Mattel Lost in Translation

I was fairly neutral on the Mattel recalls, not really blaming Mattel but this was an interesting week, one that leaves me saying “hmmmm.”
 
First Mattel’s CEO apologized to the US congress for what he said were suppliers who went around Mattel’s safety measures and created bad products of lead and small parts.  Then the VP [...]

Marketing and Finance, Still Having Problems with Metrics

The National Advertisers Association and the Marketing Management Analytics released their annual survey with some rather interesting results.  Here are a few highlights:
 
45% of organizations lack marketing ROI definitions (up 20% from last year).
 
61% of marketers said there is only “some” cooperation between finance and marketing.
 
42% of marketing executives said they are dissatisfied with their [...]

ROI Changing the Client Agency Relationship

More companies are demanding their ad agencies prove ROI for ad dollars.  This is really shaking things up as more ad companies are scrambling to find ways to prove their worth.  I am completely for this!  However I do wonder about the approach.  Many are moving toward the web marketers domain and trying to prove [...]

I thought You Said ATM’s Would Lower Costs?

Back when banks wanted us to use ATM’s they said it would lower our cost to bank.  Bank of America last week increased its ATM fee for non customers to $3.  Some other banks are looking at following suit.  $3 is rather steep, hell $2 is steep!  It is all electronic so it costs them [...]

Telemarketing is not Marketing

Lets clear the air, telemarketing isn’t marketing, in fact it has nothing to do with marketing and is actually quite damaging to a company’s real marketing efforts.
 
What is telemarketing?  It is a cold call to sell something over the phone.  Anyone in the US has experience with telemarketers and their efforts to sell us what [...]

A Year Without WalMart

I’ve been reading this wonderful blog here on WordPress called That’s Swell by a fellow blogger and her experience with giving up WalMart.  I particularly liked part II of the series as it talks about Sam Walton and how he was a real believer in Buy American and how after his death, the company took [...]

The End of Brand

It was going to happen sooner or later and the Mattel recall finally did it for many.  The end of the illusion brand is here.  And it’s a really good thing too!  I don’t mean the concept of branding is dead, I mean the idea of using brands as a smoke and mirrors tactic is [...]

The Wall Street Journal Gets it Wrong on China

The Wall Street Journal in its article Watch Out for the China Bashers, demonstrates it is completely out of touch with the average consumer.  It states that the recent concern over China has nothing do with recalls, it’s because China is an economic competitor.  Wrong!  The pet owners don’t really care, they care that their [...]

Recall Conspiracy?

I have been hearing a lot of talk now that there must be a conspiracy going on against China goods, why all the recalls?  Well it is quite simple and easy to explain without the need to rely on conspiracy theories of any kind.  This isn’t anything new, we have known about it for a [...]