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Posts from October 2006

links for 2006-10-31

31 October 2006 | | Comments (0)

Branding invades Halloween costumes ...

What are the Top 10 Halloween costumes this year?  Here's the list.

Top Kid Costumes

1. Princess
2. Pirate
3. Witch
4. Spider-Man
5. Superman
6. Disney Princess
7. Power Ranger
8. Pumpkin
9. Cat
10. Vampire

Source: National Retail Association

And what I find really interesting is that there is a distinction between Princess and Disney Princess.

The methodology and the questions asked aren't explicitly listed but I am curious if the children themselves specified that they would be a Disney princess ... or if this was created as a category by the survey takers.

Other branded characters .. Power Ranger at #7; Sponge Bob at #14 and "Star Wars Character" at #20.

Update:  If you're looking for Halloween costumes, you can find costumes for both boys and girls at my Squidoo lenses ...

31 October 2006 in Branding & User Experience, Language, Marketing | | Comments (8)

links for 2006-10-30

30 October 2006 | | Comments (2)

Loving Microsoft Live Writer and its Flickr plugin

ButterflyI'm like most old-school Internet geeks ... I never expect anything from Microsoft to delight me.  But I have to say, I love Windows Live Writer.  It is so easy, has just enough functionality but not too much (a definite deviation for Microsoft), and lets me do everything I would want in a blog editor.  My only complaint is the way you assign a category to a post ... that process seems a little detached from the rest of the interface.

All that being said, I highly recommend it.  Over Ecto.  Over Qumana.  Over the native TypePad interface.

And now ... there is a gallery of plugins for Live Writer.  And one of the featured plugins is a Flickr plugin.  Now the plugin still needs some work.  You can't specify Creative Commons license, you can't sort by interestingness .. but, it has a ton of potential.  It's great for managing my own Flickr photos and blogging them.  Im hoping that these will be addressed in future releases.

If you haven't checked out Windows Live Writer yet, you're missing a great blogging tool.

 

29 October 2006 in Technology & the Internet | | Comments (3)

links for 2006-10-27

27 October 2006 | | Comments (2)

links for 2006-10-26

26 October 2006 | | Comments (0)

Fear and Loathing in Marketing ... observations from Toronto's DMC

Last week I had the privilege of facilitating a round table at the Canadian Marketing Association's Digital Marketing Conference (DMC).  My topic was Social Media.  The folks around the table were amazing!  I wish every marketing conversation I participated in had such candor.  There were a number of client-side marketers (WestJet, Bell, Raincoast Books and GM) as well as a few folks from agencies.

I had a list of questions prepped (I'll post them at the end), but decided that the group should evoke the conversation (hey, like social media marketing!).  What were the big themes?  Fear.  More fear.  Oh, and a little fear.  Incredible desire and passion for both the medium and their customers.  But lots of fear. (Oh, no real loathing .. that was just to get your attention).

What kind of fear?  All kinds.  A lot of legal fears.  Some about ensuring that they are transparent enough to their users.  Some about making sure they have content and buy-in.  Fear of sustainability.

And these are all good issues.  It breaks my heart that there are so many barriers.

But here's the real kicker.

Those of us who are on the leading edge are instilling the fear.

And that breaks my heart even more.  There are some brands who have taken a real chance.  Starbucks with their Coffee Conversations.  McDonalds with their CSR blog.  Chevy Tahoe's roll your own commercial.

And all of these (and others) have been met with derision.  You can relive the McDonalds edrama on my blog.  You can see what Leesa Barnes has to say about Starbucks as well as what CC Chapman has to say.  And there was LOTS of feedback on the Chevy Tahoe.

So with leaders in the field of Social Media Marketing being ready at the drop of a hat to jump on and criticize these efforts, is it any wonder that other marketers don't take the risk?  Because who wants to be the whipping boy of the blogosphere?

I wrote about fear specifically in regards to the aborted ROM blog.  The ever-articulate Rob Cottingham picked up my ROM thread and left a great rif on fear on a recent episode of For Immediate Release [show notes | Rob's comments are at about the 1:02:04 mark if you listen to the podcast].  Heck, even Seth is talking about fear.  Which is great ... but we must be starkly aware where we as members of the marketing community are perpetuating the fear in our colleagues.  And we need to turn that into encouragement, by sharing best practices and lessons learned.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't offer constructive criticism or that we should tolerate poor quality work or practices from our colleagues - but I would like to see us change the tone of the conversation.  Because behind all these marketing initiatives are people. (Marketers are people too .. LOL .. It's like I'm a Hallmark commercial this morning).

And this is why I love CaseCamp.  It's a forum where we as marketers can discuss the good, the bad and ugly.  What worked, what didn't.  I've shared two cases at two different CaseCamps.  And the best part was saying "You know what, this part sucked.  Don't do it in your programme."  If you don't have a CaseCamp in your community, you need to start one.  Now.  Get the dialogue going.  Change the tone.  Dispel the fear.

 

Photo Credit: Silent Capitol Hill by Irena Kittenclaw

 

 

My initial list of questions for the Social Media Roundtable.  I still this these are really good questions that we need to answer, but until we deal with the fear, we can't even start on these.

  1. If Social Media is the future of marketing – what is the future of your brand? What are some ways that your brand can make itself more social? How are you putting your customer at the heart of your conversation?
  2. Should all companies have a blog? What about a MySpace page? Which companies should; which companies shouldn’t. Bonus question: what is the biggest area of pain for your company? Why wouldn’t you start there?
  3. A lot of content for Social Media can be extracted from “pent up” expertise in your company. Example: Starbucks “Coffee Conversations” podcasts. What are some areas of pent-up expertise that would be useful to your customers that you could use to jump-start your social media programme?
  4. Social Media is largely possible as a marketing vehicle because of technology – to what extent do marketers need to become technologists and vice versa?

26 October 2006 in Blogs and Blogging, Marketing, Toronto | | Comments (7)

links for 2006-10-25

25 October 2006 | | Comments (0)

links for 2006-10-24

24 October 2006 | | Comments (0)

Better than the Goodfellas, check out TheGoodBlogs!

A month or so ago, I started including TheGoodBlogs widget in my sidebar.  My blog was included with a number of others who blog about tech and marketing.  MNIK's headlines were integrated with others and promoted on other blogs via the TGB widget.  A version of the widget with annotations is shown below.

TGB has opened for public beta today; I definitely encourage you to sign up!  Why?  Top 5:

  • Exposure & traffic ... in my 6 weeks of using it, I've had over 38K exposures and 130 click thrus.  And this is likely new traffic from people who might not have known about my blog.
  • Dead easy .. one of my fav things about TGB is that anytime you update your widget, the settings are saved on the server so you don't have to keep updating the code on your blog.  Do it once and you're done!
  • New categories being added all the time ... even if you're not a tech or marketing blogger there is a category for you.  Theatre, food, politics, "blog sisters".  And more being added.  You can also specify your own tags.
  • Develop good writing habits ... we all know that good headlines drive traffic.  I've found that TGB makes me think about my writing; I only have a headline to grab some readers attention.
  • Vernon and Tony are really smart guys, and I think this thing will totally take off.  Will it replace blogrolls?  Dunno.  But the traffic I've gotten and the traffic that I've driven contribute to the interconnectedness of the blogosphere in a good way.

 

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24 October 2006 | | Comments (4)

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