Award-wining creative director and copywriter Karen Gedney says e-mail advertising is a recent phenomenon and that even the best traditional copywriters have trouble crafting effective e-mail copy. Here she offers a series of tips that can help. They include taking time to craft a winning subject line, which only allows for about 45 characters. She points out that your sender line should clearly identify your company and brand so it won't have to be repeated in the subject line. She also says: "Don't think of writing e-mail copy as filling in a blank page. It's more like piecing together a …

3iYing, an all-female market and design strategy company, specializes in marketing to girls ages 15 to 25. In this provocative article, seven members of the 3iYing team take on print advertising, vividly describing how many marketers totally miss their mark in ads targeted to young women. Their central premise is as follows: Getting a girl to desire your product isn't that different from getting a girl to desire you. So if it didn't work in your dating life, don't try it in your print ad. The girls also provide a blistering assessment of why a print ad for a well-known …

Unlike its competitors, Kellogg Co. has done little to promote the health benefits of its products or mount any kind of public relations effort to protect it from critic's claims that it is marketing junk food to children. Thus, it left itself open to a planned lawsuit from a consumer activist group. Tony the Tiger has encouraged kids to "Eat right, work hard, earn your stripes" in ads and Internet promotions, but otherwise Kellogg has done little else. The company trailed PepsiCo by nearly three years in announcing plans to reduce or eliminate trans fats in its Keebler cookies and …

Ford Motor is taking its case for survival directly to consumers in a new TV spot in which company CEO William Clay Ford, Jr., candidly presents the troubled automaker's situation to potential car buyers. The commercial will appear today, just two days after Ford announced sweeping changes that included the closure of as many as 14 factories and the dismissal of up to 30,000 employees. In the ad, titled "Rebirth," Ford tells viewers that his company is "determined to retake the American roadway." Anne Stevens, Ford's COO, said in an interview that if Ford was to overcome the perception it …

In a marketing test, online retailer Amazon.com is offering select users a free three-month membership in Amazon Prime delivery service. The company said the test began in the fourth quarter of last year and that participants were selected randomly. Amazon Prime was launched last February. For $79 a year, members receive unlimited two-day shipping with no minimum order size. Customers can also pay $3.99 an item to upgrade to overnight shipping. Amazon wants to "remove barriers" from users sampling the program, company spokeswoman Patty Smith said, adding that once users are exposed to the program they discover they like it. …

Anheuser-Busch not only wants consumers to buy its products, it also wants viewers of upcoming Super Bowl XL to think the company's beer ads are funny. The giant brewer has bought more commercial time in the game than any other advertiser--a whopping five minutes at an estimated rate of more than $2.4 million per 30-second spot--but the company wants more than simple exposure to the game's 90 million viewers. It also wants to win the battle for coveted word-of-mouth watercooler talk the next day about which ads were the best, and it is hoping to come out on top in …

Twenty years ago the term "global marketing" was a major buzzword in marketing circles. Coined and popularized by Harvard marketing professor Theodore Levitt, it meant that a brand could be packaged, advertised and marketed the same way in any country in the world. The goal was for brands to be like Coca-Cola, a familiar icon worldwide. Today, the reality is somewhat different, especially when it comes to packaging. Marketers are finding that, despite their best effort, when former House Speaker Tip O'Neill famously said "all politics is local," he might as well have been talking about the marketing of consumer …

Buzz is becoming big business.  As marketers have discovered the power of buzz marketing, also known as word-of-mouth advertising, practitioners of the discipline are becoming important players on the national marketing scene and attracting not only big-name clients, but serious investors as well.  For example, BzzAgent of Boston, recently featured in a Wall Street Journal article, is raising $14 million from venture capitalists to expand its business.  Its clients include Volkswagen and Anheuser-Busch, and the company has trained 130,000 people to talk to other people about products. It's a growing, $100 million to $150 million advertising sector, with perhaps …

Heineken is offering beer drinkers a chance to win a trip to the Grammy Awards show in Los Angeles next month in a promotion that uses jukeboxes in bars and restaurants as its centerpiece. Consumers can enter the contest through the Ecast network of jukeboxes in 5,000 locations or through several Web sites. The promotion includes virtual signage and video advertising on the jukeboxes, but also offers chances to play trivia games to win free song plays or the chance to "Go Totally Live" to the Grammys. Mike McCann, Heineken USA director-integrated marketing promotions and sponsorships, said that in the …

Fans can send messages to American athletes competing in next month's Winter Olympics in Italy as part of a new interactive campaign being launched by AT&T. The effort includes Web and mobile components and is part of the company's sponsorship of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic (for disabled athletes) teams. Fans are encouraged to visit a site at ATT.com/TeamUSA to write a message to an individual athlete or the entire U.S. team. Cingular mobile subscribers can also get their messages to athletes by sending a text message to "2USA." AT&T will route the messages to digital inboxes accessible to athletes …