Jane Angelich carried the guilt around for more than four decades. Years ago, she had been cruel to someone and had never acknowledged her actions. Often, she thought of the person she had hurt and wondered: Had he ever forgiven her?

Finally, she decided she could carry her burden no longer. So last winter she went online and looked up the person she had mistreated. Then she apologized for telling him to “drop dead” when he called her house back in 1961.

They were both 10 years old at the time.

“When something is nagging at you for 48 years, you need to clear it up,” says Ms. Angelich, 58 years old, a pet-products company chief executive in Novato, Calif. “That was the meanest thing I ever did to anyone.”

Jane Angelich, explained in her email to him that she hung up on him because she didn’t know how to talk to a boy at the time and was embarrassed that her mother was listening. He replied to her apology, she says, and said he did not remember the incident. “It was good to know, though, that luckily he wasn’t scarred for life,” she says.

Along with helping people reconnect with old flames, childhood friends and even long-lost relatives, the Internet is giving rise to a newer phenomenon: the decades-late apology. The Web allows us to converse by email, a form of communication that often makes us braver and more impulsive—and occasionally even more thoughtful—about what we say. There are even Web sites, such as ThePublicApology.com and PerfectApology.com, dedicated to facilitating our quest for absolution.

All this raises the question: Just because there is someone from our past we could apologize to, should we? After all, how effective is an act of contrition—whether proffered over the Web or otherwise—that comes many, many years late?

Consider my friend, who recently received a lengthy email from a guy she dated in college, apologizing for the way he treated her at a bar one night in 1987. He said he had always regretted his behavior. She says she had no idea what he was talking about.

Of course, some apologies—for things like theft or backstabbing a colleague—are serious and really should be made. But we live in a self-help culture, where therapists, 12-step program guides and talk-show hosts are forever reminding us that forgiveness and gratitude are the way to happiness (and sobriety). Many times, a long-overdue apology, much like a confession, does more for the person offering it up than it does for the one receiving it.

When an old high-school rival of Kathy Somes contacted her through Classmates.com last March, Ms. Somes, 46, apologized for her behavior years ago, which included putting gum in the girl’s hair, shooting her with a rubber-pellet gun and blowing a trumpet into her ear during band practice.

“I didn’t really care if she accepted my apology or not,” says Ms. Somes, an investment analyst in Kirtland, Ohio. “I felt better.” (And, she says, her classmate did accept her apology.)

So what do you do if you are overcome with the urge to apologize for something you did ages ago? Here are some tips:

• Make sure you are apologizing for the sake of the other person and not yourself. (A woman I interviewed who apologized to her sister—a year later—for mentioning her weight gain says her sister got upset all over again and accused her of “reminding her that she was fat.”) If your motives are selfish, don’t bother saying you are sorry.

• Resist sending an apology via a social-networking Web site. It’s too flip. Use the phone. Or at least write an email, which demonstrates a little more thoughtfulness.

• Ask how your actions affected the other person. “The best gift you can offer is the willingness to finally hear exactly what the other person felt like as a result of your actions,” says Karen Gail Lewis, a marriage and family therapist in Cincinnati.

• Be sincere. Explain why you did what you did, and why you are apologizing now.

• And—at the risk of sounding like your mother—try to apologize in a timelier manner next time. My 21-month-old nephew Zach did it last weekend, after throwing one of his toys at me. If he can do it, you can too.

Take One, if you please.

Tis the season of shopping.

When merchandise seems to sell itself, or used to. Ah the good old days. There is no point reminiscing on days of yore. There is no time like the present to put yourself out there and reach out and touch prospective clients or customers. The following has a few uplifting stories and some pointers on getting your service, message, or merchandise out there in ways that are hard to refuse.

Market With Meaning
Don’t offer your customers products–offer them solutions, connections and satisfaction.

Entrepreneur.com
 Friday,  November 6, 2009 12:00 AM

When Rob Kaufelt bought Murrays Cheese in 1991, the Greenwich Village cheese shop was a mom-and-pop hole-in-the-wall known mostly to the locals. Today, Murrays Cheese is a thriving emporium that not only sells gourmet cheeses and meats but offers everything from hands-on classes and online tutorials to catering, a cheese cave and freshly made grilled cheese sandwiches. With eye-popping sales of $2,500 per square foot, Murrays has grown by 15 percent to 20 percent a year at its Bleecker Street store, added two locations in New York’s bustling Grand Central Terminal and just inked a deal with a national chain to open mini-stores in supermarkets across the country. The store was named New York’s Best Cheese Shop by The Village Voice. It has been featured on MSN Money and Today, as well as in The New York Times and Martha Stewart Living. So just how much did it cost Kaufelt to turn his mom-and-pop cheese shop into a national brand?

