Columnist Ian Hughes rants about the latest issues affecting our industry. This time, his topic is: Facebook – friend, foe or flop?
There are few people who do not know about the existence of Facebook – and people are either sweet or sour about it. But Facebook can also be a place to do business as [...]

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Herschell Gordon Lewis shares a little copy class.
William of Ockham should have been a direct marketer. Maybe he was. Many of us moonlight openly or surreptitiously in a second pseudo-profession. And, in the 14th century, media choices were sparse enough to assure readership of anything that appeared in what then was considered ‘print’.
We all have [...]

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Doug Sacks brings clear insight into emerging markets which he says are now ripe for small and medium-sized businesses to explore. 
Recently, the iDi Marketers Forum was held in conjunction with the USA DMA’s Digital Marketing Days or ‘The Conference formerly known as DM Days New York’. 
As is the habit for the iDi, an excellent group [...]

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Nick Martin puts the brakes on customer management ‘trucks’ in favour of sleeker, more specialised vehicles.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs recently made a comparison between PCs and trucks, vehicles that once dominated the car market in the US, but which got killed by smaller cars as the US consumer got real.
In an article in the Wall Street Journal, [...]

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Keith Wiser takes a critical view of some South African customer loyalty schemes.
Did I mention that in 2008 I was voted South Africa’s Direct Marketer of the Year? I must be honest, when I received the award I felt a bit like UK musician Phil Collins . . . ‘an overnight success after 30 years’. The [...]

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Back from the iDi conference in the US, Ian Hughes reports that even big brands are having to learn to stop shouting and start listening.
At the recent iDi Marketers Forum in New York, I was lucky enough to hear a series of talks by a number of companies, that all pointed to the same issue.
The [...]

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Susanne Hornikel says food supplements products offer potential for European marketers.
In recent years, manufacturers of food supplements have had interesting opportunities for growth: an ageing population; increasing health awareness; rising incomes; and changing opinions about nourishment. A desire for comfort, a guilty conscience and a bid for higher physical efficiency and vitality are important reasons [...]

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 . . . according to chapter 36,407, says Herschell Gordon Lewis.
We assume we’re professional communicators. The very word ‘professional’ implies knowledge beyond that of someone who aspires from outside our little half-world to join us.
So when an email shows up in our daily batch, and the email is headed, ‘22 Quick Tips for Better Email [...]

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Alastair Tempest reports on how regulators are bowling with leg-break action at online behavioural advertising. 
As I write this, the summer has come and it’s all downhill to the beaches and blue seas (in theory!).
It’s also the time of year when Brussels’ regulators traditionally toss out a couple of googlies (I choose that word carefully; the [...]

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Permission marketing experts Rosemary Smith and Jenny Moseley say the latest US privacy bill is not clever and not pretty. 
recently introduced draft privacy bill has made unlikely bedfellows of the US direct marketing industry and privacy activists who are unanimously negative in their response to the proposals.
Among other things, the Boucher-Stearns bill would require ‘covered entities’ [...]

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