You are here: Home

Tide offers “Loads of Hope” for natural disaster victims

By on January 2, 2008 in cause marketing, socially responsible, videos, word of mouth

Do you have an affinity to your laundry detergent? You might after you read this. After Hurricane Katrina and the recent California wildfires, Tide dispatched their CleanStart trucks to the scene to help. These mobile laundry facilities provided the families of these disasters with free laundry services when they needed it most. The CleanStart trucks [...]

Read full story • Comments { 7 }

Inspiration from unexpected places

By on January 1, 2008 in environmentally responsible, socially responsible, videos

Happy New Year! Finding the right topic for my New Year’s Day post was more difficult than I thought. Sure, I have hundreds of things bookmarked and find new things every day. And this time of year, there are plenty of worthy “2007 Marketing Year in Review,” “2008 Marketing Forecast,” and “Marketing Top 10 List [...]

Read full story • Comments { 2 }

Love it or hate it: The Thomas Kinkade marketing machine

By on December 28, 2007 in commercialization, love it or hate it?, responsible or not?

My partner, Bill Boyd, ABC, sent me an email I thought blogworthy. Here it is: Patrick, I spent time with two brands over the holidays. One carefully guards every aspect of its interactions with the public. This company can demand (and get) premium prices. There’s never any discounting, and no products that don’t convey an [...]

Read full story • Comments { 2 }

Ad Age Trends for 2008: My take

By on December 27, 2007 in casting responsible, creativity, execution responsible, roi responsible, social networking, socially responsible, strategically responsible

Ad Age released their Trends to Watch in 2008 recently. Here’s a loose summary of the article with my comments in italics. MARKETERS HIT A ROUGH PATCH With growth slowing, fuel prices high and credit tight, marketers will struggle as consumers will reduce spending. This puts marketing responsibility at a premium. Now more than ever, [...]

Read full story • Comments { 1 }

Entertaining, but effective?

By on December 26, 2007 in advertainment, responsible or not?, videos, word of mouth

Ready for a little break from the barrage of holiday advertising? I am, and I like advertising. I was hoping I’d find a few holiday-themed ads to share, but then I realized, the most entertaining and memorable ad I’ve seen this season wasn’t a holiday ad at all. It was a Jack-in-the-Box ad, and I [...]

Read full story • Comments { 3 }

A little present from Coors to the world

By on December 25, 2007 in environmentally responsible, message responsible, socially responsible

Santa actually has nothing to do with this post, but how could I resist? The Denver Business Journal reports that the Molson Coors Brewing Co. of Golden, Colorado has made a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 12 percent within the next two years, reduce energy use and convert some waste into ethanol. “Waste [...]

Read full story • Comments { 0 }

Santa: Love him or hate him?

By on December 24, 2007 in commercialization, love it or hate it?

Do you love Santa? Or do you hate him for his role in the commercialization of Christmas? I’m torn. I’ve played Santa for our neighbors’ kids the last three years. I don’t have his beard or build, but the suit works. Their kids haven’t realized it’s me, and though I have to sneak away from [...]

Read full story • Comments { 0 }

“Season’s Greenings” from the Port of Seattle

By on December 21, 2007 in environmentally responsible

Today we received the above postcard from the Port of Seattle. Inside it reads “Please recycle peace, love, and joy.” Nicely done, Port, especially when you stack it up against the holiday message I received from Waste Management. I thought to myself, “self, this looks like something worth sharing.” Then I got an email from [...]

Read full story • Comments { 1 }

Happy Holidays. No. Really. We mean it.

By on December 20, 2007 in message responsible, responsible or not?

“From everyday collection to environmental protection, Think Green. Think Waste Management.” That’s the tagline in the footer of a Happy Holidays email I received from Waste Management. The rest of the message: Dear Valued Customer, We hope you have a safe and happy holiday. Cordially, Waste Management Apparently, they didn’t want to waste any time [...]

Read full story • Comments { 2 }

Ride the S.L.U.T. SayWa?

