Q&As

The Women’s National Basketball Association’s (WNBA) Los Angeles Sparks team isn’t just serving up points on the basketball court anymore. It is engaging fans in a new loyalty program that lets game attendees earn points to redeem rewards.

By now, most marketers are clear on the need to improve their marketing effectiveness measurement. Unfortunately, the question of how still lingers broadly.

Justification is the name of the game when it comes to determining a direct marketing budget. It’s no longer good enough to make generalizations about how much revenue you’ll make or what the margin contribution to your bottom line will be. Today, management wants to know what the ROI is going to be before releasing funds. And they want to see detailed proforma metrics as the justification, regardless of the size of the program.

Online retailers will pull back from the physical world and move to the virtual one this December holiday season. And as they do, the metrics they use to evaluate their demand generation efforts have evolved.

(Promo) Thanks to improving data tracking tools, bean counters in the finance department might become defenders of marketing budgets during belt-tightening periods.
According to a study released last month by the Association of National Advertisers, 64% of self-described “successful” marketing program leaders engage a cross-functional team to keep marketing accountable. (MarketingROI, July 27, 2006).

Makers of glassware premiums are readying a push to support new federal legislation that would ease pressure on marketers in California.

The weight-loss instructor who filed a lawsuit several weeks ago against the Coca-Cola Co. claiming that its popular My Coke Rewards program might prompt kids to drink so much soda that they could die or at the very least become obese, has dropped the suit.

Could this week be Old Navy’s “Best Week Ever” for back-to-school sales?

A multi-pronged tie-in with VH1’s hit show Best Week Ever drives traffic to Old Navy stores with an in-store instant-win game that awards prizes each hour. The top prizes: A walk-on role on VH1’s show; Chrysler Crossfires (four winners nationally) and tickets on United Airlines. Lesser prizes include Baskin-Robbins ice cream cones, a Best Week Ever sampler CD, compiled by VH1 and discounts on Old Navy goods.

A month after Alltel Corp. spun off its landline business merging it with Valor Communications Group Inc. and forming the new entity, Windstream Communications, the new company has launched a Green Truck Tour in a 33-market grassroots effort to introduce its services to consumers.

Something wicked is brewing on New York and New Jersey beaches. In an effort to generate buzz around the Broadway hit Wicked: The Untold Story of the Witches of Oz, brand ambassadors are hitting the sand to dole out Wicked-branded premiums. …