negative

Microsoft offers a spiffy new service called Microsoft Office Outlook Live and what do people do ... complain of course.

Would you ever propose a JV to a potential partner that insults his intelligence, aims to squeeze the potential in his lists brutally and later on leaving him with a corrupted list?

It's a fact of life - if you want to succeed in business, you need to know how to interact and communicate effectively with your employees, business partners, vendors, prospects, and customers. As a small business owner, this might involve rapid shifting from one type of language to another. For example, how you'd explain your expectations to your employees might be different than how you'd convey these to your business partner or potential client.

As most of my business is found through referrals, I received a call from a company that was referred to me by someone at the college where I teach marketing management. They were looking specifically for help in the area of ecommerce (i.e., SQL database programming, shopping cart software, and notably merchant account set-up, which is in my estimation a more daunting task here in Canada when compared to the American banking system).

There are almost as many direct response marketers against using negative appeals and copy as there are against using humor. It wasn't always that way. In the 70s and 80s, you'd see a pretty fair number of headlines/envelope teasers/Johnson boxes with lines like:

Now hear this: Studies at Harvard and Stanford reveal that 85% of the reason a person gets a job and gets ahead in that job is because of his or her attitude. Only 15% of the time does it have anything to do with technical or specific skills!