Do yourself a favor. Print this out and post it above your keyboard. My favorite is checklist item number eight:

Aside: the definition of permission marketing: Anticipated, personal and relevant messages delivered to people who actually want to get them. Nowhere does it say anything about you and your needs as a sender. Probably none of my business, but I’m just letting you know how I feel. (And how your prospects feel).

These should come in very handy at our next business pitch:

• Instant rimshot
• Sad trombone

Also, I love the Google ads on the sad trombone site. “Shop for trombones!” “Trombone sale!” I’m guessing these aren’t getting too many clicks.

On page 21 of the 3/10/08 issue of Ad Age is a beige box where it is written that marketers are thinking of cutting back on direct mail in favor of increased email in the face of recession. While I, as a guy who helps create lot of email, should be seeing this as a good thing, I also see this as a potential bad thing. First, we all get too much email as it is. The email we do get should be relevant and help improve our quality of life in some way. Emails promising me a 0% APR on transferred balances isn’t either of those things. Second, approaching email as an electronic version of direct mail may be cheaper than the current tree-based method, but I don’t believe it will be better. Marketers who use it in lieu of direct mail because it’s cheaper are missing the unique attributes of the medium and, in fact, are making it less effective, not more.

This is brilliant:

Funny, but NO: Rejected Valentines

Obviously, they totally understand their brand’s relationship with its consumers and are unafraid to capitalize on it. Good for them.

This is the kind of thing for which the saying, “There, but for the grace of God, go I,” was coined:

Internet failure hits two continents – CNN

I break out into cold sweats just thinking about it.

*shudder*

Just to prove that money can’t buy branding sense, two examples from Microsoft:

• IE.Next
  Apparently, IE 8 is going to be called IE.Next. Question: What’s the version after 8 going to be called? IE.After.Next? Next.IE.Next? IE.360? Maybe the guy responsible figures he’ll have been promoted by then and the problem will be for whatever schmuck comes after him.
• PlaysForSure
  Microsoft recently stiffed several “partner” companies — and at least twice as many consumers — when they set the world on fire with their Zune music player and its closed, incompatible, and (apparently) much more important (to Microsoft) DRM technology. Now, they’ve “rebranded” PlaysForSure as “Certified for Windows Vista”. I kid you not. It would be funny if it weren’t true. Even funnier is Nokia still releasing PFS devices.

Postscript: The “PlaysForSure” disaster should be a warning sign for the marketing kids at Microsoft. The cruel irony alone of using such a confident name (plays for sure…until it doesn’t) and then unceremoniously axing it should be enough to give them pause and consider the exit strategy of whatever new brand names they’re conjuring up.

This is brilliant:

As part of a partnership to be announced Wednesday, [Google] will dispense driving directions at thousands of gasoline pumps across the country beginning early next month.

Nicely combines a man’s natural aversion to asking for directions with his inclination to use neat-o new gadgets (and all dipped in the testosterone-soaked moment of a man caring for his vehicle). It can’t lose.

From CNN

Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century

Well-known Smart Guy™ and head of Universal Music Doug Morris is apparently marshaling the troops (aka, other music labels) to defeat the evil iTunes. Is he advocating an expansion of the consumer-friendly trend towards DRM-free music? Nope. He’s trying to put together a new music store that offers subscription-based access to music that will not play on iPods.

This will fail for the following reasons:

1. It’s subscription based.
2. It won’t work with iPods.

No subscription model has worked yet in the music space (see Sony, Napster, and Microsoft’s attempts) and the iPod has a 70%+ share of the MP3 player market. So, failed business model plus incompatibility with everyone’s player equals…success? I guess it does to Doug Morris.

In the article I linked to above, Doug is quoted as saying (in reference to his original deal with Apple to place Universal’s content on the iTMS), “We got rolled like a bunch of puppies.” His definition of “rolled” is that he only gets 70% of the revenue each song generates, even though Universal has zero distribution costs. Personally, if getting 70% of anything involving the sale of over 3 billion things makes me a puppy, I’d be happy to chew a few slippers and get my tummy scratched.

More examples of the point made in the preceding post:

• Oasis and Jamiroquai will both follow Radiohead’s example and sell direct digital downloads at whatever price listeners are willing to pay.
• Madonna is apparently ditching Warner Bros. and moving into a ten year deal with a concert promoter to distribute her music and market her brand – a concert promoter with no vested interest in preserving the status quo. (BTW, Madonna will be in her 60s when this deal expires.)

Basically, the acts at the top and bottom of the music pyramid are moving in directions where traditional record labels (and traditional distribution models and media formats) have no role. Ten years ago – before the web permeated our lives, before the iPod, and before near-ubiquitous access to broadband – this would have been inconceivable.