In Maryland, state delegate Tanya Shewell is proposing a consumer protection bill (House Bill 357) that could affect direct response vehicles like newspapers, circulars and mass-coop mailings.   The bill would require publishers to include a phone number where consumers could opt out of delivery. 

Ironically, the bill is not intended to stop political flyers.

The bill can be found at http://mlis.state.md.us/2008rs/billfile/HB0357.htm

MD House Bill 357 Synopsis:
Prohibiting a publisher from delivering, or causing to be delivered, an unsolicited print publication to a residential address in the State unless the publication contains a specified notice; prohibiting a publisher from delivering, or causing to be delivered an unsolicited print publication after receiving notice from a resi ... Read More »

When Starbucks is advertising, you know things are tough. In good years, the average life of a CMO is two years but add recession, then you have pressure.  As I read through my Advertising Age today (January 28^th issue), I keep looking for the falling sky. Below are some of the glooming storylines.

1. The writers’ strike has made Johnson and Johnson skip last year’s TV upfront selling period.
2. How Banks can Boost Image in Chaotic Times
3. CMOs, Get Ready for a rocky ride
4. Strike driving $100M in ads from TV biz to big screen

In tough times, marketing is under a great deal of pressure to do more with less, making measurement and metrics king in 2008. Smart marketers will not spend money on unproven or non-measureable media, failure is not an option in a bad economy.&nb ... Read More »

According to the CMO Council™ Marketing Outlook 2007, quantifying and measuring the value of marketing programs is the top challenge facing marketers in 2007.  To quantify marketing performance, many of those surveyed (43.8 percent) are looking to implement automated marketing dashboards. 

Building the dashboard is the simple part, automating the data feeds to deliver timely and accurate marketing insight is the challenge.  Let’s assume you are a marketer who spends over $25 million on marketing annually and people can buy your product via retail, web or telesales channels.   If you have a $25 million budget, then you are using multi ... Read More »

Increase attributed sales to a marketing program by 30% to 40% by tracking offline marketing to online web sales.

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Google’s deal with Clear Channel and EchoStar to auction remnant inventory will be interesting and will be watched by many.  Basically, no one wants their business to be made a commodity, letting supply and demand determine value and price.   Think of how many people make a living selling the value of their ads.  Change will be slow, which is why the focus is on remnant inventory.  If TV networks and video providers  were serious about the auction model, they would put up their entire inventory, not just the remnants that are likely to go unsold up for auction.  It is change, it is unknown. 

If eBay, the undisputed leader in auction, could not succeed, what will Google do differently?  Ironically, radio and cable providers will get a view of their inventory that does not exist today. 

I have read several articles about cable being dead because of the emergence of broadband internet and entertainment, making cable and satellite’s future unclear.  Time Warner is even going to consider selling off its cable division and analysts expect the Cox family to sell Cox Communications.  Cable is Time Warner’s biggest division with 2006 revenues of $11.8 million, even bigger than its AOL , film entertainment and cable networks.

With sites like YouTube, I understand the concern.  The cable companies do not want to be relegated to being just the pipe.Read More »

Ann, the CMO of The Mighties, and her marketing team will be taking some personal time after month-end to recover from the overwhelming bombardment of Excel spreadsheets required to generate the post-mortem presentation for all marketing channels. Read More »

Meet Edward, the Mighty IT deparment head. Gain an understanding of his business role, biggest frustrations, success factors, biggest fears, information consumption habits and hobbies.

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Meet Ann, the Mighty CMO. Gain an understanding of her business role, biggest frustrations, success factors, biggest fears, information consumption habits and hobbies.

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Meet the Mighties
Follow the corporate drama of the Mighties as they navigate a corporate marketing culture that looks a lot like yours. 

In an effort to deal with marketing and marketing intelligence perspectives, I have created The Mighties.   Each mighty person represents a persona in an organization; personas I will use to expose different challenges and opportunities organizations face when dealing with new media, marketing and marketing intelligence. 

Bottom line, I am really doing it to make blogging more interesting not just for me but for my readers.