Carol's IMC Blog

Advertising or Information?

carolatl — Tue, 19 May 2009 00:50:29 +0000

Google’s Dr. Vinton G. Cerf, interviews with OgilvyOne Singapore and shares his opinions on how advertising and brands can affect social networking. In his opinion, Advertising are the messages we are not really interested into, however messages that are of our interest (a book, or a clothing or a moving we may like) is called information sharing. Watch the video.

Embeded TV Ads?

carolatl — Mon, 18 May 2009 19:12:45 +0000

Skipping commercials when watching your favorite shows? No worries, marketers found a new way to get the message to you, embedded in an episode. NBC’s 30 Rock has been doing it for over a year. Watch the video below:

Too direct for you? It is not a surprise though that NBC is getting paid for placements like this and only in this season, the show had 142 placements. The office has had 381 so far. Though times call for tough measures and with new technologies such as Tivo and DVR, consumers are not as exposed to ads as they used to be.

NBC + Fox = hulu

carolatl — Mon, 18 May 2009 18:59:49 +0000

Did you miss the last episode of House? Log on to hulu.com and you can watch it using the internet.

Hulu, a site that “distributes video both on its own website and syndicates its hosting to other sites, and allows users to embed Hulu clips on their websites” was launched a little over one year ago, in March/2008. Also, Hulu displays shows from other networks : Comedy Central, PBS, USA Network, Bravo, Fuel TV, FX, SPEED Channel, Sci Fi, Style, Sundance, E!, G4, Versus, A&E, and Oxygen.”

Check hulu.com for more details.

What is your tribe?

carolatl — Mon, 18 May 2009 18:22:46 +0000

A new endeavor lead by IT professionals of Google and Nokia among other companies in the US, is analyzing behavior of thousands of cell phone users in America. The new company led by 35-year-old Skibiski, is based in New York City and called Sense. With a group of computer scientist and IT professionals, the lab monitors tagged 4,000 cell phones in the city and monitors every move they make. In a virtual map you can little dots moving around and clustering into neighborhoods, stores, restaurants, etc. The experiment is able to then predict people’s “predicting people’s preferences by their movements.” People are then divided intro tribes, based on their behaviors and purchase habits. So which tribe would you be in?

What does that mean? Big brother is watching and this time, big brother can be the media company, marketing firms and any other entity interested in buying the data. It is a dream come true for marketers: to be able to know exactly when and where customers buy a cup of coffee and how often, without having to pay for expensive market researches.

Mobile data have other uses and implications besides providing marketers with behavioral information. Over 25 millions people already have Facebook in their cellphones and Latitude is application that allows for friends to connect and see what’s everyone else is doing. You could see if your friend is at home, at the mall, stuck in traffic or leaving work early. However, the ethical and privacy issues come up…would it be right for a company to hand a cellphone loaded with Latitude to an employee? Fleet and truck companies have done it for years, but some can argue the truck and goods being transported were being watched, not the employee. As all of this evolves, I’m sure more aspects will come up and more functionalities will surface. The good news is that for now, it is optional to allow for a company to collect the data from your mobile device. If you don’t want it, to use the application.

Searching the web…how it works?

carolatl — Sun, 17 May 2009 19:27:30 +0000

Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN are just databases that provide free searched to the general public. When searching Yahoo for the nearest florist, you are not searching the web, rather you are searching Yahoo’s database. But how do florists, card dealers and any other “results” become part of a search engine database? There are basically two simple ways:

The first one is to submit your site to the search engine, where they will index your site and capture key elements code in your page and content. When someone does a search for “florist” the database then searched for websites that can be linked with the word “florist”.

The second way of becoming part of the database is to let them find you. You would have a search engine software find the site and link it to from another site back to yours. This kind of software is known as spiders, because it will “crawl” your site to see if you updated it and link it to the results of a search done at Yahoo or Google.

Then, there are the results you will see from a search. There are also two kinds of results: one is the results that appear on the very top of the page and are called “sponsored”, which means they are paid placement and are more advertisement than a result. Indeed they are linked to whatever search was done, but often are not the exact match. The second kind of result is the true result, provided by the search engine database and the closest match to whatever search was done.

Viral Marketing – Is it contagious?

carolatl — Fri, 15 May 2009 02:53:20 +0000

Viral Marketing is a non-traditional strategy used by marketers to disseminate information through email and word-of-mouth. It encourages people to pass on a marketing message to others, escalating the chances of better exposure and increased awareness. It helps creates a buzz! The idea is that, just like a cold virus, viral marketing multiplies to reach more and more people.

There are six factors that contribute to an effective viral marketing:
1. Free give aways of products or services
2. Information sharing is easy
3. Goes from 0 to million in the blink of an eye
4. Make uses of people’s behaviors
5. Uses existing communication channels
6. Utilize other’s resources

Good examples of Viral Marketing Campaigns:

Burger King’s Whopper Sacrifice: http://www.whoppersacrifice.com/

Hotmail: Classic! One of the first viral marketing campaigns, Hotmail succeed in offering free email to millions of people by including a link to sign up for a Hotmail account at the bottom of every email.

Dove Evolution: A great campaign that generated almost 2 millions hits in less than a month! Its simplicity is in the production as well as in the message. Watch it:

Welcome to The Now Network

carolatl — Fri, 15 May 2009 02:22:28 +0000

In an attempt to differenciate its services from the competition, Sprint launched a new ad campaign, very interactive, that explains all the benefits to the consumer. Watch it now!

Clio Awards results are in!

carolatl — Fri, 15 May 2009 02:06:35 +0000

Check out the Clio Awards website to find out who took the gold, the silver and bronze “estatuetas” home!

http://www.clioawards.com/winners/

Watch Apple Ads

carolatl — Fri, 15 May 2009 01:40:21 +0000

10 tips for the best website!

carolatl — Wed, 06 May 2009 03:07:47 +0000

1. Don’t expect users to think: Navigation and site architecture need to be intuitive, so there are no questions about the message that is being conveyed. A simple straight forward structure paired with visual elements in the right dose can naturally guide visitors from point A to point B. If users need to hunt for answer or can’t seem to figure out their way around the site they will likely give up.
2. Instant gratification…users have no patience: Make sure that users can try out the site and see how they can benefit from its services. If a customer has to fill out forms and provide data in order to try a tool, he/she may not be up to returning to the site or even providing the information. Make it simple.
3. Put the user’s attention into focus: Provide a sense of orientation, so users know where to focus. Including specific focus areas that will direct the visitor’s attention where is needed can assure that the objective is not lost.
4. Good features: Make sure visitors can see what features are available right away.
5. Writting right: Long texts, bold and italics are not effective or attractive to the eye. Visitor won’t read, they will scan. Bullet points and block texts are better than long paragraphs.
6. More is less: Although a nice design will be pleasing to the eye, users are on the site to get the information they want, regardless of the design. Keep it simple.
7. White space is your friend: White space is good! It helps visitors to break up the page in sections that can actually be looked and absorbed.
8. Good communication with visuals: There are three fundamental principles: organize, economize, and communicate. Organize the structure of the website so it is clear, economize so you can show the most with the least, and communicate efficiently with design elements, words, and a right level of message.
9. Use standard converntions: Just like most grocery stores keep products in similar places (eggs, milk and butter are always next to the yogurt, rice, pasta and tomato sauce are in the same aisle, etc) a website needs to follow general convention so users don’t need to figure out where to go every time they visit a website for the first time.
10. Test, Test, Test: Test your website before you launch it. The process should be, test it, fix any issues, and test it again until there are no more problems with usability, structure and functionability.