the salmonella recall lists from the FDA.) more

Bend it like Beckham, the movie title derived from that English striker’s special gift for curling free kicks into the back of goal nets, takes on a whole new meaning as his brief Major League Soccer career appears to be ending.

The unique twist here is that the bright promise David Beckham seemed to represent as a marketing icon for MLS and the Los Angeles Galaxy has turned into a cautionary tale that leaves the American soccer league looking distinctly second rate. The Galaxy look as though it was the team taking Beckham on loan in a $25 million five-year deal, rather than AC Milan, which will apparently keep him after his two lackluster seasons in the MLS.

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McDonald’s is once again making headlines. And this time, childhood obesity isn’t the issue.

Instead, the flurry of comments is all about the fast food chain’s McFlurry dessert and its “appearance” on last week’s episode of “30 Rock.” more