“Our advertising budget has been zero point zero zero since the day I bought the company,” says Kaufelt, who grew up in his family’s supermarket business in New Jersey. “Its like my grandfather always said, ‘Here,taste!’”

Companies of all kinds–from retailers to restaurants–are discovering that it’s no longer enough to blast out marketing pitches touting the virtues of your company’s products and services. You need to create a marketing campaign that entertains, educates and adds value to your customers’ lives. Whether that means doling out mouthwatering samples from behind the counter, creating interactive games to play on the web or offering online courses that teach people how to make their own pasta, today’s marketers need to deliver more than slick sales pitches and rock-bottom prices–or risk getting left in the dust.

“Do you know what makes people say ‘wow’?” asks marketing guru Seth Godin, author of Purple Cow, the best-selling book about how companies can transform themselves by becoming remarkable.”Connection, meaning, humanity, things that change them in some way. No one is impressed by your features or even your price. What we talk about is art, generosity, and products and services that make a difference.”

Sounds like a pretty tall order–especially for a startup or small business. Funny videos and interactive games may be great marketing tools for Fortune 1000 companies with seven-figure advertising budgets, but how can SMB owners create the same kind of impact as Nike and Burger King?

“Actually, one of the greatest viral videos of all time was created by a small business,” says Bob Gilbreath, author of The Next Evolution in Marketing: Connect with Your Customers by Marketing With Meaning and Chief Marketing Strategist at Bridge Worldwide, one of the nation’s largest digital advertising agencies and part of WPP. According to Gilbreath, Blendtec was a little-known, 186-employee player in the high-end home blender category until its new marketing director, George Wright, walked past the company lab and saw piles of sawdust on the floor. Once Wright discovered that the R&D manager regularly tested blenders with lumber, he decided to share his discovery with the world. The first of what would become a series of videos called Will it Blend? was shot and posted on YouTube for $50. “That first video received 6 million views in its first week,” Gilbreath says, “and Blendtec went on to see sales rise 43 percent over the next year.” How can your business achieve similar results? In his book, Gilbreath proposes a Hierarchy of Meaningful Marketing that consists of the following three levels (loosely based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs):

Solution marketing: Free offers, cash savings and loyalty rewards that offer customers real solutions to their problems. “A free sample is a no-cost way for customers to experience your product or service,” Gilbreath says. “‘Free’ tends to make people feel compelled to like your product, and usually the cost is very low.

“Connection marketing: Online videos, interactive games and social networking that connect customers with the brand. “Entrepreneurs already know their customers well and have a right to earn a place on their ‘friend’ lists,” Gilbreath says. Examples: One deli announces the daily specials to office workers at 11 a.m. when they are beginning to think about where to go, while a pet boarding service uses Facebook to share updates and pictures with pet owners while they are away.

Achievement marketing: Online courses, free seminars and cause-related marketing that let customers actualize their potential as human beings. “When done in a way that clearly links to your business and is something your customers care about, cause marketing can significantly drive your sales,” Gilbreath says. “For example, Amy Adam, a real estate agent in Cincinnati, donates a percentage of her house closing fees to the charity of her customers’ choice.” Much of her new business is attributable to her campaign. Besides strong post-sale satisfaction levels, “She’s [gotten] specific comments from customers who like the idea and have never heard of something like it before,” he says.

What’s the Return on Investment (ROI) for marketing with meaning? Ask Tara-Nicholle Nelson, an Oakland, Calif., real estate broker and founder and Chief Visionary of {RE}Think Real Estate. Nelson projects the $75,000 she invested in positioning herself as an expert–empowering women to buy their own homes–to yield $1 million in brokerage commissions, speaking engagements, content licensing deals and other revenue by 2010. Her marketing campaign included a targeted book, website and PR efforts coordinated to position Nelson as the Dear Abby of women-owned real estate–helping female homebuyers overcome their fears and find solutions to their real estate problems. “I can track about $250,000 in revenues directly back to the book and the original campaign,” Nelson says. “The fact that no commission or compensation [is] riding on my answer is a major credibility point.”

Business to Business marketers can use marketing with meaning to jumpstart their sales efforts, too. Elyissia Wassung, CEO of 2 Chicks With Chocolate in Matawan, N.J., has made sampling the centerpiece of her sales pitch to corporate clients. By letting customers taste, “they get a clearer understanding of the actual product itself,” Wassung says. “Textures, flavors, the experience of it dissolving in their mouths–it changes their participation level completely. Suddenly, they’re personally involved and asking questions whereas before it was more of a polite response.” That’s why, when it comes to marketing to today’s customers, its not enough to win a share of their wallet. You’ve got to win their hearts, minds and, sometimes, their taste buds, too.

Says Kaufelt of Murrays Cheese: “When you walk into our store, we want you to walk out with an experience whether you buy something or not.”