By on December 19, 2007 in naming, strategically responsible

If you live in the Seattle area, you’ve witnessed a naming blunder or two over the last few years. Washington State’s “SayWa?” slogan to promote tourism in the state was widely panned and then scrapped. The Seattle Convention and Visitors Bureau followed that ditty up with “metronatural,” [lower-case 'm' is part of the branding] a [...]

Read full story • Comments { 2 }

Art from junk mail

By on December 18, 2007 in environmentally responsible

Lemonade from lemons? How about art from junk mail? Sandy Schimmel of Schimmel Art of Phoenix, Arizona is using recycled advertising ephemera, junk mail and greeting cards to create some visually stunning art. Check out her collection.

Read full story • Comments { 2 }

For the library: William Zinnser’s “On Writing Well”

By on December 17, 2007 in books

Recently I shared a copy of On Writing Well, by William Zinsser with an Outsource Marketing client. It may well be the 10th copy of the book that I’ve given away. It’s that good. My former partner Ken Mays said it best: We bought a copy of this book after reading an article about an [...]

Read full story • Comments { 1 }

My friend, the spammer

By on December 14, 2007 in responsible or not?, social networking

Want to make some easy money? Now you can, if you are willing to spam your friends on Facebook, and soon, Skype, Open Social, Twitter and some of your other favorite places to connect online. Check out this blog posting from TechCrunch, and make sure you scan the comments.

Read full story • Comments { 0 }

Responsible or not?

By on December 13, 2007 in responsible or not?, videos

Boring advertising is irresponsible in so many ways. But there’s a fine line between breakthrough creative and going too far. Is this ad responsible or not? Comment below to weigh in.

Read full story • Comments { 7 }

Is marketing outsourcing Responsible Marketing?

By on December 12, 2007 in casting responsible, execution responsible, marketing outsourcing, strategically responsible

It’s a fair question. To answer that, first you need a little better understanding of what marketing outsourcing is. To help explain the concept, I wrote Demystifying marketing outsourcing. It’s a quick read that describes marketing outsourcing categorically, not my company. Of course, since we are marketing outsourcing pioneers and I’m closer to this than [...]

Read full story • Comments { 0 }

A multicultural marketing swing and miss

By on December 11, 2007 in execution responsible, multicultural marketing, socially responsible, strategically responsible

Multicultural marketing is smart. It makes a lot of sense. And it could be your company’s next competitive advantage. A few of my team members at Outsource Marketing wrote a substantive article on the topic awhile back in Are you serving the minority-majority? Why multicultural marketing matters more than ever. It’s definitely worth your time. [...]

Read full story • Comments { 0 }

On first impressions and sweating the small stuff

By on December 10, 2007 in execution responsible, strategically responsible, word of mouth

On the surface, Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market looks like the type of company I’d enjoy profiling on The Responsible Marketing blog. They are saying all the right things: they believe in making fresh and high quality food affordable in every neighborhood, they are active in their communities, they treat their people well. So it [...]

Read full story • Comments { 0 }

Why you should evaluate all your contact points

By on December 4, 2007 in execution responsible

So my family is returning from our vacation in Whistler last week and my four-year-old has to “really go.” We’re in traffic, and we’re not sure when we’ll get to the next gas station. Parents, are you tensing up a bit? Finally, there’s one on the corner. What a relief. Or not. We pull in, [...]

Read full story • Comments { 4 }

I deserve a hot, juicy burger…and a cup of water

By on November 26, 2007 in creativity, signage, simplicity, word of mouth

Last summer, I took my mom to Wendy’s for lunch with my kids. Believe it or not, it was the first time she’d been there. Hold the ‘heavy hitter’ and ‘great son’ comments — it was her idea. Anyway, after we sat down for our gourmet meal, there was a bit of a stir near [...]

Read full story • Comments { 0 }

Why won’t Starbucks do something like this?

By on November 23, 2007 in environmentally responsible, socially responsible

Go into any Starbucks and you can pick up one of their brochures sharing their corporate social responsibility. They are really putting some energy into their communications in this area, and I applaud them for it. Tully’s is a Seattle-based company that has followed Starbucks, literally, into many of Seattle’s neighborhoods. Their strategy: open a [...]

Read full story • Comments { 2 }