Tag Archives: marketing
My lip balm is eating my lips!
The other day I hurried home from work, pulled open my bathroom cupboard and with a crazed look in my eye, scanned through the list of ingredients of my various lip balms and moisturisers for salicylic acid. For according to Martin … Continue reading
Name it right
It must be pretty important to pick a good name for your business, judging by the mushrooming of brand consultants, no doubt to feed the eager demand of companies who have worked out that sometimes it’s more profitable to spend … Continue reading
Advertising on holiday
Advertising. Sometimes it provides useful information about products before you buy. Sometimes it’s a socially wasteful side-product of competition between firms (No, really, how different can two brands of washing powder be?) I enjoyed an example of the latter every … Continue reading
Soap, bubble and shop
Why do firms in some markets engage in apparently pointless and costly activities? And why doesn’t vigorous competition drive out inefficient practices? The other day, a friend came over for dinner, kindly offered to wash up, and was overwhelmed by the … Continue reading
A healthy respect for profits, sorry, I mean the environment
It seems as though everyone is trying to be greener than Kermit these days. The threat of climate change is pressuring Governments to take action, spurred on by the voting public (well, in some cases, as long as it doesn’t … Continue reading
Reduce the SAD – make them shop!
Or why sun lamps in shops could be the next big thing. We know about shops and their wily ways. How they evilly pump out the smell of baking bread when you go into the supermarket, how they cunningly place … Continue reading
Five Minute Economist's Blog 
Anti-nudging
Behavioural economics incorporates psychology into the science of decision-making. Some of it isn’t all that new to marketers, who have been using funny quirks in our decision-making skills to sell more stuff to us for years (e.g. pricing things at … Continue reading →