Circuit City vs Mad Magazine

Pop Quiz: You work in the Corporate Operations office of Circuit City. One morning, somebody tells you that the new issue of MAD Magazine features a parody of a Circuit City promotional flier. You know that some Circuit City retail outlets sell magazines, including MAD. What is your response?

A. "We're in MAD Magazine? Neat! I think I'll buy copies for everybody at the office."
B. "We sell magazines? Hmmm... maybe that's not in line with our core competencies. I should look into that."
C. "Wait... I work at Circuit City? Crap! Maybe I should send my resume to Best Buy."
D. "MAD Magazine made fun of us? This is a crisis and I must solve it! I'll send a memo to our retail outlets ordering them to pull MAD from the shelves immediately!"

The correct answer, if you're smart, is A (although we would accept B or C, too.) The absolute WRONG answer is D. Unfortunately, that's the boneheaded answer a real live person working at Circuit City's Corporate Operations office actually gave when confronted with this situation in real life. Circuit City has since reversed that order. Nevertheless, what the heck were they thinking in the first place?

In a show of support for satire, free speech, and all that jazz, click here to get a subscription to MAD for yourself or for someone you love.

Or just click here to NOT shop at Circuit City.

Created By Marketing Executives With Too Much Downtime, Part 3

Today Borders books sent out an e-mail to their mailing list that contained a series of coupons and sales notices. One of those sales qualifies as...

The Saddest Direct Marketing Campaign Offer of All Time

Here, for your review, is the offer in that qualifies Borders for this dubious distinction.




Offering consumers 5 romance novels for the price of 4 (and making the offer a week before Valentines Day) crosses the line from "meeting the consumer's untapped needs" to "exploiting the consumer's human frailty at a time of emotional weakness."

Created By Marketing Executives With Too Much Downtime, Part 2

Created By Marketing Executives With Too Much Downtime