Low Clouds, and the Last Word on Brookstone/Abacus

Fall is an unusual time in the Pacific Northwest. It is a 2-3 week stretch between the dry season (July - September) and the rainy season (November - March). Today, the clouds were so low that they engulfed the foothills. You could literally watch a cloud envelop your home. In just a few weeks, we enter windstorm and heavy rain season. From there, we eagerly await the drizzle of January, February and March.

A few tidbits for you:

• Arthur Middleton Hughes, who was featured here last week, talks about nine database marketing sins.

• The 1to1 blog has a wrap-up of comments from the DMA conference.

• Advertising Age ranks the top 200 "brands" based on how much the brand spends on advertising. I wonder what the list would look like if they ranked "brands" on the basis of return on investment?

• For those of you who like LTV formulas, Avinash Kaushik has one for you.

• Gerry McGovern writes about award winning websites and their practicality / functionality.

A final note on the Brookstone / Abacus commentary of the past two days. Most of the feedback has been negative, especially negative from folks working in the B2B world. Adelino de Almeida at the Profitable Marketing blog wrote an insightful post.

What I learned from your comments and emails is that this is a really exciting time to be on the B2B side of Database Marketing. There's a lot more pressure on the B2C side of the Database Marketing equation, as businesses seek to become more "efficient" with advertising and expense management.