Marketing Pilgrim

I am a big fan of the Wall Street Journal. It’s a business essential and you can pretty easily avoid the politics if they do not suit your tastes. With their All Things Digital group they do a great job of giving you the lowdown and many scoops on the digital world. As for the paper? Their digital coverage is certainly improving but a recent series on behavioral targeting shows what direction they are leaning toward in their message to the business people that read it. Be afraid, be very afraid, because the digital boogeyman is out to get you. I really wish they didn’t do that and here’s why.

“We met for dinner in Chicago. We liked each other.  Our companies had very complementary strengths.  One thing led to another.”

Sounds like an influential CEO confessing to an elicit affair, but it’s really VigLink CEO Oliver Roup talking about how his company happened to acquire rival DrivingRevenue this past Friday. It began with an email from Revenue’s Raymond Lyle and Jack Bafia saying they should talk. That was in May, so it was quite a rush to the alter. Says Roup;

“We’re very excited to be joining forces. Ray is going to lead the sales and merchant relationship team and run our Chicago office. Jack will be moving to San Francisco to assume leadership of the product team. Everyone else is keeping their job as well.  They’ve all made a big bet on the future of the combined business. They are doubling down, not cashing out.”

Look out banks and other financial entities, as of Wednesday, there’s going to be a new sheriff in town. The Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection will open its doors as soon as Obama signs the financial regulations bill and they’ll have the power to police financial advertising – but to what extent?

It’s pretty much a given that the new rules will require truth in advertising and clear disclosures written in plain English. Where things get muddy is with the single word “abusive” which has been added to the new law that deals with deceptive advertising. Advertising Age quoted Dan Jaffe, exec VP-government relations for the Association of National Advertisers as saying;

By, Lisa Arthur, CMO, Aprimo

Recently, season four of the acclaimed AMC television series Mad Men kicked off. In case you have been orbiting space since the show premiered in 2007, Mad Men is set in the 1960s and exposes the professional and personal lives of advertising executives based in New York City.

What was particularly striking about the premier episode was its uncharacteristic focus on public relations (PR) and its connection to the world of advertising. At the start of the episode, advertising executive and character Pete Campbell claimed that he does not deal with PR. It reminded me how much has changed since that era, and that today, while marketers may have a particular focus within the medium, we are more and more often required to understand all facets of marketing and integrate efforts across all channels. Today’s marketing professionals need to have an understanding of key business goals, how to align messages, all marketing channels (from print to social media) and how to drive the bottom line.

According to a survey commissioned by game company PopCap, approximately 100 million people in the US and UK alone are social gamers. Of that number, 83% said Facebook was their preferred place to play. Now here comes the important number, nearly a third (32%) of social gamers said they were likely to purchase virtual items with real-world currency.

But not everyone has the ability or is comfortable paying online, so GameStop is working on a solution that they hope will help them gain some ground in the Facebook gaming business. To promote their new game, Gangsta Zombies, GameStop is giving out promo cards in their stores that can be used as in-game currency. They’re also selling pre-paid cards that players can buy and use in lieu of a credit card or give to someone as a gift. Chris Morrison of InsideSocialGames.com says,

We live in a very cynical and sarcastic world. One of the ways that people (myself included) feel a little bit of control or power is to make fun of things. I am not saying this is healthy but I am saying it’s just reality. As a result, products can often live and die by the amount of buzz generated that is derogatory and designed to make fun of it rather than promote it (even though it still does promote it which is often the point, right?).

One of the most derided and lampooned products of recent memory is the Snuggie. While I laughed when I first saw one of the cheesy infomercials about the ‘revolutionary’ product, I have to admit that seeing how much my daughter loves her Snuggie knock-off (now isn’t that ironic) makes me think twice.