Chief Marketer Staff

• News Briefs

  KRAFT: has tapped two former American Idol contestants, Anoop Desai and Matt Giraud, to help get a new jingles contest underway

• Agencies

  LL Bean’s Centennial Includes Signature Brand Relauch

  L.L.Bean has served up a new interpretation of its “L.L.Bean Signature” brand.

• Penton Taps MeritDirect For List, Marketing Services

  MeritDirect and Penton Media have inked an agreement under which MeritDirect will offer Penton

• Agencies

  Merkle To Help Feeding America Say Thank You

  Anyone still struggling to get out the wedding gift thank-you notes will appreciate the task facing Feeding America, a hunger-relief organization that focuses on Americans: The organization generates nearly 500,000 responses to its solicitations every year, and wants to efficiently acknowledge every one of them

• SEC Director: InfoGroup’s Gupta “Stole Millions”

  Former infoGroup chairman and CEO Vinod C. Gupta “stole millions of dollars from Info shareholders by treating the company like it was his personal ATM,” Robert Khuzami, director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s division of enforcement, alleged in a statement.

• Hotlines Can Now Happen in Real Time

  Once upon a time, the freshest data you could get was “hotline” information

• Agencies

  Loyalty Programs Need to Keep Evolving

  The competition for consumers’ attention is tougher than ever, and marketers must keep finding new ways to engage with their audience.

• The Relevance of Credibility in Marketing

  Look no further than two recent examples of relevancy gone bad and the negative impact it has had on the brands: Tiger Woods and Toyota.

• People In The News: MeritDirect, Western Sierra, Charming Shoppes, VisionPoint Marketing

  MeritDirect, Western Sierra Acceptance, Charming Shoppes and VisionPoint Marketing have recently announced personnel changes.

• Data Integration Concerns Lead Marketer Woes: Survey

  Readers who haven’t been sleeping well of late may take some cold comfort in knowing their compatriots are tossing and turning right along with them. Why the restlessness? Primarily over concerns about measuring results and increasing effectiveness, integrating marketing channels and turning data into actions.