When the latest Netflix envelope arrived in the mailbox, it contained an ad on the inside sleeve promoting some sort of concert broadcast honoring Kiss, Queen, Def Leppard and Judas Priest. We saw that the broadcast was set to air Wednesday, May 31 at 9PM. Maybe we're just dumb, but we had to stare at the ad for several minutes before we figured out the broadcast was occurring on VH1. The logo was tiny and buried in a way that was very hard to see.
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Remember the days when hospitals didn't advertise, lawyers didn't advertise, spamming was unheard of and you just went to whatever doctor your neighbor recommended? Of course you don't because it's been eons since that simple life was the norm. Thanks to one Louisiana chiropractor, you might as well assume your going to get a call from your local chiropractor a day or two after you've had an accident. At least if you live in Louisiana. The Consumerist tells us Dr. Kirtland Speaks has gone to court asking for a repeal of the Louisiana Board of Chiropractic Examiners regulations which prevents doctors from obtaining accident victim's phone numbers from public accident reports.
While a lower court refused to overturn the Boards' regulations, a higher court ruled in his favor so, for the time being as the case continues to wend its way through the legal system, Louisiana resident can expect a call from Dr. Kirtland if they ever find themselves in an accident.
To promote it spolygamy-themed new show, Big Love, HBO headed down the wedding-theme promotional road placing figurines atop actual wedding cakes in actual bakeries. Now, it's sending out direct mail wedding invitations which point to a website for the Henrickson wedding, Bill Paxton's surname in the series.
Whatevs.org gets pitched by Fox Searchlight for its upcoming horror flick, The Hills Have Eyes, with a styrofoam-encased delicacy most, other than horror movie fans, would rather not see. See what's inside here.
Shell, in a seemingly innocent effort to give away a free phone card valued at $2 to students away from home during the Chinese New Year, has, according to Tian, distributed promotional pieces around the Arizona State University campus. In order to redeem the offer, students must fill out a web form including email address, name, address and some other optional demographic information. Certainly, this information is needed to send the actual card, however, the promotion's Terms and Conditions state the cards are only available first come first serve causing one to wonder why Shell needs to collect the information from any person who signs up after the cards run out. Surely, Shell knows exactly how many cards it has to give out and could very easily terminate the promotion once all cards have been claimed rather than continue to collect information up to an arbitrary end date thereby building itself a nice fat database of names for future use.
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Ad-Verse's Eric Weaver recently received a piece of direct mail, as we all have, and it, apparently, was one too many. Weaver took the DM piece and made a few comments and edits altering the piece to make it more truthful. Poking fun at everything from the promised credit line to the ever-so-important "respond by" date to attempts at personalization to unmasking what the marketer would really say if they were honest
Eric Weaver, writing on his blog Ad-Verse has crafted, hands down, the best article on why direct marketers are still stuck in the dark ages and why the practice is, as Weaver calls it, "A science of stupidities." While we've long known many marketers are, in fact, still holding signs up and grunting incessantly in front of cave men's doorways, never before have we read such a concise diatribe against the practice of direct marketing.
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 I Need A Vacation! Andrew Teman informs us about a direct mail piece his boss had received consisting of a white 3" x 3" x 3" box which contained a fortune cookie that read, "whatsmyfortune.com." The link leads to a site containing a video portraying a frustrated ISP IT manager experiencing the usual technology related headaches. At the end of the video, he is seen opening his own white box with his own fortune cookie inside. The viewer is then pushed to a series of pages outlining the services CISP, an outsource ISP provider, can offer. After three pages, the visitor is taken to a form page where more information can be requested. It's very pointed and succinct in it's message delivery. Teman reports, though, a problem. His company is not an ISP. Perhaps CISP should check the quality of the mailing list it used for this promotion.
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