« October 2007 | Main | December 2007 »
I'm not so great with French, but I thought I'd share some tips on marketing and advertising words from other languages...
Then again, English is my native language so what do I know? Help me out here or offer tips on your own favorites.
I'm heading to Paris tomorrow. Last time I went was January and got some great suggestions on family-friendly activities, which I'll repost here. Then on to London, where the dollar is worth even less than last year. Any additions to the ones below - especially places to go without going broke?
- Seine boat tour
- France miniature
- Parc Asterix
- Disneyland
- Playmobil Fun Park
(thanks to former Forrester colleague Michelle Bouquet!)
- Le Bois de Boulogne (e.g. jardin d acclimatation)
- L'Entrecote
(thanks to Eric Kintz, HP!)
Did you notice this article in Ad Age today? "Dove Viral Draws Heat From Critics."
The idea of two brands conflicted underneath an CPG umbrella crossed my mind back in June - of last year. [Don't get me wrong; I'm not claiming by any means to have invented this meme.] My feeling is that the ends justify the means. When I asked Babs Rangaiah about it during a panel discussion in March, his response was that they're separate brands with separate strategies. Works for me.
Now someone's gone out and posted a viral video on the matter, which tells me that the meme has reached critical mass (that and the fact that there's a mainstream media article on the subject).
So - is this a case where Unilever needs to take on more corporate social responsibility? Or is all fair in the name of shelf space and margin?
I know it's not black and white and thus probably a bit of both. Just goes to show that the more successful you become, the more criticism you'll receive. No one's crowing about Nike's ads anymore...because no one's talking about that ad campaign at every social media conference you attend these days.
I was in Barcelona last week. Some thoughts on the visit:
- The weather was colder than I anticipated. The Spanish people however were warm and friendly.
- Tapas were delicious - I especially enjoyed Ciudad Condal. For a cozy experience, visit Can Paixano.
- Good souvenirs at Art Escudellers, in an alley off Las Ramblas. They carry art from every region of the country.
- Sagrada Familia is starkly different from traditional cathedrals.
- The smaller the store, the more interesting the name.
And I would really appreciate if anyone could tell me more about the children's song behind this shirt from Nanoniano!
I had "dinner" at Can Paixano last night - talk about being social!
During the day, there was a lot of talk about social computing initiatives and we tweeted quite a bit of it. As I hear about different brands, industries, and technologies, some questions keep coming to mind:
There are probably more questions; these are the highest-level ones that keep coming to mind when I hear people speaking about what they're doing or recommending to clients.
Good case study examples should answer all of those questions - we're past social computing 101. Brands still need 101-type information and there's still a lot of learning left out there. What it means is that people who are put on stage these days as experts should be delivering the goods, better.
I'm in Barcelona this week for Forrester's Consumer and Finance Forum. I'm already hearing some great examples of how European companies are using social computing.
Most of my updates from the event will be on Twitter, where Jeremiah, Tracy Sullivan, and I will be tweeting.
Longer updates via blog are at Jeremiah's blog and the Forrester marketing blog.
I was walking to lunch earlier this week with Brian Haven and he told me about a simple, clever tactic he uses to manage account logins and email spam.
Background - last time I moved, I changed the name on my magazines to my dogs. Since then, they've gotten various offers in the mail. Most recently, Lucy received a trial membership to a women's fitness club. (She does need to lose a few pounds...)
So Brian mentioned how he's doing this with email. The basic concept is to set up an email address for every account you have that requires a login. So if you own the domain "foo.com" then you'd set up email addresses like amazon@foo.com, ebay@foo.com and gmail@foo.com. This means you:
There are some variations to this (e.g. forwarding, catchalls), but that's the basic concept. If you don't own your own domain name already, you can get a one year *.info at GoDaddy for US$3.19.
I know some people use a free email account for all signups, order confirmations, etc. But sometimes there are account-specific emails that you may want to receive. We may never be able to filter every spam email in the world, but I thought this idea was cool because it's got more than one purpose.
Anybody have refinements to add? Been doing this and found any drawbacks to share?
Buzzlogic is rolling out "conversation targeting" today at Ad:Tech - evolving online ad placement from contextual to super-contextual. It's not the next step beyond behavioral, which keys off of client-side activity, but could evolve to include this as well. Rather, we're talking about placing content-relevant ads with a dimension beyond reach/impressions - adding in a calculation of source "quality." Quality has typically been left up to advertisers to determine for themselves based on clickthrough or conversion.
Right now the system only works with AdWords, so look for integration of other platforms - like blogads or adbrite.
This is an interesting product for a brand monitoring vendor - makes more sense to see this from an "engagement" type vendor like Buzzlogic or Visible Technologies. Gives you an idea for where the market is heading.
