Is Crash & Grab The Hip Thing To Do?

Okay … here is the headline on FOXNews.com…

Fan Nearly Falls From Stands During Home Run Derby in Phoenix

And about four sentences into the article, the reporter references the same drive-less lucky guy earlier this week in Dallas…

His near miss came the same day as the memorial service for Shannon Stone, a 39-year-old fan who died last Thursday while trying to catch a ball thrown into the stands at a Texas Rangers home game.

The reporter raises the most pertinent question… Is this a trend…the drive to grab the ball that the players simply could not catch with no rational sense of the actual physical parameters… defined by the environmental surroundings?

Could this be illustrating the newest “crash & grab” public release from years of economic stagnation?

Or perhaps, an urgent statement of diversion and denial of the economic, political and marketing mayhem firing up the heat of a global climate change summer?

Tonight, CBS Evening opened with more than 8 minutes of story coverage of Rupert Murdoch and his grilling today by the UK politico.

The Nets… spanning from CBS, NBC, ABC, BBC, CNN and all their children of incest… are like vultures feasting on the perception of a dog that just got hit by a car.

After all… if Rupert Murdoch can be admonished… can their despised competitor FOX News be destroyed as well?

Earlier today, I was on a conference call with a Canadian sister company of a well-known American direct mail promotion company.

The Canadian sister company has the opportunity to handle a network of Canadian direct marketing programs for one of my clients.

The client involved spent a significant investment in building a pretty cool segmentation model of top customers. The segments emerging are “niche-specific” with opportunity ranging from a mere 25% above average to more than 150% above average.

Now I have to admit that there are parts of the Canadian culture set with which I can certainly connect. Grilled salmon with maple syrup glaze makes my stomach growl.

But over the last week, the Canadian direct marketing sister company might be more illustrative of the “crash & grab” headset than a smart strategic mindset.

What did the sister company do?

They elected to fire away, with the client on the phone, about how the segmentation model that the client built was limited at best and that just going out and “bulk mailing was a much better strategy because it would reach out to every one in a retail trade area.”

I got a feeling that Canadian direct marketing sister company who vies to “crash & grab” might have just fallen over the railing.

Our team also won a great media buying account this past week based on identifying the client’s brand-equity audience groups and niche channels of reach and dialogue.

We were up against an agency that claimed the position of buying the top-rated network shows with the highest ratings and banging down the price to “the lowest rate per spot.”

Their argument? Brand success is all about reaching the masses!

No question, I cheered on the agency to lurch over that railing to grab that home run hit.

For some, long-term brand stewardship and rolling up the sleeves with a long-term commitment to growth and strategy is no longer in-vogue.

But CPG brands like TIDE, Coco-Cola, Kraft… long-term consumer brands like NIKE, HERSHEYS, JEEP… innovative technical brands like APPLE, INTEL, FACEBOOK certainly understand where the ROI pays out.