11 June 2008

Posted at 10:58h in advertising, billboard, times square by

1 Times Square is a very profitable building. In an block made famous for its advertising, this address is the number one player. It costs roughly US$300,000 a month to have your sign on this building. In 2000, it was estimated the owner brought in monthly checks of up to US$250,000,000. The most interesting thing about this building? It's empty and the insides are completely gutted. It brings in more money through advertising than it would having to deal with pesky tenants. That is a ridiculous amount of money. I would love to see the ROI for brands that use these electronic billboards....

09 June 2008

Posted at 01:23h in al gore, australia, climate crisis, design, entertainment, itunes, technology, ted by

You'd be a clown if you weren't subscribed to TED presentations in iTunes. Not only are there some fantastic talks on marketing but nearly every single presentation offers something unique. For anyone ever doing a presentation of your own, there's definitely something to learn. Here's a great presentation I've watched just now by Al Gore...

07 June 2008

Posted at 17:41h in plurk, twitter by

I think if you signed up for Plurk right now you'd still be considered an early adopter. Although there is a lot of buzz going around at the moment so get in fast. I quite like the concept and it seems to out do Twitter in nearly every way. The only problem is there are no banner ads. No forms of advertising what so ever. Sure in the short term that's great for me and you but how are they going to pay their costs? This becomes particularly important with their exponentially growing traffic. Like many social networks, they are going to struggle to monetise the site. And by introducing advertising now, you risk alienating your community. Where does this leave them in the long term?...

06 June 2008

Posted at 19:40h in gatekeeper, junk mail, reception, spam by

On occasion I work Reception. In fact I'm actually "working" right now so don't tell anyone. Part of my role is to sort incoming mail and then delivery it to the correct pigeon holes. Whilst sorting through the legitimate mail I find myself with handfuls and handfuls of tangible spam. Just now, I've thrown out 16 letters from the same organisation to different people who work here. And much much more. I don't even open the envelopes before turfing them into the recycling bin. I feel like writing to them to say that interruption advertising like this just doesn't work. Especially when you can't even get it through the Receptionist. I did find one exception a few weeks ago. A small tin arrived which was clearly spam addressed to one of the managers. But I didn't throw it away. The instructions said to open it and water it daily while keeping it warm. So I took it home that night and thus began a two week relationship with the brand and counting. After a few days a plant sprouted and somehow on one of the leaves were embed the words Thank You. It's still growing today. It's somewhat similar to this. What a great way to break through the clutter. I'm still interacting with the brand and I even feel like they are a little bit more environmentally friendly than I thought. I guess the only problem is I took it home and failed to pass it onto the manager. Like the rest of the junk mail, it never got passed the Receptionist even if for a different reason. ...

04 June 2008

Posted at 00:14h in apple, firefox, internet explorer, mozilla, windows by

Apple users are passionate. Windows users are not. Mozilla Firefox users are passionate. Internet Explorer users are not. I'll stay away from the almost cliché example of Apple and instead use Firefox. Mozilla recently announced Firefox 3 will be launched shortly and have decided to involve their powerful consumer following. On what will be Download Day, they will be trying to break the Guinness World Record for the most downloaded software in 24 hours. You can actually pledge to download the software, where they will then send you a reminder email on the day. A fantastic idea and at the moment they already have 672,214 pledges. Not downloads, but pledges. I think Internet Explorer might be in trouble. In fact, I wonder how many people would pledge to download their latest version?...

02 June 2008

Posted at 16:30h in heroes, julian cole, marketing today, peter wagstaff, simon oboler, youtube, zeroes by

Be sure to check out Marketing Today where Peter, Jules, Simon and myself discuss The Perfect Viral in Episode #64. During this discussion a point was raised regarding the effective use of preview images on YouTube. Generally a hot female or a cleavage shot tended to give your video a higher view count. I also learnt, that this preview image is selected from the exact middle of your video. Now take a look at Episode #1 of a fairly quirky series called Zeroes...

01 June 2008

Posted at 17:23h in green, idea a day, safeway, seth godin by

Following on from a previous post, I recently purchased four items from Safeway. The receipt was 34cm long. For four items. 34cm long. Seth Godin has a good post here showing two companies who could be perceived as being just as wasteful. Or entirely luxurious. Either way, I will never see Safeway as luxurious and such a long receipt only says to me they are not as green as they could be. Again I recommend you head over to Idea A Day and check out Idea #2842 for another submitted by yours truly....