More than 80 percent of Pitney Bowes customers are won via direct response marketing, according to company official Neil Metviner.

Seaport Village, a San Diego retail hub, saw a 26 percent rise in traffic to its Web site right after city officials launched a holiday direct mail campaign steering visitors to the shopping center.

By: Steve Cuno

Branding has become the hot marketing topic of the new millennium. Advertising agencies have taken to calling themselves “branding agencies.” New books and magazines about branding sprout daily. Marketing talk everywhere centers on the brand.

Yet amid the babble, there’s little agreement about what constitutes a good brand. …

Only about 49 percent of all companies with revenues over $500 million reported using formal marketing performance scorecards, according to a 2005 report by the CMO Council.

CMO tenure averages about 26.8 months, says a 2007 study by executive search firm Spencer Stuart.

By: Eddie B. Allen Jr.

Three years ago, they began returning home from far-flung war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, bodies maimed, spirits as stout as ever.

And the veterans who would eventually found the Wounded Warrior Project in Virginia also returned home ready to take up a new struggle, …