Web-based footwear retailer Zappos may now be owned by Amazon, but it has an amzing reputation for its customer service and now turns over more than$1billion. It’s 10 core values start with ‘Create WOW through service’. But do you know what I really like? After new employees have completed their initial training they are offered $2,000 to resign.

Am I the only person who is horrified by the recent ads from Royal Mail, promoting their new ‘Insight Tool’? This tool gives access to 140 million eBay transactions ‘telling you who’s buying what at postcode level’ . Where is the indiviudal’s right to privacy in this? The data may be aggregated at postcode level [...]

At what point does clever marketing become marketing that is totally misleading, and which makes the customer believe they are buying something they aren’t? I know that under English law we have caveat emptor i.e. buy beware, meaning that the customer should check that what they are getting is what they have been led to [...]

I read with interest in a recent issue of Marketing magazine that sales of Budweiser lager have fallen by 32% between 2004 and 2008, so that it is now the 8th best-selling lager in the UK rather than the 5th best-selling. It made me think back to Louis the frog (he was the meerkat of [...]

I try to stop myself, but can’t…. I keep singing ‘compare the meerkat.com’!!!!! Great ads create great catch phrases, that live on long after the ad campaigns are over. From the old days of ‘Don’t say brown, say Hovis’ to ‘Have a break, have a KitKat’ to the Budweiser ‘Waaasssup!’ But the comparethemarket.com ads have [...]

50Cent (aka Curtis Jackson) the rap artist is not just a very wealthy businessman now, worth around $250million, but he has shown how using all components of the marketing mix can turn an individual (never mind a hotel chain!) into a global brand. His website gets 30 million unique visitors per month! All too often [...]