In response to the recent audit of First-Class, two-way DVD return mail pieces by the USPS Office of the Inspector General, the author of the blog “Hacking Netflix” has posted a video on You Tube comparing and contrasting Netflix and Blockbuster’s envelopes. The less than 2 minute video, which is entitled “A Tale of Two Envelopes,” had 1,596 views as of today.

It just occurred to me that a radical shift in the music retail model has deprived me of one of the biggest holiday thrills I used to experience: The anticipation of who would be the Christmas number one in the charts.

Yes, I’m showing my age; I’m from an era when people bought singles, on vinyl, for about 75p in my hometown, London. This story from the BBC makes a decent attempt at stirring up a bit of excitement, but much of that was caused by last week’s controversial censoring of a word in the Pogues’ classic Fairytale of New York on BBC radio stations and the subsequent U-turn on that decision).

Most music charts now factor in downloads – it’d be daft not to. How many people now actually go to a record shop (do they even still exist?) clutching a greasy bill in excitement to buy the long-awaited tune from their latest passion? And the download model for music works well in that it makes purchase so much easier. But because of that, songs are less likely to stay at number one for more than a week; in fact, the concept of being at number one is so outdated and irrelevant in today’s multichannel music world that I find it hard to believe many music fans will even know what’s top of the pops during any given week.

Complex algorithms on download sites recommending new bands to people who’ve just downloaded a song undoubtedly expand musical tastes; it’s worked for me in the past. The thrill of discovering new sounds is still there, and social networking has brought the excitement (and bragging about early discoveries) into a new sphere which is arguably larger than the traditional groups of friends in “real life.” And the record companies are having to step up their game to prove their value and pick the right pricing model (or the bands will do it for them, such as Radiohead did).

But just for this day, five days before Christmas, just let me mourn for a moment the fact that I won’t wake up on Sunday, atwitter with excitement as to who will be number one. I probably wouldn’t have heard of the song anyway.

Within the last week my inbox has been inundated with “popular” search lists from various sources. While some have peaked my interest, others just left me confused (did “snowman” really get more hits than “Santa”?).

That said, Yahoo! Telemundo released its top searches of 2007 this week. Not surprisingly, rumors of Fidel Castro’s death prompted searches for “Cuba,” which was this year’s most popular news search topic, according to the site. Other popular news searches on Yahoo! Telemundo included Cecilia Bolocco, the former Miss Universe, as well as Hurricanes Dean and Felix. Immigration reform was another hot topic. Spiderman 3 was the most searched movie of 2007, followed by the Hollywood blockbusters Transformers, Harry Potter and Los Simpson. Shakira was the most searched woman and musician of 2007, while Don Omar and Fidel Castro were the most searched men of the year. The top sports searches included Major League Baseball, Copa America, Real Madrid and the World Wrestling Entertainment. Barbie was the top search favorite for kids, followed by Disney, Naruto and Pokemon.

As someone who is still scrambling to finish her holiday shopping and will be pleased to manage a New Years day deadline for dropping greeting cards in the mail, Restaurant.com’s most recent push caught my eye. In an event they are calling “National Freedom from Shipping Week” the online coupon provider has given me and my fellow procrastinators one more tool in our gift-giving arsenal. Beginning tomorrow and running until Dec. 25, the site is reminding consumers that its variety of gift certificates from more than 8,500 restaurants nationwide requires only a printer or can be passed along by e-mail directly to the recipient.  This “no shipping necessary” gift trumps all other widely publicized last-minute holiday shipping dates. This campaign, which merely provides new context for Resturant.com’s basic offering, strikes me as marketing at its finest: giving a specific target audience (i.e. gift-givers with no time and money to spend) a reason to visit the site.

 - Cara Wood 

As the Super Bowl looms, the subject of ad spend is never far behind. As someone who has spent many years writing about the non-advertising marketing channels, my conversations are less “wow – did you see that ad?” and more “what would you do with the money that a 60-second spot costs?”

There’s no denying that the value of the spot goes far beyond the 60 seconds if the ad is creatively stunning, or controversial, or generates particularly good leads (and I intend to study the ad breaks on February 3 to see how many spots contain a direct response element). But a direct marketing executive will likely boast they can achieve far greater returns, and a longer-term customer relationship, with their own toolkit, if given just a fraction of the spend.

This train of thought started chugging with the news that NBC Universal was refunding some advertisers’ money for primetime rating shortfalls, due in part to the writers’ strike and Nielsen’s new ratings system. NBCU says it’s only a small portion, but for many marketers, it’s unusual and unexpected to suddenly have a chunk of budget unspoken for in the last two to three weeks of the financial year.

