Phishing for big brands, VCs, Big Media & Words of Wisdom from an Ad legend

Venture capitalists switch to startups - notable as some VCs thought running a company was easy.

Big Media YouTube Competitor? Sorry, Quincy Smith is Not a Moron -From Henry Blodget's Internet Outsider blog. Always an interesting read.

Phishers Switch Brand Bait to Coke and McDonald's - the biggest takeaway is buried in the bottom: Few marketers beyond eBay and PayPal have developed strategies to prevent phishing, but that may have to change. "Perhaps consumer brand companies will need to follow in their footsteps in educating customers," Mr. Roberts said, adding: "It probably is going to be just a necessary part of connecting with their customers digitally."

Time to wake up and proactively establish some policies and contingency plans. Incidentally, we have been advising some big brands on this for years.

After 36 Years at Grey, Time for Life No. 2
Some great words of wisdom Edward H. Meyer...

"I built my career and the agency on the belief clients come first, and the job of the guy at the head of the agency is to know their needs. Not what they like for dinner, but their advertising needs, better than anyone at the agency."

"I built auxiliary services here like direct marketing not because I’m a genius, but because I got an early alert; I heard my clients talking about them. If I waited for the guy or gal running the account to get that information to me, it’d be a year later."

Finally, an interesting take on the year that was: 2006, Brought to You by You

Bonus Weekly Roundup - More Spam laws, recruiting and subject line advice

CAN SPAM - Part Deux? According to MediaPost, there are some potentially huge email related laws on the horizon, notably on the state level that would make email an "opt-in" rather than "opt-out" platform.

New York Times reports Spam Doubles, Finding New Ways to Deliver Itself -"Spam 2.0" means 9 out of 10 emails are junk. Not good.

Recruiting In The E-mail Marketing World - an important part of the email long term success equation, often forgotten.

Subject Line Magic Number
Bill Nussey, in his blog, cites a new report that the maximum number of characters in a subject line should be 49.

Second Mover Magic
A great blog post on Yahoo dispels first-mover myth. This quote from Rich Skrenta, CEO of Topix.net sums it up nicely: "The second mouse gets the cheese while the first mouse gets trampled on."

Weekly Interactive Roundup - Search Stats, Big Monday, Email Myths and Misery

Search Marketing 2006: Facts & Figures - Highlights MarketingSherpa's annual "Benchmark Guide." Consider it Cliff Notes to the real thing.

Cyber Monday generates $608 million in online sales: comScore - Hype or not, the numbers are not too shabby.

Don't Believe Everything You Hear - Interesting piece for several reasons including mentioning AIMA, Atlanta's Interactive Marketing Association (of which I am a board member) and AIMA"s former President, Teresa Caro, now senior manager of strategy at Avenue A Razorfish.

Cringe! Worst emails ever