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4/29/2005 12:23
A recent study commissioned by HP revealed that people who obsess about the many forms of communication available to them - e-mail, text messages, phone calls (dubbed "infomania") - have a 10-point drop in IQ. That's twice the drop caused from smoking marijuana. According to a BBC report, the University of London psychologist who carried out the study said that unchecked infomania could reduce workers' mental sharpness. Just think about that the next time you're at home or on vacation, twitching to check your e-mail. And remember the old PSA - 'this is your mind on [drugs].' Maybe we can all trade a little speed of response for some rest and relaxation.
4/27/2005 16:50
My friend Brandon has been designing web sites for many years, we met doing a bunch of work together on web sites five years ago. He and I were talking today, and he said something that was really interesting to me. He said he's noticing a big shift in the way designers are creating sites. When I asked him what the most noticable change in web design was, it was funny to hear him say "Kids have grown up with big screens." It used to be that web sites were optimized to accommodate 800 x 600 screens (for laptops). (Well, it used to be that "green" screens were then norm, and that orange type was a novelty... but that was the time of the 300 baud modems, and I digress.) Apparently now, the trend is to create "print-like" environments where there are beautiful images at the top of the page that will sometimes fill a browser window half full. Another change is the concept of first level, second level and third level pages. They're disappearing. No more do you find the drastic design differences as you navigate through web properties. As we talked about this, Brandon remarked that he's starting to see more and more business and portfolio sites that look more like blogs than the more familiar, traditional sites. Another shift When I told Tara about this shift, she noted that she's seen more traditional journalism sites - like cnet.com - with trackback links on their stories. They might not be inviting comments (yet!) on their own sites, but they can track the resulting discussions. When you think about the ripple effects of technology - big screens and blogging, for example - on design, it's really pretty fun to watch them unfold. I wonder how our brains will evolve to map the changes?
4/27/2005 11:20
In an interesting development, the folks at BlogKits are conducting a blog advertising survey right now. From what I can tell, they're mostly speaking to casual (vs. corporate) bloggers - the first question is: "Why do you blog?" And the possible answers are: It's fun, To make money, Blogging is cool, I like to write, (my personal favorite) It helps me relax and It's fun and maybe I can earn a buck while I'm at it. Survey design issues aside, I think it's very interesting that they're launching a survey (I found it on the Blog Herald site) at all. I was unable to determine when/where/how the results would be published, but I'll probably take the survey (It helps me relax!) and hope to find out.
April 26, 2005
I stumbled across this little prize earlier today. According to Nick Lewis, CNN recently engaged in a rather unusual marketing campaign in the blogosphere. The campaign allegedly combined blackhat search engine optimization techniques, viral marketing tactics, and guerrilla comment spam.
Lewis makes a decent case for it in his blog, yet I couldn't help but wonder...who is this guy and is he credible? (Based on his bio, I'm a little skeptical.)
If Lewis is correct and CNN really is employing such clandestine tactics, shame on them. But what if Lewis is wrong? Will CNN's brand suffer long-term damage from such rumors?
Some might think this is strange coming from a Marqui employee since we pay bloggers to blog about us -- a decision that some have labeled unethical in its own right. However, we have always been very up-front about our objectives and tactics.
Reading through Lewis' post, three things come to mind:
1) Is the blogosphere really as self-cleansing as people believe?
2) How much longer can companies get away with ignoring bloggers when posts like these can spread like wildfire?
3) Given how fast the blogosphere is expanding, will companies be able to react to blogs effectively without using some sort of automated system? And is this sort of thing really unethical?
At any rate, if anyone can confirm or refute the CNN story, I'd be very interested in what you have to say.
4/25/2005 10:16
Janet recently sent me a great MediaPost article, "Can Search Help PR's Reputation." The author, Max Kalehoff, asks why PR pros seem to expend so little energy monitoring the content of search-engine results. He goes on to point out the number of industry leaders, such as United Airlines, McDonald's, Splenda and iPod, with damaging third-party content appearing within their top results. Given how many Internet users now rely on search engines to gather information about a company, product or service, this article is a must-read for any PR person. My only nit is that while Kalehoff points out a few firms that offer integrated PR/search services, he doesn't provide any practical advice on how to handle search-engine related crises. Marqui has had a bit of experience in this arena since our PayBloggers program has led to some unusual items popping up in our top results. (Nothing too terrible, just not the most relevant content.) We are actively working with our search engine marketing agency, Anvil Media, to get this resolved...but it's not quite as easy as one might think. Among Anvil's suggestions was the idea of crafting a press release filled with keywords, links, etc. that will appeal to search engine spiders, thus giving it a higher ranking than less desirable content. Now, the more traditional PR person in me cringes at the thought of such a buzzword-soaked creation. However, I have definitely come to realize that it's a brave new world out there -- and that world is highly influenced by search engines. Rest assured, once I move forward with this little project, I'll report back on the "results."
