Q&As

USA Network and Sonic Drive-In have teamed up for a co-branded marketing partnership for Nashville Star, which includes TV spots and an in-store sweeps.

New Yorker writer Roger Angell steadfastly refuses to resume his once-annual tradition of encapsulating the just-ended year into a series of verses, and readers are poorer for it.

With a tip of the Loose Cannon derby in his direction, I offer what might have been

Not too long ago I spent a day teaching a group of marketing professionals about loyalty marketing. Fun it was not.

Dear 1940 Graduate:

Your class graduated right into the middle of the greatest world crisis in five generations!

Your are taking your first jobs just when Business is caught in the cross-currents of a war-time boom. You are casting your first ballots

Collette Vacations had a powerful marketing tool at its fingertips: A database of customer satisfaction survey responses, which also held information

AAA Insider, one of AAA Southern New England’s newest member programs, is also one of its most effective. A year in, free-to-paid memberships are converting at nearly 95%, compared with the club’s general renewal rate of around 89%.

Upscale health food chain Wild Oats is using dynamic content in its national e-mail newsletter to boost attendance at events in local stores, and the program reportedly is working like gangbusters.

Maura Regan not only knows how to sell Sesame Street, she knows how not to sell it. Regan, Sesame Workshop’s vice president and general manager of global

American Express may be doing a little more entertaining this year. The firm will decide by March whether to expand a pilot program to put upscale lounges

RSS may stand for Really Simple Syndication (among other less-descriptive things), but there’s nothing simple about selling the automated Web feed processes