Bill Brohaugh

Interesting perspective on perspective in a blog entry called “10 Frequent Flyer Tips You Need to Know” at TravelGuideline.net. From Tip #6.

As a frequent flyer, you’ll want to get the most from your accumulated rewards. Unfortunately, similar to getting chips in a casino, your mind might not equate frequent flyer rewards with currency, which can cause you to make poor decisions when it comes to how you use them. Therefore, think of your rewards as cash — this may help you make wiser decisions.

My first reaction is that I wish i could use the words “cash” and “wiser decisions” in my own life a little more often. My second is to ask, How do your members view your rewards currency? As spendable cash, as the blogger suggests? As convertible assets being aggregated and grown? As steps in a ladder toward greater...

A while back, I waxed nostalgic about Christmas Clubs–the largely dormant concept of a bank savings account into which savers deposited set amounts at regular intervals–as well as other nostalgic remnants of a saving society. In a Christmas Club, savers could withdraw the set-aside money (with interest), and use it to buy what they saw fit. The concept has been coming out of dormancy during the recession, and has just arrived at Toys”R”Us in the form of the Christmas Savers Club Card. The card is actually something like a layaway without a specific purchase in mind. Load the card with holiday-spending cash, and earn a reward (what might be called “interest” in the banking world)–3% of whatever’s on the card on October 16. So, in essence, this is a layaway/Christmas-Club hybrid, with a reward in return for a promise to spend with Toys”R”Us or...

So here I am, right in the middle of Electronic Social Media Land, about to tout a bit of old media that has seen better days: The Magazine. I hope that blog filters don’t sniff out references to dead-tree media and block this post.

Specifically, I’m touting the relaunch of the magazine the Holland America cruise line publishes for its Mariner Society frequent-cruiser program. “Titled Mariner, the newly redesigned 64-page magazine presents a sophisticated, eye-catching design and offers fascinating editorial features by celebrated writers, superb photography and informative regular sections.” So says the release.

I cheer such an effort because it exemplifies form meeting content, or, more specifically, form meeting form. A magazine is physical, visceral. At its best, it is elegant, provocative, dignified. In its physical, tangible beauty, it matches the experience of high-class cruise travel. It is a perfect, luxurious means of communication to the...

Today only! Read this column for free!

I’m no different from all marketers preceding me, who have long understood the power of free—samples, for instance. Something-for-nothing attracts attention, allows sampling of products and services, and ideally primes the pump for future transactions. For instance, an Arbitron study of retail shoppers found that 35% of those who sampled products purchased the product on the same shopping trip, Of that 35%, 26% had never heard of the product (the Acquisition group),19% knew of but had never bought the product (the Conversion group), and 31% had bought the product before (the Retention group). The study also showed that 58% of samplers indicated that they would buy the product again (47% of Acquisitions, 60% of Conversions, 85% of Retentions).

Yet, marketing with freebies presents communication challenges, in that the word “free” can have its negative connotations—from the derisive (“You get what you pay for”) to the...