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marketing
What If Microsoft Designed The “What If Microsoft Designed The iPod Box” Video?
By 3.15.06
A couple weeks ago, we posted a video that has been taking the Internet by storm: What If Microsoft Designed The iPod Box? At the time, we wondered about the funny guys who’d so perfectly hoisted Microsoft’s petard.
McDonald’s Shady Anti-Spurlock Countermeasures
By 3.14.06
We hate Morgan Spurlock. Hate hate hate hate hate him. We swear to Buddha, 90% of this video of Mortal Kombat 3 fatalities is what would happen to him if John Brownlee ever, ever got his massive, Incredible-Hulk-like hands on the greasy little turd. The last 10% of the video — the part featuring Mortal Kombat 3’s Babalities — is what would happen if Ben Popken ever got the small, playdough-like lumps of his pudgy toddler’s fists on Spurlock. Such is our rage.
Steve Rubel Blog Marketing Q&A At Washington Post
By 3.10.06
Speaking of the Walmart/Edelman scandal, there’s a Q&A session with Steve Rubel, senior vice president at Edelman, up at the Washington Post. On one hand, as is the rule-of-greasy-thumb for PR double-speak, most of it seems eminently reasonable and level-headed. In fact, a good amount of it we agree with. But there’s a couple of pearls of wisdom that have tumbled from Rubel’s snout that betray the usual slimy patronization of consumers by executives that gets The Consumerist shouting “Spoon!”
Does Super-Sizing Disprove Free Will?
By 3.2.06
Our favorite neuroscience blog, Mind Hacks rebuffs a profound philosophical question: does unthinkingly opting to super-size your small popcorn disprove the concept of freewill, thus making you a soulless automoton? After all, if you decide you want a medium instead of a large, then pay thirty-five cents more to Super-Size that transaction, doesn’t that mean you’re a philosophical zombie?
USPS Delivers More Junk Mail Than Love Letters
By 3.2.06
If you’ve noticed your snail mailbox getting fuller, it’s not because you’ve become more popular, because odds are, you haven’t.
Don’t Overpay for a Mattress
By 2.28.06
How does the IRS sleep at night? Well, they don’t spend too much on mattresses for one thing.
Sexy Grapefruit Domain Banned In Vietnam
By 2.16.06
Over in Vietnam, various regulations prevent you from naming a .vn domain after a body part approximately 50% of people on Earth have. Recently however, this aggressive stance towards clean, wholesome domain names has backfired on the clean, wholesome Vietnamese grapefruit which, without its tonal accents, is a filthy homonym for a cock.
Pastor Complains About Satan Tagline Criticism
By 2.15.06
A couple days ago, we wrote about how St. James Church used a quote from Satan as their website tag line. Church Marketing Sucks has been following the story, and has posted this comment from the pastor of St. James:
Mind Hacks on Neuromarketing
By 2.14.06
Mind Hacks, following its theme on the neurological implications of marketing and advertising, have their first post-up, in which they skeptically examine claims that flashes of electricity in the brain can easily be utilized to create successful advertisements:
Satan Speaks: All Your Church Are Belong To Us
By 2.13.06
Church Marketing Sucks has a post up detailing the unique tag line a church has chosen for itself in Pennsylvania.
The Consumerist Interview: Scott Meldrum of Hype Council
By 2.10.06
In a post on gaming webcomic Penny Arcade, an anonymous email was posted regarding the actions of Hype Council, accusing the company of hiring employees to create online personas to drive word-of-mouth marketing online.
Stanford Studies Show Getting Ripped-Off is Healthy
By 2.10.06
Companies charge us more out of the kindness of their hearts, new Stanford Graduate School of Business (SGSB) study shows.
In each of three different studies, participants were given energy drinks that supposedly make consumers feel more alert and energetic. Some participants paid full price for the drinks; others were offered them at discounted prices. The participants were then asked to solve a series of word puzzles. In all three studies, the people who paid discounted prices consistently solved fewer puzzles than the people who paid full price for the drinks.
WOMMA’s Word of Mouth Code of Ethics
By 2.10.06
WOMMA, the ‘Word of Mouth Marketing Association,’ has published their first draft of an ‘Ethics Code’ and they’re asking for “interested parties” to pass on comment. Touched with unique quality that allows marketers to mix terms describing ethics with terms describing profit, they’ve boiled down the ‘WOMMA Code’ to the ‘Honest ROI,’ comprised of the following:
Dear Nvidia’s Mister Perez…
By 2.9.06
We’re passing on a message from our buddies over at Church of the Customer Blog:
Nvidia ‘Focus Group’ Member Details Hidden Program
By 2.8.06
For the record, while there are certainly “Manchurian Fans” being hired to promote products in the games and/or gaming hardware world, Nvidia and AEG have both clearly denied that they have hired stealth marketers to create personas to promote Nvidia products. We have no reason not to believe them and have stated that elsewhere on the site, but am putting it up again just to outline it. (Naturally, we’d like to know who is hiring these stealth marketers, so feel free to pass on anything regarding this you feel germane.)
