susanharrow | April 26, 2006

Wal-Mart’s new program to help competitors compete against them at first seems counterintuitive, and it may well be. Wal-Mart is famous for moving into a neighborhood and displacing (that’s a fancy word for putting someone out of business) local stores and businesses. According to Michael Barbaro of The New York Times “The giant discount retailer, under assault as never before by critics, announced a wide-ranging effort today to support small business near its new urban stores, including the hardware stores, dress shops and bakeries with which it competes. Under the program, Wal-Mart will offer those businesses financial grants, training on how to survive with Wal-Mart in town and even free advertising within a Wal-Mart store.”

Category: Image, Publicity | 1 Comment »
Tags: coopetition, Wal-Mart

susanharrow | April 24, 2006

They call it: “Word-of-Mouth programs for some of the best products and services in the market today.” But is that just a fancy way to say that buying buzz is ok? Word of mouth marketing has been around a long time–real buzz. www.Bzzagent.com, a firm based in Boston “hires” people (30,000 volunteer brand evangelists – or BzzAgents ) by giving them free samples of products to try and then tell their friends, acquaintances and strangers about. The “testers” say that they like being on the cutting edge of talking about new and exciting stuff.

Category: Marketing & Publicity, Public Relations | No Comments »
Tags: word of mouth