Healthy Blog Reviews » Business

Old Spice Reaps Rewards of Viral Campaign

cgseo — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:31:40 +0000

Sometimes an ad for a product is so clever that you remember the ad but not the product. Not so with Old Spice’s new “Smell Like a Man, Man,” campaign which went viral earlier this year. According to a Nielsen report which was noted in Brandweek , sales of Old Spice Body Wash have jumped 55% in the past three months and 107% this past month. “Gary Stibel, CEO and founder of The New England Consulting Group, said his data also shows a lift for Old Spice. “We think that Old Spice is up. We don’t think it’s up in the double digits, but it’s up meaningfully, and we think it’s driven 100 percent by marketing.” What’s not measurable is how much help the campaign had from the news coverage it received. Type “Old Spice” into Google news and you’ll find more than 2,000 articles have been written by everyone from Business Week to MTV to. . . us. If P&G had bought ad space on all of these publications, the cost would have been astronomical, but now they’re a part of advertising history and that is, to quote another ad genius, priceless. The “Old Spice Guy”, Isaiah Mustafa, is now on his way to becoming a movie star with a role in Jennifer Aniston’s new movie. Now that’s how you breath new life into an old brand.

Cup of Joe: Kevin Spacey & Google Play By Their Own Set Of Rules

cgseo — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 12:38:06 +0000

A few days ago Google launched a new “image search” user interface to the public. If you haven’t tried it yet you should go ahead and give it whirl–after reading this post. My first impression was wow! I really like how the images are positioned in a way that maximizes all available screen real estate. As I continued to search for images and test out the new UI, I had this feeling of deja vu. Something didn’t seem right with this search feature. For some reason it felt like I had used this before. And, then it dawned on me! Certain aspects of Google’s new image search resemble Bing’s image search. The most notable similarity is the absence of pagination navigation at the bottom. This feature change alone on a search engine can stick out like a sore thumb and create a remarkable difference in other similar image search engines like Yahoo for example. Many say that imitation is the highest form of flattery. But in business, there’s sometimes is a fine line between flattery and insult. And when the corporation at hand can drop millions in legal fees on a daily basis, the insult can have a devastating impact. But if you are Google that doesn’t matter. Why doesn’t it matter if Google blatantly copies the features of its competitors? It doesn’t matter because Google dominates a majority of the market. Which means that the vast majority of the folks running image searches have never even tried Bing’s innovative features. Likewise it doesn’t matter if Kevin Spacey imitates well know actors because let’s face it, it’s an honor to be imitated by Kevin Spacey! Having a strong brand isn’t just about making more money or building trust. Often times it’s also about playing by a different set of rules, and sometimes creating your own. So as you grow your business remember that even though there are other ways to create revenue streams, nothing can replace the power of strong brand.

Search Marketing Expenditures Drive up Global Ad Dollars

cgseo — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 10:25:36 +0000

With half the year behind us, ZenithOptimedia has revised their 2010 global ad forecasts from a 1.5% decrease to a 1.3% increase in North America . The change is due to a surprising increase in consumer spending and confidence despite rampant unemployment and most of the change is coming from the online sector. Newspapers and magazine are both expected to continue their downward spiral, while radio, outdoor and cinema remain fairly flat. Television is on the rise again after a downturn in 2009 but it’s Internet that’s galloping along at a brisk pace. Looking at internet advertising by type, paid search leads the way and by 2012, the figure is expected to nearly double what was being spent in 2008. Display advertising dropped slightly last year, but is expected to rise again in the near future. The fastest growing sector is social media and mobile advertising. Says Television Business Reports: “Between 2009 and 2012, ZO forecasts mobile advertising to grow by an average of 43.2% a year, while social media advertising grows by 30.2% a year , compared to 15.6% a year for the internet as a whole. The two formats overlap to an extent, since many consumers use their mobile devices to access their social profiles, and mobile social networking will become more and more important to advertisers over the coming years.” In terms of actual ad dollars, online advertising has passed magazine advertising but still has a ways to go to catch newspapers and TV. With newspaper rapidly folding and others experimenting with online models, it appears that internet advertising will catch up with them in the near future. As for television, maybe now that Lost has gone off the air, we’ll have a chance of wooing some of those ad buyers away from the networks and on to our weekly webisodes.