4/21/2005 14:44
Finally, the server is behaving! The color article is up and you can find it here. It's no surprise that colors have an affect on people's behavior. I think we've lost touch with our senses in so many ways as we've moved to a more digital world. Even the article talks about the limitations of 256 colors online. Man, such shackles! But who thinks about that anymore? I think we should all be more cognizant of the right sides of our brains... may they not atrophy. This may seem like a non-sequitur, but I was lucky enough to attend an event last week where Kurt Perschke's Red Ball Project made its way to Portland. The Red Ball is all about viewing architecture in new ways - it has traveled around the world and was all around Portland (the link above shows it snuggling up under the marquee of the Schnitz) for a week. People interacted with it in some pretty amazing ways. People (kids mostly) would throw themselves into it and bounce out, stare at it as they walked by, etc. Kurt said his favorite were those who tapped it with the backs of their hands as they walked by. Subtle causes and effects. Anyway, the man who brought the Red Ball project to Portland is Kevin Carroll from the katalyst consultancy. Kevin makes his living these days teaching business people how to play. He encourages people to promote the power of play to enhance their creativity. And his enthusiasm was infectuous. He spoke at length about learning to explore your world in different ways (hence, the Red Ball project). Some people do it with music, some with meditation, some with play. And some, it seems, with color.
4/21/2005 14:26
I just got BtoB's E-Mail Marketer's Insight for today, and there was a tempting lead article about how changing the color of your e-mail will help boost response rates. It hit me over the head when I opened it that there was a big blue border around the usual red and white newsletter. Of course, I wanted to read more. Clicking the FULL STORY link, I got this: View image Damn. Either their server got hammered as a result of the new blue border, or it chose a very bad time to have a time out (the technical version of the 'naughty mat'). I might never know.
4/21/2005 10:02
Sometimes reading blogs is really fun. I guffawed today reading Tara's blog.
"The cracker community tends to use creative spellings as a sort of jargon, and coinages such as warez have even escaped into more mainstream usages."Whaaat? I really enjoyed some chuckles when I happened across Mena's Corner, a blog from Mena Trott, one of the founders of Six Apart, who created the Movable Type blog tool that we use. Mena's one of the few company presidents these days writing a corporate blog. She provides a great perspective on life at the top. My first chuckle came from reading her post from April 13 that Six Apart has opened the Six Shop, where you can buy t-shirts and such. First of all, the fourth-grader (who's still active - fortunately and unfortunately) in me snickered at the name of their online store. Secondly, and with great joy, I read about her favorite tees:
"My personal favorites are the Ladies Rebuilding T-Shirt and the Ladies Wrench T-Shirt. .... Yeah, and there are men's shirts too."In a world where women have been forced for years to wear men's polo shirts to every technology trade show and event, I really got a kick out of her attitude. I'm delighted in looking around once in awhile, that women are making an impact on the mostly white, mostly male world of technology.
4/21/2005 8:41
Janet's post made me wonder why on earth "phishing" is spelled the way it is. This is what Wikipedia had to say about it: "The term 'phishing' is sometimes said to stand for password harvesting fishing, though this is likely a backronym. The cracker community tends to use creative spellings as a sort of jargon, and coinages such as warez have even escaped into more mainstream usages. The term phreaking, which refers to gaining access to telephone networks, most likely influenced the spelling of the term. Still other theories accredit the term "phishing" to originate from the name "Brien Phish" who was the first to allegedly use psychological techniques to steal credit card numbers in the 1980s. Others believe that "Brien Phish" was not a real person but a fictional character used by scammers to identify each other. Another, more recent theory credits the nature of the attacks, in which one is fishing, metaphorically, for an unsuspecting user's information." So there you have it.
4/20/2005 17:15
Every once in awhile my boss, Stephen King (no, not that one!) forwards me an e-mail where someone has "forgotten" to include an enclosure they reference in the body of the e-mail. He believes they're a ploy to get him to contact the sender and ask for the promised file. I'm notorious for forgetting to send files to people and invariably sending an immediate "oops!" note with the enclosure. I'm not sure I could be devious about my forgetfulness. Is this a new marketing tactic? If so, I would liken it to phishing. Phorgetting the phile? Clever marketing or devious ploy?
