Last week I was chatting with two of my colleagues: THE Michael Schneider and Doug Gould. The topic of the conversation was the temporary nature of online creation. Doug talked about how the nature of online creation prevents people from actually holding it in their hands or displaying it on their shelf. Will magazines or books or newspapers ever go away? Of course not. But more and more , technology is enabling people to bring things with them digitally.

Change happens. And creative people learn to adapt to the new parameters. Take album cover art for example. There was quite a divide at the dawn of compact discs where fans of the large format art on album covers were upset with the small format of CD jewel cases. But people adapted. Now you can find some pretty cool and innovative ways that designers have made CD covers just as precious (albeit smaller) as their vinyl counterparts. Read more…

It was a familiar sight. I was reading Boston.com, the online newspaper for the Boston Globe and I saw a series of familiar pink boxes and a coffee cup. Must be another series of Dunkin Donuts ads I thought. But after a closer look I noticed something interesting.

Those ads were not Dunkin. They were Starbucks. When you think of the color “pink”, Starbucks is the last thing that should cross your mind. As someone who has worked on the Starbucks account, I can tell you that browns, and earth tones are a mainstay. Not the festive pink and orange that defines Dunkin’s brand.

It looks as if Starbucks is playing in Dunkin’s sandbox. Read more…

Using offers in direct mail has been common since the dawn of direct marketing. Frequently, when communicating to C-Suite audiences, using premiums in the mailings will yield stronger response.

But adding premiums in mailings brings with it a whole additional set of considerations and expenses. What may have previously been a standard letter package or self-mailer has now evolved into a dimensional box with additional postage.

There is no question that dimensional mail and premium packages work. But how do you justify the additional cost to the client? You can propose, for instance, that you send an item worth $20 a unit to a list of 2000 prospects. The client may love the idea, but worry about the additional cost with no measureable response. In essence, all 2000 recipients could just pocket the premium item and not respond to the offer or purchase without referencing the mailing as being the reason for response. Read more…