I love going grocery shopping on Fridays. That’s the day my local Wegmans sets up half a dozen “sampling stations” throughout the store. As you shop, you can nibble on tiny bites of aged pecorino… soy chips… dry salami… pasta… protein bars… and wash it down with a thimble-sized cup of green tea… pomegranate juice… or lemonade.

No matter what product you’re marketing, keep this in mind. As Jessica says, “Make sure you market for the brand and not just the product.”

Because of that conversation I had with Michael, a new column has been born. Each week, I will write you a letter giving you an inside look at something that has happened in our business that made a difference to how we run ETR. You, in turn, can take that experience and apply it to your own business.

When you have a limited budget, one of the best resources you have for promoting an event is the people who’ll be participating in it. And one way to get those people really pumped to help out is to appeal to their egos.

In 1982, members of the pop band Tommy Tutone wrote “867-5309/Jenny,” a song about a guy desperately trying to get in touch with a girl named, of course, Jenny. It was at the top of the music charts for 40 weeks and made the band members rich and famous. At least for a while.

“Did you know that graphic design used to get short shrift in the world of marketing?” Michael went on. “For the longest time, direct marketers believed that all that mattered was the copy. But it’s been proven that images have a potentially huge impact on revenues. In fact, a colleague of mine was able to double his response rates in the mail just with good graphic design.”