Q&As

Who needs public relations? Anyone in business, and small direct marketers are no exception.

To boost the launch of Midway’s new arcade-style racing game L.A. Rush, MTV and MTV2 are rolling out two separate sweepstakes in which three consumers can win a pimped out 2006 Subaru Impreza WRX STI. The promotion coincides with yesterday’s launch of …

When HSBC Bank USA wanted New Yorkers to know of its presence in their neighborhoods, it set up faux game shows, complete with real prizes, in front of local branches. The result was increased brand awareness and foot traffic, and even new accounts.

The pop-up store was originally slated to be open only for three days. But media coverage topped 150 million media impressions on six continents, creating a buzz that led Meow Mix to keep the store open for an additional seven days. It even drew a request from a South African businessman who wanted to open a franchise there.

During the last week of September, New York City was the host for Advertising Week 2005, a multi-venue conference. Featured sessions were largely filled with pomp and platitudes. A more realistic view of the industry might have included a few of the following

CDW has always been ahead of the curve. A traditional mail order company specializing in high-tech products, CDW started a Web site in 1995 and two years later offered online ordering. And it has since developed a multi-channel approach to serve its technically savvy customers.

This year the oldest of the baby boomers turned 60. In recognition of this potential market, health insurance firm Humana Inc. is setting up a call center in Tampa Bay, FL to deal expressly with its growing Medicare business.

Those recipes hanging on the refrigerator for peach bread pudding and Grandma’s potato salad aren’t from an old family recipe book. Nope – they’re from your real estate agent. And he wouldn’t mind one bit if you passed them along because it’s his way of staying…InTouch.

In their rebuttal to the CRM Cynic, Peppers and Rogers wrote:
We’ve been searching the academic and trade literature for two years and we haven’t found a single example. That’s why we maintain that Return on Customer is in fact that rarest of things in business—a truly new idea.” They should have checked Google.

Type the phrase “Dell hell” on Google and the world’s most popular search engine returns more than 2.4 million results. Type “Dell sucks” and almost 1.3 million results come back. Dude, Dell has a problem.