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The mailings that caused building evacuations, again...

The mailings that caused building evacuations, again…

Part 1 Earlier this week a PR stunt for a new video game resulted in the Bomb Squad being called to Ninemsn’s offices. Apparently a black safe was delivered anonymously to the publisher’s office accompanied by a “suspicious” letter which told a reporter to “check your voice mail”. But the reporter didn’t have voice mail. The staff entered a pin code supplied with the safe, but it started to beep…

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#B2B Marketing #branding #direct marketing #marketing

WOW a 5-hour marketing seminar on a subject that doesn't exist...

WOW a 5-hour marketing seminar on a subject that doesn’t exist…

Well folks, the cyber-hustlers are at it again. Those digital doofuses who have no marketing expertise but call themselves marketers. This image has been chasing me around social media for a while, promoting something that doesn’t exist in marketing ‘paid advertising‘. The state of something that doesn’t exist… Advertising by its very definition is media that has been paid for. The marketer…

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Good grief, now LinkedIn staff are sending unsolicited social selling spam...

Good grief, now LinkedIn staff are sending unsolicited social selling spam…

At first I thought is was a joke, particularly given my post yesterday about the appalling social selling spammers on LinkedIn. But alas, no. Today I get an unsolicited “LinkedIn Offer” in my personal messages – which was nothing near an offer at all. An offer has two parts: What the prospect getsWhat the prospect has to do to get it It is as rank-amateurish as it is insulting. It is from…

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#linkedin

Another example of social selling failure with marketing automation on LinkedIn...

Another example of social selling failure with marketing automation on LinkedIn…

It’s a simple truth – “the more that sales and marketing executives rely on technology to do their hard yards, the more likely they will fail“. So I open this article with a statement: Sending unsolicited spam through marketing automation tools, under the guise of social selling on LinkedIn, while lying in the message content, is a disgraceful reflection on our industry – and it needs to be…

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Has COVID killed the culture cult...

Has COVID killed the culture cult…

As anyone working in a medium to large organisation will be aware, culture has taken on a cult-like reverence since organisations switched from people managing people, to ‘people managing software to manage people.’ No longer do managers walk the floor to understand their staff and the office environment/mood. Instead, they let their fingers do the walking on keyboards linked to culture…

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Social selling has become the new spam...

Social selling has become the new spam…

Marketers are a strange lot. They actively ignore the lessons of history rather than learn from them. And then repeat the same mistakes, over and over. So-called digital marketers are exemplary performers of this behaviour. Around 35 years ago, as a result of marketers flooding residential letterboxes with too much irrelevant mail, the “Do Not Mail” register was created. It allowed consumers to…

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Everyone can type, but not everyone can write...

Everyone can type, but not everyone can write…

As any experienced marketer knows, one of the casualties of the digital marketing industry has been the quality of marketing communication. The majority of digital marketing messages don’t communicate at all, let alone persuade. The reason is simple – the marketing messages are written by typists, not copywriters. I’ve written about this problem before. It also afflicts photography – but that’s…

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#copywriting #cyber-hustlers #digital marketing #email marketing

I have smart phone, therefore I am... a photographer

I have smart phone, therefore I am… a photographer

I know a number of professional photographers – most are working as couriers, limo drivers, handymen, or anything other than photographers. That’s because the bean counters and bureaucrats in our life believe that all you need to take a decent shot, is to point your smart phone and click. So they assume there is no need for professional photography anymore. And they’d know wouldn’t they? Not! The…

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#content marketing #marketing #photography

It's time to truthfully rename BIG DATA to what it is: "just lots more data - mostly useless"...

It’s time to truthfully rename BIG DATA to what it is: “just lots more data – mostly useless”…

Or maybe; “I know 90% of the data I capture is useless, I just don’t know which 90%” On January 28, this year, Tim Cook, CEO, Apple delivered a presentation at a Data Privacy Day event. Here is some of his most insightful words about the use of data: “Technology does not need vast troves of personal data stitched together across dozens of websites and apps in order to succeed. Advertising…

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#BIG data #customer service #marketing #marketing automation

How manufacturers use QR codes to steal business from retailers who sell their brands...

