08 June 2008 A Guilty Pleasure
This country is in a ridiculous amount of debt.
As a marketer, should I be feeling guilty about this?
07 June 2008 Zac Martin Just Plurked
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 Planting The Seed
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.
05 June 2008 8 Rules To Web 2.0 Logos
1. Use a simple sans serif font but not a standard one because you might be seen to lack typeface skills.
2. Fluorescent colours are good, preferably blue, pink or orange.
3. Everyone uses boxes, so you should too.
4. But if you do, make sure the edges are rounded because that’s what all the cool kids are doing.
5. Show customers you are really good with Photoshop and include a reflection.
6. Prove you have a keen eye for design and ensure everything looks as glossy and as shiny as possible.
7. No Web 2.0 logo is complete without a vertical gradient of some sort.
8. Ensure you are going to be the “next big thing” and include the word Beta somewhere in your logo.
04 June 2008 Pledge For Passion
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 A Single Frame
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…
If you have a keen eye like myself you might noticed at 1:57 a flicker of a frame. You might also notice that 1:57 is exactly halfway between the video.
The frame is of a blonde cheerleader. The same one as the preview. This user has gone to the effort of placing a frame in the middle of the content just to get a certain preview image.
Interesting. How long do you think until this becomes a common practice?
01 June 2008 More Free Ideas
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.
28 May 2008 Whale Meat: Beef Of The Sea
First episode of The Gruen Transfer aired just now. Peter Wagstaff, Julian Cole and myself sat on Twitter during the show as a little experiment, adding an extra element to see their reactions. I only signed up on Twitter today but I’m already starting to see its potential.
Wasn’t quite what I expected but interesting. This week’s challenge was to sell a whale meat campaign. DDB used the quote in the title playing against the consumption of beef. While Jack Watts Currie played on the idea of an angry prawn on a BBQ and at the end of the spot there was a flash of a website. The website actually exists, I find that very cool.
Worth looking at, particularly if you’re not studying marketing. I assume the ABC will podcast it.
28 May 2008 Citroen Doesn’t Give Me Wings
Redbull are the new sponsors of some Citroen release. Today they attempted to run a bit of a joint event on campus. Free Redbull, Citroens on display, music and an Xbox to play with.
Redbull is a perfect brand to promote to university students. The Generation Y targeted product works particularly well with the Redbull Girls.
Citroen is not. Why would you attempt to sell cars to university students? I don’t even buy they idea they were trying to “plant the seed”. I actually groaned when I saw the sales man wearing a suit.