I want to add a note to Alli’s Super Bowl ad post from yesterday. Tom Fugleberg of OLSON made this point to me in my MinnPost column on the Super Bowl adstravaganza.
Increasingly, these high-profile ad spots are being used as entry points to other marketing efforts. In this year’s Super Bowl, VW’s ad directed viewers [...]

We just bought a couple new laptops, so that must mean we have more job openings, right?  Indeed we do! The first will be issued to an emerging superstar with serious social media chops, strong writing skills and a little gravitas to boot.  Ideally, our new Client Relationship Director would be a highly creative and strategic thinker who [...]

Man, selling a new autobiography has become quite formulaic. Publicists used to work hard, but now the recipe for success is simple. All you need is a few hundred pages most of the world doesn’t really care about with a few outlandish allegations or bombshell admissions mixed in (think MacKenzie Phillips).  Then you leak the [...]

Girl: “Does my ass look fat in these jeans?”
Guy (if he’s smart): “NO, NOT AT ALL!!  You look terrific! In fact, I think you should try and eat more, you’re getting a little too thin.”�
I gotta believe there isn’t a guy reading this post who hasn’t had to answer that question or a girl who hasn’t [...]

The world of TV infomercials took quite a hit with the passing of Billy Mays last weekend.  I’m pretty sure we haven’t seen such an effective pitcher since Cy Young.  If he was selling, people were buying – to the tune of more than $1 billion in collective sales for the products he endorsed. So [...]

Editor’s note: This is John Reinan’s weekly marketing column for MinnPost.com.
Conventional wisdom says that women love to shop. Carrie Leum would disagree.
When the subject turned to shopping, Leum noticed, many of the women she knew spoke not about the thrill of the hunt, but about the hassle.
“So many women told me they hated shopping,” Leum [...]

Almost a year ago, Kevin Dugan asked at Strategic Public Relations, “Is your brand sticky or slippery online?” To this day, that concept has stuck with me — pun intended, I suppose.
For years, Web publishers sought to develop “sticky” content that would hold people’s attention and keep them coming back. Makes sense, right? If you’re producing [...]

Editor’s note: This is John Reinan’s weekly marketing column for MinnPost.com. To see the original, go to http://tinyurl.com/alpfah.
Somewhere out there is a marketer who does only one thing. But I’ve yet to meet him.
The range of marketing channels continues to grow, and it sometimes seems like a full-time job just to stay abreast of the [...]

A while ago, I mentioned Brandtags.net, an experiment by Noah Brier that tests the theory that brands exist in people’s heads. A recent trip led me to play with the backwards section where visitors guess the brands based on other users’ tags.
Some brands are dead giveaways (Apple’s popular tags include Steve Jobs, ipod and mac), [...]

[Editor's note: This is John Reinan's weekly marketing column for MinnPost.com, reprinted with permission. To see the original, go to http://tinyurl.com/5cgaah.]
The new poster boy for green marketing is standing shirtless in sub-zero temperatures, his shaved head painted in team colors as he waves a giant foam finger to the heavens.
You can have your earnest ex-hippie [...]