AMERICANS hold the notion that the United States is a nation of great marketers.
The rest of the world, of course, thinks this is hilarious.
So many great marketing ideas that may be outrageously successful in, say, Ohio, tend to translate into other cultures as just plain outrageous, or simply very, very, funny.
Still, when it comes to accelerating the speed with which money spins around their own economy, Americans have come up with some stellar ideas.
Take the humble 800 telephone numbers that automatically reverse the call charge. Here is a telecommunications service that startled everyone.
When combined with the not-so-humble credit card, the humble 800-number immediately spawned a telemarketing industry of gigantic proportions.
The funniest television commercial I have ever seen was, naturally enough, in the US, and was promoting the services of what looked like a particularly aggressive firm of litigation lawyers in California.
