Great Links!

Welcome to this week's edition of the Friday Blog Log! Here are our fav's of the week:

Our first link is one from BtoBOnline regarding Green Marketing. You may recall our earlier post from this week on the same topic. There we discussed how important it is to practice what you preach, i.e., you can't say you're a green marketer if you aren't. In other words, don't talk about your "green-ness", then direct market environmentally inefficiently. Makes for some really bad press -- that's for sure! Anyway, back to BtoBOnline . . . in this post, author Carol Krol provides a readout from IBM's presentation at DM Days (going on this week in NY). IBM's VP Marketing, Elaine Lennox presented on this topic and how IBM is moving towards being a truly-Green company. “Don’t think about green in terms of ‘How do I make this product look green?’ ” she said. “You are ‘green-washing’ it in that scenario. Instead, ask: ‘How will I make my company green and make my products green because of it?’ ” Lennox proves that she "gets" it -- and for a company as huge as IBM, that is extremely significant!

Next, we'd like to feature our friend Becky Carroll and her Customer's Rock blog. This week, she's shared with us the results of some recent work that she's done for one of her clients on what makes for 5 Star Customer Service. In this economy, customer service becomes more important than ever . . . and Becky's research proves this out. The biggest "aha" is that the idea of excellent customer service, particularly 5 Star Customer Service, is different to every person. The business who understands that they need to create a phenomenal situation for each individual customer is one that will be looked upon as 5 Star. There are some great comments in this post and we know you'll enjoy it as much as we did!

Finally, check out Ted Grigg's post from this week on how he defines the next great "Big Idea" in marketing. We love Ted's down-to-earth and downright honest attitude. Ted keeps it real, man. In this post, Ted discusses his answer to a client question, "What's Your Big Idea?" Ted's response is accurate and well-put or as Ted says: "I gave my typical response, 'Direct marketing relies upon a set of discovery processes including research, testing and analytics. It is out of this discipline that big ideas emerge.' " Amen! Come on people, there aren't any silver bullets out there . . . or the one Big Idea that will turn your business around. We agree with Ted in that as you are planning your direct marketing strategy in this or any other economy, take it back to the basics and start by using an intelligent approach. If you do this rather than flying by the seat of your pants or just going by your gut feeling (something that we see way too often by the way), you'll weather any economic situation and make each campaign more successful than the last.

Happy Father's Day to all of you Dad's out there! Have great weekends all!