Alex Woodruff Biz Buzz

According to news hitting the press in mid-November, an Australian firm supplying Santa Claus actors told its employees not to say the traditional “ho ho ho” as this word could now be understood as an insult to women. Yes, in case you haven’t been listening carefully to American rap for the past 5 years, ho [...]

I hate the term guerilla marketing. According to the book written in 1984 it is “an unconventional system of promotions on a very low budget”, but these days it seems to be anything that isn’t classic media. A creative way of doing something different by throwing people off buildings, slapping stickers on people’s foreheads, whatever.Would [...]

Problem-solution advertising through and through, scanned in from a German magazine: But somehow this is so blatant, it’s corny. OK, the target market is clear. OK, it clearly shows the “brand benefit”. OK it’s encouraging men to drink this alcoholic beverage and not just women. But do me a favour. Actually, under new guidelines in [...]

Spending above the line (ATL – classic advertising) is not common in many areas of business to business. Relationship marketing is more important and customers are simply not looking at the media with BtB buying in mind. It’s also very expensive. More money goes into personal selling, brochures, websites and especially trade fairs. So it’s [...]

When products have little to talk about on a functional level, they have to jump to the other extreme in terms of product benefits, and play to the emotions. This is what Lynx deodorant – or Axe on the continent – has been doing for years. A typical Unilever product, it is marketed purely on [...]

When money is tight, it’s difficult to push products with high profile campaigns. On the other hand you can’t pull the plug entirely on ‘P for promotion’. Kotler’s suggestion: at the very least keep money aside for PR. In one spectacular case, a small company grew sales by 15% year-on-year, purely through effective PR. I [...]