Back to Posting Marketing Stories

Posted by Paul Christ July 09, 2009

Labels: Advertising, Legal Issue in Marketing, Product Management

We are still in the stage of moving KnowThis.com to a new design, but we now have the time to post new Marketing Stories. Our new approach to Marketing Stories is to present these not only as a listing as we have done for many years, but to also present these within a blog posting. This will allow us to add comments beyond the short notes we have offered in the past. Of course, since this is a blog posting you are welcome to subscribe to our RSS feed and receive automatic updates when posted and also offer your own comments.

Since we have not posted stories for a few weeks we do have an extensive backlog so here are the first few that should be of interest and worth investigating:

There is a growing threat to U.S. online retailers who, for the most part, have avoided having to collect sales tax for product sold to customers outside their state. However, there is now a push by many states, primarily due to poor economic conditions, to start collecting what many states view as their revenue. But as pointed out in Web Retailers and States Wrestle Over Tax Rules (MSNBC) there is a lot more to this issue.
Legal woes are also being found in the mobile ad market. While the story Mobile Media Usage Soars, Opens New Vistas for Marketers (BrandWeek) discusses the growth opportunities in this market, marketers may need to enter there with caution as discussed in A Mobile Marketer's Horror Story (AdLaw).
An interesting report is summarized by the article What Ads Types Are Most “Helpful”? Search Ads Follow Newspapers, TV (Search Engine Land) that shows newspaper ads may still be very relevant after all. So maybe they are not dead yet!
In Europe the story Handset Makers Agree to Standard Charger (BrandWeek) discusses how product designers will be responding to customer complaints and will soon produce products that will work across different brands.
Another product story How to Turn Research into Innovation Gold (BusinessWeek) offers an excellent look at what it takes to cut through tons of data obtained while doing product research in order to get to what is really innovative.
Ads That Break the Mold and Grab Attention (BusinessWeek) is worth the read to see what marketers must do to break through the ad clutter. But also in BusinessWeek check out the story Hollywood's Blockbuster Role for Product Placement for a good inside look at how product placement promotion is used.