How manufacturers use QR codes to steal business from retailers who sell their brands…

In my first book on email marketing published in 1998, titled “They laughed when I sat down at the keyboard, but when I began to email…” I made a couple of predictions. One was that manufacturers would use their packaging to direct customers to the manufacturer’s website to build a database of customer data. These manufacturers would then use email to take their websites directly to the…

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QR codes are dead, long live QR codes...

QR codes are dead, long live QR codes…

As you know dear reader, more often than not, the latest shiny widget hailed as the new-new-thing in the digital marketing world, dies a rapid death and is soon forgotten as the next new-new-thing takes its place. Google glasses being an example. And so it was with QR codes. Relegated to the digital dustbin, they had a short life mainly due to the hassle of downloading an app for scanning the…

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#QR Codes

I'm not a ballerina, so stop asking me to pivot...

I’m not a ballerina, so stop asking me to pivot…

This ridiculous email arrived in my inbox this morning from Dropbox – the highly successful digital equivalent of the storage sheds you rent to store your excess junk. The sender is <[email protected]> – this is a cardinal sin when sending emails for marketing purposes. If you are communicating personally and directly to an individual, then you need to identify yourself and give the recipient…

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A phone call with pictures won't cut it for events/conferences/seminars in 2021...

A phone call with pictures won’t cut it for events/conferences/seminars in 2021…

Like many of you in 2020, I attended virtual versions of events originally designed for conference venues. The worst part of this forced process was enduring the events on conference call technology that was not designed for running events online – Zoom, Teams, Skype et al. I also had to teach university classes using Zoom and Teams – these are definitely not media designed for teaching, let…

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Irrefutable evidence the fake marketers and cyber-hustlers are destroying the joint...

Irrefutable evidence the fake marketers and cyber-hustlers are destroying the joint…

Today, I conducted a small experiment on two social media channels – Facebook and Instagram. I simply scrolled for a couple of minutes on each, capturing screen shots of the advertisements posted in my feed. I work in and teach marketing, do research on marketing stuff and speak about marketing near my smartphone, so the advertisements in my feed are mostly about marketing services or similar –…

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Google MD writes hilarious application to join Saturday Night Live...

Google MD writes hilarious application to join Saturday Night Live…

Well folks, job applications take many forms, but this week the MD of Google in Australia obviously played her cards to pursue a career as a comedian.

How else can you explain this hilarious Open letter to Australians?It was written in response to the Australian Government deciding that Google must pay for news written by other publishers and journalists, rather than steal the news from them. Go…

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#advertising #branding #digital #digital marketing #Google #SEM #SEO

Before Coles stops using printed catalogues they should look to Dominos for guidance...

Before Coles stops using printed catalogues they should look to Dominos for guidance…

This week a marketing clerk at Coles made the ridiculous decision to stop using one of its most powerful media channels for retailers – printed catalogues. For international readers, unaddressed catalogues distributed via letterboxes, are one of the strongest generators of retail store and online traffic in Australia.

Coles catalogues

The reasons given by the clerk were ridiculous to say the…

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#branding #catalogue marketing #digital marketing #direct mail #letterbox marketing #retail

Looks like people are lying in vital COVID-19 market research...

Looks like people are lying in vital COVID-19 market research…

Forget the second wave of stupidity folks, the third wave of stupidity is gaining momentum in Australia. Suburbs with no recorded COVID-19 cases are rapidly running out of bog rolls again, as TPHS* spreads its deadly tentacles.

The third wave of stupidity is here…

Yet, despite my recent vigorous research into what humans fear most, the fear of running out of bog rolls doesn’t appear anywhere – on…

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#COVID-19 #market research #marketing

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