Editor’s note: This is John Reinan’s weekly marketing column for MinnPost.com. It’s long been accepted as marketing gospel that younger is better. Younger people are more receptive to new things; the older demographic is set in its ways. If someone has been using Crest toothpaste for 30 years, they’re not likely to suddenly switch to [...]

Does this thing look even remotely appealing to you? This little novelty “sandwich,” the Double Down from KFC, consists of bacon and cheese slapped between two slabs of fried or grilled chicken. Bun you ask? Nope – your chicken serves as the outer lining of this little morsel. I don’t have any problems with the ingredients, [...]

Editor’s note: This is John Reinan’s weekly marketing column for MinnPost.com. To view the original, go to http://bit.ly/9pe5Lz. I hate it when the facts get in the way of a good hypothesis. I was all set to write a post about how tough it is to market a product when your client is urging people [...]

It’s a great time of the year to ride your bike: we’ve just had our first taste of 60-degree days in Minneapolis, one of the nation’s top cycling cities. Bicycling enters the public conversation every spring, around the same time that Midwestern flooding prompts a bizarre national Fargo-Watch and March Madness replaces work. Last week,  [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]