Author Archive
Google’s backwards ad thinking
I love Google ads.
In a world where advertisers consistently demonstrate the definition of insanity: doing more of the same thing because it’s not working - Google turns things on their head. And in doing so, they turn advertising into what marketers always claim it is (despite knowing better): useful information for buyers.
Gerry McGovern at Giraffe [...]
Virtual worlds aren’t the real world
Michael Sebastian at PR Junkie writes that virtual worlds like Second Life will never, ever catch on:
Blame a perfect storm* of publicity. This summer and fall you will notice—if you haven’t already—a renewed interest in virtual worlds.
Despite what you hear, remember: The idea that real companies will conduct business in virtual worlds like Second Life is utterly ridiculous.
My [...]
iPhone status
Say what you want about the iPhone… but ask yourself, how many phones are the subject of a whole page on the Forbes site?
iPhone detractors who point out that another phone has a better keyboard, or can be had with more carriers, or has great music capabilities, or a better camera, or can shoot videos [...]
When Britney arrives, the party’s over: a suggestion for Twitter
How do you know something has arrived? When it becomes a channel for spam.
For those of who who don’t use Twitter: you probably do know that it’s been the social media darling for some time now, even with its ongoing reliability issues. I’m a fan; I love simplicity, and Twitter eschews the feature creep that [...]
When throwing a party, make sure you have enough ice
Hey, did you hear that Apple came out with a new phone?
If you didn’t, well, welcome back from the Antarctic vacation! Yes, Friday was the big iPhone 3G day. People lined up at stores to get the newest and shiniest Apple product. Apple is very, very good at building excitement about their new products; whether [...]
Staking it all on Google
We all know that organic search is important; well, here’s a Danish company that’s taken it to an extreme: their home page is a Google search results page.
In fact, the only thing that is not a Google page is the contact page.
I’m not sure what I think of this, mainly because I don’t speak Danish [...]
Getting to know you…
Getting to know your customers is a good thing; we all understand this. But if you get to know your customers by gathering data about them, a funny things happen: your customers expect you to know about them. And to behave accordingly.
I have a a Canon printer. (It’s a PIXMA MX700. I like it a [...]
Broadasting on Twitter
Mack Collier wrote on MarketingProfs about a trend he sees in Twitter - it’s feeling more like a broadcast medium than a social medium.
Earlier this year, I would normally use Twitter during the morning to share links as I went through my feeds. If I found something interesting, I’d share it with my followers. Then [...]
What do they want?
Marketers have gotten used to paying attention to web analytics - the clickstream data from tools like Google Analytics that give us all kinds of insight into what people do on our web sites. That’s great, but there are questions that all that data can’t answer: why are people coming to your site? What do [...]
Fun with real estate marketing
It’s a difficult time for realtors. Here in Houston it’s not as bad as in many other cities; things have slowed down, but having missed the bubble that affected so many other large cities, we’ve been spared the bust to some degree. But it’s not exactly a seller’s market.
Tough times are good times to sharpen [...]
