BevLog

My friend, Rae, sent me a link to an offer "Save 50% today only to NYTimes for 26 weeks for a Times digital subscription" on Cyber Monday. Small print indicated "only to new subscribers." This is another indicator about how hard NYT is trying to save/keep people reading The New York Times. The offer included Smart phone and Tablet apps for mobile. "Mommy, what's a newspaper?"

From a broader marketing/promotion view, it turns out that this year's Cyber Monday broke the all-time high U.S. online shopping record reaching $1.25 billion up 22% from last year. And so the beat goes on to sales online more and more. Marketing dollars continue to migrate faster and faster to the fragmented market onine vs. "mass marketing." TV and radio hang on but not print.

I wanted to write a post about Groupon's IPO earlier, but there was so much controversy and postponement, I decided to let them go formal first.

Being in marketing - my interest all along has been the explosive rate of Groupon's "Daily Deals" - and how much competitive growth in discounting/couponing could actually hurt a brand's value. When you look closely at the financial aspects of Groupon's IPO - they're pretty interesting from an investment point of view.

But getting back to marketing, I think Al Ries says it best in his article,"Discountitus, the Disease that's Sweeping the Marketing Community." He writes that many industries are already "infected" (from department stores to airlines to car insurance). That branding success takes "leadership." The ability to "launch a new brand in a new category like Apple did with the iPad." And, you have to "Lower the boom on price" so competitors can't compete. Period. Agreed.