4/18/2005 13:06
I get a lot of e-mail newsletters. Some of my favorite are from MediaPost and BtoB. I like to keep up with what people in marketing say is 'hot news' for marketers. I think the MediaPost folks have some of the best aggregations of information for marketers available. I got a newsletter today talking about simplicity in e-mail offers, and how, if you keep it simple, you'll get a better response. In the newsletter, the author offered a white paper on e-mail marketing. I clicked the link that took me to the SubscriberMail site, where I submitted my information to receive whitepapers on e-Mail List Building Secrets, and one on e-Mail Marketing Tune-Ups. BAM! One simple entry begat six responses. I got two copies of each whitepaper, and two follow up e-mails from two different salespeople at SubscriberMail, each enclosing a 500K enclosure with more information about SubscriberMail. Suddenly, I'm feeling spammed. I'm wondering whether SubscriberMail might want to tune up their databases AND their auto-generated response notes. So much for keeping it simple.
4/18/2005 11:59
The Pew Internet & American Life Project published some new stats about spam last week. It shouldn't come as a shock to hear that the amount of spam flooding into in-boxes continues to rise. What did come as a surprise (to me at least) is that research indicates people are now less bothered by it. Yes, you read that correctly: e-mail users are getting more spam than ever and yet it's irritating them less. Obviously, I was not included in this survey. At any rate, if you'd like to know more about how much spam people are receiving these days, click here.
4/14/2005 12:37
In a sentence, Rondi Adamson summed up what I feel about the blogosphere. In an article published in today's opinion section of the Christian Science Monitor (read it here), Adamson wrote about bloggers thwarting a Canadian court's press ban, revealing details about a case ("Adscam" - where the Canadian government has been attempting to "sell Canada" to Quebec)currently being reviewed. The article was a fascinating look into the clash between government regulators (in this case, the Canadian court system), and bloggers (in this case, a guy from the US - Captain Ed and his Captain's Quarters blog). Captain Ed published some of the secret testimony from the trial, which was corroborated by other parties. Well, that just didn't go over well with people online (who heard about it immediately) and those who heard about it through the media. Although the traditional media tiptoed around the source of the leaks, lest they be held in contempt of the court ban. You'd probably guess that the court order didn't withstand the furor that erupted. It was mostly recinded last week. A sentence in the last paragraph in the article, though, jumped out at me: "Freedom should not be mistaken for licence." While I applaud the freedom to report information and hold discussions about all sorts of things online (a widely held definition of a blog is an online discussion), I have been pretty apalled lately about the license people have been taking with this liberty. More on that when I have the time...
4/13/2005 14:35
I've probably wired a few hundred press releases during the last 5-6 years and have used all of the major services: Business Wire, PR Newswire, Market Wire and PrimeZone. Every time I go through the process, I wonder what the value is. Of course, public companies are required to distribute news via a major wire service, but what is the real benefit for us private folks? Not only are these services extremely expensive (e.g., an average release on Business Wire costs me $500-$600), but I have to wonder whether journalists even pay attention to them anymore. As soon as a release hits the wire, it's old news so what's the point? Sure, it's nice to see that my press release was posted on Forbes.com or Yahoo or whatever, but to get any meaningful press coverage regarding a particular announcement, I need to contact the media well in advance, schedule interviews, etc. Again, I'm coming at this from the private company perspective -- you public entities are in a different situation -- but it just seems like a hefty expensive with little ROI. So...I'm conducting a little experiment. I'm doing a head-to-head comparison of all four major services. Over the last three weeks, I've wired press releases on Business Wire, Market Wire and PrimeZone. I just finished up a meeting with PR Newswire, so that's the next one I'll use. I'll provide a recap once all results are in. I'll be evaluating based on cost, release "postings," Web traffic increases, incoming press inquiries, etc.
4/11/2005 12:58
Corporate blogging is all the rage these days. Diva Marketing recently posted a Blogging Ethics Manifesto to help corporate bloggers get started. Susan Getgood expanded on the Diva post with links to some other helpful blogs about corporate blogging policies. Bill French and others have even put a stake in the ground that blogs are NOT simply a passing fad and soon all companies will be embracing blogs for their PR and marketing value. I happen to agree with Bill and company in that most organizations will eventually incorporate blogging into their business practices. However, I have to wonder how many will actually maintain their own blogs as opposed to simply monitoring and responding to what bloggers are saying. Aside from the legal issues, good blogs are labor- and time-intensive. Obviously, they provide a wonderful forum for communicating with customers, partners, etc., but companies want to be able to pinpoint ROI on just about everything these days. How will corporate blogs stack up? Some are definitely gambling that corporate blogging is here to stay. Just last week at the DMA World conference, I noticed a company touting its new "blog appliance." The company claims the appliance is perfect for the "security conscious" organization. Assuming blogging isn't just a fad, is this what the future holds? Rack-ready corporate blogging appliances?
