The Internet Marketing world lost one of its pioneering superstars this weekend, as Corey Rudl died in a car accident.

The LA Times reported the news, http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-speedway3jun03,1,3324057.story?ctrack=1&cset=true. But they didn’t give Corey his proper credit. They said he “worked in Internet marketing.”

That’s like saying Colonel Sanders worked in the chicken industry.

Corey introduced many marketing techniques that are taken for granted today. He always pushed the envelop for finding new and better ways to use this new medium. He made millions for himself and his followers did quite well as well.

I met Corey when we both served on the advisory board of a high tech start-up in Vancouver. He was a very nice person and extremely creative and helpful. He never put on airs or acted differently just because he was worth millions.

Corey was the real deal.

You might wonder what a cruise ship has to do with marketing — and what could that possibly mean for you?

The answer is: everything.

I recently returned from a wonderful cruise along the Alaskan coastline aboard the Coral Princess. You’d think that the travel company would end its marketing with the sale of the cruise tickets, but you’d be wrong.

There are many lessons to be learned here and I’ll probably break this story up into several bite-sized pieces for you so you can savor each morsel and determine how it might fit into your marketing strategy.

The lessons will be worthwhile to anyone who operates a seminar, convention, tour, and dozens of scenarios I can’t imagine but all have one thing in common: the people are physically in an environment where you control just about everything. There probably are lessons here as well for many marketers in a variety of situations.

Let’s start.

I heard that the cruise industry expects people to spend $200 per person per day extra, above and beyond the cost of the cruise tickets.

They do this by selling tours of land excursions. They have stores selling clothes, jewelry, watches and duty-free liquor (not to be drunk aboard the ship, which could interfere with their own bar sales), even tuxedo shirts and a book with the chef’s favorite dishes. And don’t forget the art auction! That’s worth a blog entry in itself!

Dan’s Chipping Point #1: The sale is only the beginning of a relationship. What else can you sell your customers?

Authors, speakers and coaches have built empires based on products such as books, CDs, group and personal coaching sessions, phone seminars, in-person seminars, boot camps and on and on. You’ve heard the maxim, “it is easier to sell to an existing customer than to find a new customer.” Now you know why.

Tomorrow, we’ll see what you must do before the event to ensure sales happen at the event.

In a crisis situation is there a more lame answer to a reporter than “no comment?”

That answer implies guilt.

So does not answering at all.

Then there’s the ever present “the person did not return our phone calls.” That’s seen as another admission of guilt (even if the desperado councilman was attending his kid’s soccer game).

So what should you do if you are fed a loaded question that you don’t want to answer but don’t want to be seen as uncooperative?

The answer comes from today’s Star Tribune newspaper of Minneapolis (June 2, 2005). Read on and you’ll learn how to say something while not saying anything at all!

Here’s the story. Two restaurants are closing in the City Center. The reporter asked for the reason from the spokesperson for one restaurant and she said, “It was a business decision.’ The intrepid reporter asked the spokesperson for the second restaurant and she must have been reading from the same playbook because she said, “Bottom line, it was a business decision.”

This tactic appears to be very effective since the reporter either didn’t ask a follow up question, or he was not given any more info to work with.

One might think that he would have found employees who were laid off to spill the beans to get the real story. Heck, if two restaurants in a mall died on the same week, that cries out for a trend story on the viability of the mall and its affect on downtown life.

Or the reporter could have just said to himself, “I have only 4 column inches to work with, and I’ve filled it, so I’m done.

I guess he won’t win the Pulitzer Prize, but the PR people should have earned kudos from their bosses for letting the story die a painless death.

Lesson #1: Never underestimate the laziness of a reporter or the frazzled-ness of an editor under deadline. If it fits, it flies.

Lesson #2: The tactic is clear for any person in a relatively tough interview and crisis communications managers: Any answer is an answer, even an answer that doesn’t add any details. You appear to be cooperative and the story dies. You don’t have to show your dirty laundry.

What’s the best non-answer you’ve heard? Post them here — and keep a list in case you are facing the smoking gun.