Almost 60 percent of promotion agency professionals received no salary increase in 2001.

That fact is hardly a surprise, considering that the recession slammed into the marketing world like a sledgehammer. In terms of corporate cost-cutting, marketing budgets were like the Marines — first ones off the boat, and the department most likely to suffer heavy casualties.

To purchase article, or full research report, visit The Marketer’s Research Store” from Primedia Business Magazines and Media.

Almost 60 percent of promotion agency professionals received no salary increase in 2001.

That fact is hardly a surprise, considering that the recession slammed into the marketing world like a sledgehammer. In terms of corporate cost-cutting, marketing budgets were like the Marines — first ones off the boat, and the department most likely to suffer heavy casualties.

To purchase article, or entire research report, visit The Marketer’s Research Store from Primedia Business Magazines & Media.

They may reside in the virtual world, but dot-coms are spending real money to attract flesh-and-blood patrons.

With costs often running into the seven figures, mobile marketing is a pricey way for a young company to advertise (though not as costly as, say, a $2 million ad during the Super Bowl). But fledgling Internet-based businesses are finding that a well-conceived road show is an effective way to build brand awareness – and can pay off in double-digit traffic gains online.

“Dot-coms are not requesting our services as fast as we would have thought. But we’ve received a lot of RFPs,” says Joel Benson, principal at EventNet USA, Ft. Lauderdale, FL. “Many [dot-coms] are scrambling. They’re looking for non-traditional approaches.”

Homepoint.com, a Greenville, SC-based company that sells furniture online to retailers and consumers (although businesses account for 85 percent of revenues), broke through the virtual clutter and pulled in new visitors last year with a mobile event colloquially called the “Bunker Bob Tour.”

Eighteen-month-old Homepoint.com recently raised $55 million to add to the $16.5 million in start-up funding it received, according to ceo Mike West. (A chunk of change like that can certainly make marketing plans a little more “flexible” than those of the average start-up.)

The Bunker Bob tour was conceived when Maine-based journalist Greg Arata approached homepoint.com last year about sponsoring him on a national tour with a Millennium theme. Working with p.r. firm Cooper Katz in New York City, the company hatched a plan to send the footloose scribe on a hunt for the best city in which to “bunker down” and prepare for the potential Y2K chaos.

“Bob” was armed with a 52-foot, see-through Plexiglas trailer containing a two-bedroom home and a liberal display of homepoint.com furniture. “We positioned him as the millennial pioneer with the best picture window in America,” says Cooper Katz principal Andy Cooper.

Managed by EventNet USA, the tour traveled to 40 cities from Sept. 9 through Jan. 1. Arata provided dispatches to a dedicated Web site (bunkerbob.com, accessible through homepoint.com) where visitors could view pictures of his local adventures.

An advance team provided local media with video footage, and 149 TV stations picked it up. The tour attracted national programs, too, with Fox’s Good Day New York broadcasting two hours from Bob’s lair and the syndicated radio network Talk America running weekly updates and airing its New Year’s Eve show live from the bunker in New Orleans.

“We received great media coverage. It was high risk, but high return,” says West, whose company spent $500,000 to build the trailer and another $1 million running the tour. But the costs were worth it: 14 percent of the visitors to homepoint.com last year said they learned about the site via Bunker Bob, West says.