4/7/2005 11:09
It's been a little quiet in Marqui's World the last couple of days since Janet and I were in Seattle attending the DMA World 2005 conference, "Relevance and Results: The New Revolution in Direct Marketing." This is actually the first DMA event I've attended as I spend most of my time working the AMA -- and occasionally the PRSA -- scene. This is likely to change though since I was blown away by the quality of the event. DMA World 2005 was very well attended and the sessions were exceptional. The stand-out was the closing keynote by John Zagula, one of the authors of "The Marketing Playbook." (You can visit The Marketing Playbook blog here.) I don't want to spoil the book for anyone, so I'll give just a quick re-cap of his presentation... To Zagula (and his co-author Rich Tong), marketing campaigns can be distilled down to five basic strategies, which he cleverly described and illustrated as sports-like "plays." These plays are as follows: 1) The Drag Race: Drawing on his own experiences in crushing WordPerfect with Microsoft Word, Zagula explored the value in selecting one competitor to pick a fight with. The caveat? Make sure it's a fight you can win. 2) The Platform: This is this "coopetition approach" -- namely, why bother to compete with others, when you can build a platform for everyone to make money on. Of course, this might result in some short-term losses but in the end, you'll have a small army eager to defend your "platform" against others. The example here was NTT DoCoMo. 3) Stealth: If the first two plays are out of the question, why not try a stealth maneuver? Zagula cited Enterprise Rent-A-Car's monopoly of the insurance market as the perfect example. While others were busy duking it out for costly airport space, Enterprise quietly signed deals to be the exclusive provider for the massive insurance market. 4) Best of Both: A "Tastes Great, Less Filling" approach where you position yourself as providing the best of both worlds. The poster child in this case was Lexus, which combines lower pricing and Japanese reliability with European-style luxury. 5) The High Low: Zagula describes this as the "why compromise" strategy, and cautioned attendees that it is the hardest to pull off. Four Points by Sheraton is the example he provided. Four Points delivers an outstanding hotel experience at a reasonable price. He explained this was Sheraton's successful response to Marriott. The only problem lies in whether this will end up cannibalizing business at Sheraton's higher end resorts. This summary doesn't do Zagula's session justice but again, I don't want to spoil the book. Although, even after hearing him speak, I plan to read it. And no, I'm not being paid to blog about it. :-)
4/7/2005 8:36
Just want to make sure everyone saw yesterday's Dilbert... Thanks to Cindy, a fellow Portland AMA (American Marketing Association) member, for forwarding it along!
4/4/2005 10:06
According to The Pew Internet and American Life Project, 29% MP3 player owners, or almost 6 million people, have now downloaded podcasts to their MP3 players - like the iPod. Nearly half of digital-music player owners younger than 29 have tried out podcasts, compared with 20 percent of those 29 or older. Podcasts were equally popular among men and women, the survey found. That's pretty amazing for a communication tool that has only emerged in the past year. We've had a couple of our bloggers podcast information about Marqui. In fact, we had someone call Todd Cochrane's podcast with Stephen King 'the world's first podcast infomercial.' It was downloaded (last I heard) more than 16,000 times. You heard it (wherever/whenever you wanted) first!
4/4/2005 9:46
As anyone will tell you, blogging is an addictive activity -- in fact, it's so addictive that I couldn't just write for one. Nope, I went out and found a second blog to contribute to: MarcomBlog. Many in the marketing world are already familiar with MarcomBlog since it features marketing- and PR-oriented posts from Neville Hobson, Guillaume du Gardier, Dee Rambeau, etc. MarcomBlog has a wonderful story behind it. The creator, Robert French, is a teacher at Auburn University's Department of Communication and Journalism. Instead of just lecturing at his students, Robert wanted to help them get comfortable actually using things like blogs, wikis and content management systems. He also liked the idea of putting them in touch with other PR and Marcom professionals for some good old fashioned mentoring. Thus MarcomBlog was born. But Robert hasn't stopped there. Now he's interested in helping other professionals start their own blogs. Not only will he help with the set up process, he'll also host it for free. The only catch? The blog has to deal with marketing and/or PR issues (i.e. no personal blogs about tropical fish or something). Interested parties can either send me an e-mail or visit Robert's blog. His most recent post provides a full overview of what he's trying to accomplish and what he'll provide to get folks started. Talk about raising the bar for other college professors!
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