Email Signatures

I’m not a fan of email signatures that use images, fancy fonts, have legal disclaimers, and overshoot while attempting to achieve cleverness. But having said that, this is a pretty valuable piece of real estate that can be used effectively to not only communicate key details but reinforce brand messages.

Email signatures come in all shapes [...]

When Customers Vote

This is actually very clever… it looks and feels like it’s built on Salesforce.com Ideas.

A new coffee blend is scheduled for an April debut, and a Web site, www.mystarbucksidea.com, will allow customers to submit ideas to the company and to vote on them.[From Starbucks CEO sees economic tailspin | Reuters]

Sprint was running their [...]

Cakes and Local Search

Need a cake for a special occasion? Want a one-of-a-kind cake that really stands out? Here in the Bay Area you can go to Studio Cake with nothing more than an idea and you will get something really unique and tasty in return.

The picture below is the birthday cake we had yesterday, my wife gave [...]

Marketing as Blood Sport

Jason Corsello posting an interesting piece about enterprise software vendor bashing which tied in with the whole 6A/Wordpress food fight the other day.

One thing I do know for sure….our enterprise customers despise when one vendor bashes another. Frankly, its bad salesmanship, and more often than not, comes across as an act of desperation. [...]

Going Directly At Your Competitor

When I read this post from Anil Dash suggesting that the right WordPress upgrade plan would be to convert to Movable Type I was surprised. Both Six Apart and Automattic have been pretty civil towards one another and while everyone knows they are competitors you would be hard pressed to determine that from their marketing [...]

Right and Wrong Way to Pitch Me

Two emails from PR people this morning, interesting contrast.

The wrong way is to address it as “Dear Venture Chronicles”. I guarantee I will not pay any attention to your email.

A much better way is to express some degree of personalization, such as “Hi Jeff. Even though you’re in sunny Florida at We Media, I wanted [...]

How Not to Formulate a PR Response

Consumerist ran a post about how Monster Cables was ripping off customers with really high priced products that were technically indistinguishable from other offerings.

Monster Cables responded with a lengthy PR response that:

1) offered an extensive tutorial on how profit margins are calculated

2) blamed high prices on retailers

3) included a [...]

More Product Name Follies

“There aren’t many people in the company, in the whole world, who know about the Lolita’ book or films,” Lim said. “There might be a few people in the country who have a problem with it, but it’s just a name.”[From British Stores HaltLolita' Beds]

Not a ringing endorsement of the organizational IQ of Woolworths [...]

My HypeMeter Goes to 11

I’ve been watching the stream of press releases coming out in recent weeks about this or that BigSoftwareCo joining the DataPortability organization and, apparently, been having the same thoughts that Canter has.

So lets please lighten it up on the press releases and claims of support - when its just not clear what the [...]

Privacy, a Reality Check, and a Suggestion

Much has been made about Facebook’s Beacon program over the last week, I don’t have much to add. I will say that dustup reflects once again that this is a stark reminder that social networks only have as much authority to monetize as the users grant to them. In other words, the users are the [...]

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