Muppets' Exclusive La Choy Fire Breathing Dragon! While on the road to success, Jim Henson's creations were used in the advertising world. The La Choy pitch is a great insight into the workshop's early genius. [more inside]
posted by Frasermoo on Mar 19, 2009 - 28 comments

Feast your senses (including, perhaps, your sense of outrage) on this Merck Vioxx sales training video, presented in 3 parts without commercial interruption (heh) by the often interesting Pharmalot. [more inside]
posted by Mister_A on Aug 28, 2008 - 42 comments

Selling something? Try some humor with your pitch. Donna Stuff4Sale. My 95 Ford Ranger. McNeeb Auto.
posted by Cool Papa Bell on Feb 26, 2008 - 15 comments

MSNBC soft pedalled the story while others have offered their regurgitated take on the press release. But I can't find anyone asking the tough questions about the new deal between Microsoft and Vivendi/Universal wherein MS will pay Universal a flat price for every Zune player sold.
With big names like David Geffen saying, "Each of these devices is used to store unpaid-for material. This way, on top of the material people do pay for, the record companies are getting paid on the devices storing the copied music." are we really getting to the point where everything we think we know about property and theft is going to be re-defined in terms of someone's perceived loss?
posted by I, Credulous on Nov 10, 2006 - 65 comments

What What: I came across this and offer it to the MeFi community, mostly in the hopes you guys can explain it all to me.
posted by ancientgower on May 12, 2006 - 12 comments

An engaging presentation given by bald marketing dude Seth Godin to the Google people on February 28. Godin goes over his usual themes, Permission Marketing, Ideas as virus, marketing as stories, etc. He also claims that technology without marketing can’t win in the marketplace. 48 minutes on Google Video
posted by growabrain on Mar 5, 2006 - 46 comments

"I will make sure you will never be able to place an order on the internet again." "I'm an attorney, I will sue you." "I'm going to call your local police and have two officers come over and arrest you." FlickrNation's Thomas Hawk gets service from the manager of a New York City camera store. (via Digg)
posted by LinusMines on Nov 30, 2005 - 69 comments

Promoting Freedom or Fueling Conflict? U.S. Military Aid and Arms Transfers Since September 11--from the World Policy Institute, a report on whether we put our money where our mouth is. Statements like "Freedom will be the future of every nation and every people on Earth" might sound nice and even inspiring, but why is our own government funding overwhelmingly anti-democratic and abusive governments? ... When countries designated by the State Department’s Human Rights Report to have poor human rights records or serious patterns of abuse are factored in, 20 of the top 25 U.S. arms clients in the developing world in 2003 -- a full 80% -- were either undemocratic regimes or governments with records of major human rights abuses. ...
posted by amberglow on May 24, 2005 - 51 comments

Amazon UK was taken down for over an hour today after a rush of orders caused by apparently mis-pricing Compaq HP iPAQ H5450 Pocket PCs and HP iPAQ H1910 Pocket PCs at £23 GBP and £7 GBP respectively (normally priced at over £200 GBP each)!! I know a few people who have ordered one or two ;) - Amazon is back up and running now but we're all a bit in the dark as to whether we'll get our cut-price goods or not. Logic and fair-play (and the Trades Description Act) dicatates that we should get our goods - but I wonder.... (see also here at The Register)
posted by andyHollister on Mar 19, 2003 - 37 comments

"There Is Only One Sale" is the traditional January sales slogan of Harrods' department store in London, where the elbow-fest begins next Monday. With disappointing Christmas retail sales being reported more or less everywhere, it looks like the U.S. National Retail Federation's statement "What's going to be crucial now is the week after Christmas" is not the usual BS. Sales in Europe are still month-long extravaganzas where unique bargains can be had. In the U.S. they seem to be more frequent, shorter and somewhat diluted. Assuming you're normal (a stingy, somewhat gullible and opportunistic shopper like the rest of us), what are your post-holiday shopping objectives? Which department stores will you be hitting? Or is it all just a big con?
posted by MiguelCardoso on Dec 24, 2002 - 10 comments

Apple's retail stores are drawing visitors but not generating sales, with a disappointing conversion rate so far. Apple doesn't blame its sales clerks: "Apple stressed Mac expertise — not salesmanship — when it trained them. . . . But now Apple plans to beef up its instruction to teach clerks how to close the deal." But John Manzione isn't so sure: when visiting a local Apple Store, he found that "[w]ho I was dealing with here were Mac enthusiasts who cared more about being around the product than selling it."
posted by mcwetboy on Feb 21, 2002 - 42 comments

Sample letter intended for businesses who advertise in a Honolulu newspaper. Found here via the always informative Media News.
posted by zedzebedia on Sep 13, 2001 - 16 comments

Slumping Sales. The RIAA appears to be losing money so far this year because people aren't buying as many cd's and aren't going to as many concerts. It's hard to tell if there's some correlation between the demise of napster and the falling sales or if the numbers are down because the new album's coming out aren't really that good. Personally, I'd say a little bit of both. I haven't purchased many cd's this year, although there are one or two that I plan to pick up in the coming months (only because I've already downloaded the songs and know that it's worth the money).
posted by dave on Jul 20, 2001 - 37 comments

In what appears to be a suicide mission, Gateway announced it is backing away from lucrative services and software (which accounted for 100 percent of its fourth-quarter earnings) in favor of refocusing on computer sales, an area that recently has not made a dime for the company.
posted by shauna on Mar 5, 2001 - 25 comments

CD Sales down by 39%? And guess who's to blame. (Also linked in the article is the interesting stopnapster.com site.)
posted by gi_wrighty on Feb 26, 2001 - 43 comments

A situation similar to the story below. What is it with Car Dealers? Why can't they just do the right thing?
posted by da5id on Aug 2, 2000 - 0 comments

CD sales down near college campuses?
A new study shows that despite growing music sales overall, independent stores near the campuses of colleges that have banned Napster report a 7% decline in sales over the past two years. [more inside...]
posted by daveadams on May 25, 2000 - 10 comments

"If supermarkets were designed like Web sites, milk and bread would be at the front of the store." Instead, he thinks commercial web sites should put the most popular items deep so you have to "walk" past other items. If the entrance to fifty other stores was always within two steps, no matter where you were within the store, stores wouldn't be organized that way! How could someone at IBM make such a fundamental error?
posted by Steven C. Den Beste on Feb 25, 2000 - 6 comments

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Amway is bringing their scams to the web. When your gullible relatives get online, expect to be bombarded with 'opportunity emails.' Fortunately, there's plenty of people getting the truth out about them.
posted by mathowie on Aug 26, 1999 - 0 comments