From: FreePeople.com
Subject Line: Short Pants Romance
Date: Friday, February 1, 2008

Email + Social Networking = so hot right now! Yet despite all the talk, I haven't seen many retailers integrate email messaging with MySpace sites. Enter the notably-early-adapting Free People! (They've been blogging and RSSing forever.) Check out the hotlink to add them as a MySpace friend at the upper-right of this email. Kudos to Free People for sticking their toe into the Email + Social Networking pool! Although I'm not sure I'd recommend becoming an early adapter on the "Short Pants" trend. With construction boots? Yikes! Not hot.

Posted by lfharmon at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

From: Eddie Bauer
Subject Line: Shop New For Spring | Spring Outerwear is here.
Date: Thursday, January 18, 2007

From: Eddie Bauer
Subject Line: One Week Only: Extra 30% Off Sale Outerwear.
Date: Monday, January 22, 2007

Eddie Bauer appears to be taking the dual "supressed images/preview pane" threat seriously: these recent campaigns use HTML for almost all text - including nav items. And you know what? I think they look pretty darn good. A lot of us have been skittish to follow the best practice - use as much HTML text as possible - because we lose a degree of creative control over how text renders. But (depending upon your brand and your audience) it might be better to have slightly-less-beautiful text read than no text at all. And with the introduction of IE7, which renders HTML text in a more appealing (read: aliased) way than it's predecessors, combined with the upsurge in Mac use, HTML text is looking better and better. Plus, as more and more B2B and B2C marketers make the switch, our eyes will adjust, and what once looked ugly might look just lovely.

Posted by lfharmon at 08:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am all for innovation, but this is ridiculous. To start, Neiman Marcus appears to be exceedingly proud of the "unfolding magic" which is possibly the crappiest video ever made. Come on! What the heck is that!?

And then there's Crate & Barrel. They're so excited about their first TV commercial that they sent an ad about an ad. Wow! A TV ad? Amazing!

Finally, we've got Bergdorf Goodman selling CDs. Maybe I just don't grasp their greater "live-in-our-brand-bubble" vision, but how does a Bergdorf Goodman CD collection make any sense? And who buys CDs anymore anyway?


From: Neiman Marcus
Subject Line: The Christmas Book is here!
Date: Tuesday, October 3, 2006

From: Crate and Barrel
Subject Line: Preview our new TV ad
Date: Thursday, October 5, 2006

From: Bergdorf Goodman
Subject Line: Volume: Preview & own the music of Bergdorf Goodman
Date: Friday, October 27, 2006

Posted by lfharmon at 07:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From: FreePeople.com
Subject Line: Free People Picture Show
Date: Friday, August 4, 2006

After testing the RSS waters, I applaud Free People for jumping into yet another "hot" technology: video. While the Free People Picture Show video itself is basically totally boring, featuring some video footage from what appears to be their catalog shoot, as well as still photographs made to look like video by applying noise and shaky movement, I appreciate the effort and bravery involved in trying something new.

Posted by lfharmon at 06:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From: Hollister
Subject Line: Take a Trip with Hollister - Downtown to Surftown
Date: Thursday, July 20 2006

Regardless of my feelings about Hollister and parent brand Abercrombie & Fitch - namely that they use sex inappropropriately to market to children - I have to applaud their brilliant branding efforts. I do not frequent their website much less their stores, but even through my limited contact with the brand - via email - I have developed a very strong sense of the Hollister "imaginaire." Hollister is not just a clothing retailer. It's a place, a texture, a way of life, a state of mind - an imaginary west coast refuge of laid-back beauty. It's in the words, the font faces, the imagery. It's an incredibly well-constructed illusion that promises teen paradise is as close as slipping on a "Mountain Road Beach Henley".

As the subject line reads: "Take a Trip with Hollister - Downtown to Surftown". Click here to see a technically impressive execution of this seductive imaginary world.

Posted by lfharmon at 06:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

From: The Land of Nod
Subject Line: Free Justin Roberts Music!
Date: Tuesday, July 11, 2006

There is much ado in the marketing world as advertisers navigate the dizzying maze of new media channels. Here, The Land of Nod experiments with Podcasting, which, like Free People's RSS Feed, is a novel foray into these unchartered lands. While I fail to draw a clear connection between furniture and music, I applaud Land of Nod's effort and bravery. Keep innovating!

Posted by lfharmon at 08:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From: FreePeople.com
Subject Line: Get the RSS on What's New with Free People
Date: Thursday, June 22, 2006

Free People is the first specialty retailer I've seen leverage RSS. While I know approximately nothing about the efficacy of this technology, I'm interested in how it may or may not change online retailing. The traditional website has totally changed the way we shop, delivering product into our homes and sparing us a trip to an actual retail location. With the RSS Feed, we don't even have to visit a website anymore! Product is offered at a personal virtual location even more convenient to us.

I'm a sort of creeped out by the "Minority Report-ness" of it all, but am curious to see if it catches on, and what that means for traditional websites and email marketing. RSS experts, please, offer us your wisdom and post a comment!

Posted by lfharmon at 06:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)