Category: Uncategorized

Mobile shopping was supposed to be lethal to brick-and-mortar retailing. But according to two new studies, it’s helping physical stores at least as much as it’s hurting. “Out on the streets, more people [who own smartphones] are going into stores and staying there longer while those who purchase online tend to favor online-only stores, based…

The consumer research is in, and it shows that the Clinton and Trump campaigns’ television advertising is achieving the same results – none. The reasons are very different though, and each has an important lesson for regular (i.e., non-political) advertisers. The Trump campaign’s television advertising is so ineffective for a very simple reason: They’ve run…

Quick, which furniture store is having a this-week-only sale with no payments for six months? Which tire store is selling four tires for the price of three? Which personal injury attorney will fight for you against insurance companies? All of them. And that’s why you can’t tell them apart. “Best Practices” = same practices That’s…

Where do you go when you know who you’re looking for but not where to find them? The (usually online) White Pages directory. Where do you go when you know what you’re looking for but not who sells it? The Yellow Pages. Or maybe you just go to Google, which works like both, but more…

  There are times when doing too much can be as harmful to your bottom line as spending, and doing, too little. Audience size isn’t everything In buying media, for example, the temptation is to go for as large an audience as you can. It’s only logical. Logical, yes, but not necessarily right. Let’s say…

  This post may not be true. Actually, it is. But even if it weren’t, you’d be more likely to believe it. That’s because it has something some others don’t — a picture. Advertising professionals have long known that a picture makes an ad stand out and attract more readership than an all-type ad. They’ve…

  Way back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, televisions were black-and-white, and telephone deregulation was a gleam in Ronald Reagan’s eye, there was this ad that Western Electric, the monopoly Bell System’s manufacturing division, ran in major magazines. It showed a photo of a small electric fan wired to a phone, over the headline, “This…

  Each ad you run gives you one shot at your target audience, so it makes sense to use all the ammunition you can, right? Wrong. True, there’s a lot you want prospective customers to know about your business, but putting it all into one data dump of an ad will hurt far more than…

  Of all the better-known, officially declared Republican candidates (Sorry, George Pataki and Jim Gilmore don’t count.), the one who needs the most help in a general election against Hillary Clinton is Donald Trump. According to the most recent Real Clear Politics polling data averages for nine leading Republicans, he comes in ninth – and…

Way back in in the 1950s, Dr. Jonas Salk’s personal motto was, “The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more.” Six decades later, Covered California, the state Obamacare exchange, put a new spin on it: The reward for work poorly done at exorbitantly inflated cost is the opportunity to do more…