As brand marketers look toward an uncertain future of landing into commercial breaks with a splat, surrounded by endless reality programming, they must surely be looking elsewhere. This is when they can start to get really creative. So people are watching more TV online? Don’t just try to shoehorn the TV-ad-break model onto the Internet. Do something different with the format and the type of audience engagement you get online. One-off events like NBC’s giveback present a license to do something that hasn’t been done before. Don’t just spend it on buying alternative media for an existing ad.

How would you spend the $2.6 million-odd that a 60-second Super Bowl spot costs for your brand?

As e-mail delivery has become more about a good reputation than about subject lines in the past couple of years, Habeas has launched ReputationWiki.org, as a resource for on reputation services.

The ReputationWiki.org is “intended to be a primary resource for marketing, sales and brand professionals to expand their knowledge, contribute to relevant topics and interact with their peers on issues that are important to them.”

I didn’t know it was a problem until I read about it, and all of a sudden, I was mad. Facebook was forcing me to describe my status in terms of “Elly is…” and sometimes, that just doesn’t work. Required to describe my pithy thoughts in circumlocutory ways, I was happy to see Facebook groups dedicated to overturning this grammatical stranglehold.

And suddenly, the problem went away. Almost as quietly as the Beacon widget came for many unsuspecting users, the word “is” suddenly appeared in the highlighted text box when I clicked to change my status. Was it due to pressure from the advocacy groups? Or did Mark Zuckerberg get frustrated by his own site’s limitations? Who can say. All I know is, I naturally can’t think of a single status update that I want to post that doesn’t start with “Elly is” all of a sudden.

Here’s a marketer that’s taking the next step in seeing just how environmentally friendly a catalog can be. Selecta First Class, which sells rooted and unrooted cuttings to growers in the US and Canada via a catalog and online, recently announced that the printing of its 2008 Poinsettia Catalog is supporting wind power as part of a certified renewable energy initiative. The California-based printing company Selecta is working with is purchasing 1,200 Megawatt-hours of renewable certificates each year to offset 100% of the electricity used at its offices and printing warehouse, Selecta marketing manager Sabina Reiner tells “Greenhouse Grower.”

The poinsettia catalog is also the first Selecta catalog to be printed on recycled paper with soy-based ink, thereby reducing production costs by 10% through the elimination of high-gloss paper and UV coating.

–Chantal Todé

DM News wants you - the industry expert - to make a case for your views on DM issues. We are looking for experienced executives to choose a side and defend their position for upcoming Gloves Off debates.Where do you stand on:

Long copy vs. Short copy on traditional mailers?

In-house vs. Outsource teleservices staffing?

Single-brand loyalty vs. Choose-your-own reward programs?

Better yet, what’s the latest issue that’s getting talked about around the coffee pot in your office? Do you have a long-standing difference of opinion with a colleague or co-worker.Send me a note at cara.wood@dmnews.com if you’ve got a topic of contention, name your contender and ’slug it out’ on our pages.

–Posted by Cara Wood

McDonald’s is under fire for sponsoring a program in which an ad for the fast-food chain was printed on report card envelopes that went home with 27,000 elementary school students in Seminole County, FL, promising a free Happy Meal if the student met certain academic, behavioral or attendance benchmarks.

At issue is the appropriateness of a school selling report card space, whether this violates a McDonald’s pledge to not market unhealthy food to kids under age 12 and why no one seemed to notice that Pizza Hut had been sponsoring a similar program for about 10 years previous.

While I see the moral dilemmas inherent in including branding on materials that kids so young (age five to 11) will be exposed to, the sponsorship meant that McDonald’s paid out the $17,000 cost of printing the report cards and envelopes. This $17,000 — though a modest sum — can be used to buy any amount of other materials that the students can use year-round or into next year. An entire computer lab could be had for that cost.

Parents are up in arms, alleging that the program contradicts their attempts to keep their children eating healthy. The Orlando Sentinel printed that a parent “resented ‘being the bad guy’ who had to deny her daughter the meal.” But, telling your child “no” is part of being a parent. If the child had got wind of the program through television or a bus ad, she still would’ve been upset at the parents’ denial.

However, does this violate the agreement that McDonald’s and other manufacturers announced last month? At first glance, it would appear so: The New York Times said that “companies agreed not to advertise food or beverages in elementary schools” when they signed on to what is called the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative. Though, it should be noted that this is a regional campaign and not a national one — it’s likely it was set in place before the corporate announcement on November 15 of the Initiative.

Perhaps the corporate bosses should’ve checked with their franchises to make sure they weren’t doing anything in violation of the letter of the agreement and extinguished it. $17,000 is nothing to the multibillion dollar fast-food giant, which has absorbed plenty of PR hits in the past few years, to avoid another.

Unfortunately $17,000, as noted above, is a tidy sum for American public school districts, who would be hard-pressed to give up a simple insert program that paid off that amount. Branding and advertising in schools will continue to be a hotly debated topic, as long as corporations continue to be flush with cash while schools are stretched thin.

—Nathan Golia