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Search Marketing Expenditures Drive up Global Ad Dollars

Content Mission: Search Neutrality, The New York Times and Google

cgseo — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 04:30:24 +0000

I realize this Sunday section I have here on Marketing Pilgrim is supposed to be concentrating on the business of content but I needed to say something about an editorial from this past Wednesday’s New York Times . Since editorials, no matter how ill conceived, are content I will stretch the boundaries of the definition today. The gist of it as follows. Since Google is so big and most people use it for their Internet searches, how do we REALLY know if they are being fair? If we can’t be completely sure should there be some form of government oversight for the engine to ensure its fairness? In political speak, this editorial is about search neutrality. Here is a slice of the editorial When Google was a pure search engine, it was easy to appear agnostic about search results, with no reason to play favorites with one Web site or another. But as Google has branched out into online services from maps and videos to comparison shopping, it has acquired pecuniary incentives to favor its own over rivals. ….the potential impact of Google’s algorithm on the Internet economy is such that it is worth exploring ways to ensure that the editorial policy guiding Google’s tweaks is solely intended to improve the quality of the results and not to help Google’s other businesses. So what this editorial is suggesting is to first follow the path of the European Union’s (EU) European Commission (EC) which has been hounding Google for just about everything as of late. The EC’s intent is clearly to limit Google’s ability to do business in the EU by looking to regulate everything Google does in the name of ‘fairness’. This comes from a group that is looking into Google because of the complaints of spam site producers and inferior search engines . Acting on these types of complaints is the equivalent of validating a street level drug dealer’s claim that the big pharmaceuticals are restricting his ‘trade’. Puh-leeeze. There is even a scenario played in out in this mindless drivel from the Times that half wonders out loud if the government should require Google to make its algorithm public! Some early suggestions for how to accomplish this include having Google explain with some specified level of detail the editorial policy that guides its tweaks. Another would be to give some government commission the power to look at those tweaks. Google provides an incredibly valuable service, and the government must be careful not to stifle its ability to innovate. Forcing it to publish the algorithm or the method it uses to evaluate it would allow every Web site to game the rules in order to climb up the rankings — destroying its value as a search engine. Requiring each algorithm tweak to be approved by regulators could drastically slow down its improvements. Forbidding Google to favor its own services — such as when it offers a Google Map to queries about addresses — might reduce the value of its searches. Notice the wording of ‘might reduce’ or ‘could slow down’ when describing the potential impact of regulating a company like Google. This is the language of an entity that thinks that this may be a viable alternative. Even thinking this way and simply bringing this idea into the realm of this discussion is too much. For now at least, we are a free country and our economy operates on free market principles. While far from perfect I challenge anyone to show me another system that works better. If you have had enough of my rant and would like to hear Google’s opinion of this whole thing then read the piece written by Google’s vice president of search product and user experience, Marissa Mayer, in the Financial Times . It’s worth the look and be sure to read the comments as well because not everyone outside of the New York Times thinks this is a bad idea. So how do you feel about the idea of the government essentially regulating Google? Is it a good thing, a bad thing or nothing? What’s your opinion of the New York Times going down this road? Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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Content Mission: Search Neutrality, The New York Times and Google

Yahoo: We’re Switching to Bing Next Month…or Maybe Next Year

cgseo — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 13:43:52 +0000

Yahoo has emailed advertisers to let them know that they should expect a full transition to Bing’s search results as early as August… …or maybe 2011. That’s a heck of a window! I mean, August is just around the corner and the busy holiday season is starts in just a few months. Either you’re ready to make the transition or you are not. Why have marketers go through the process of prepping for the transition, if you’re not entirely sure if it will happen now, or after the holidays? Still, the fact that Yahoo is emailing advertisers AND warning them to prepare not just for a switch in paid search results but organic too, suggests that the switch will take place in August/September. Yahoo suggests marketers follow these steps if they wish to be prepared for the eventual switch-over: Compare your organic search rankings on Yahoo! Search and Bing for the keywords that drive your business, to help determine any potential impact to your traffic and sales Decide if you’d like to modify your paid search campaigns to compensate for any changes in organic referrals that you anticipate Review the Bing webmaster tools and optimize your website for the Bing crawler, as Bing results will be displayed for approximately 30%* of overall search query market share after this change Oh, and Yahoo is testing some Bing results in July. Yes, this month! Have you spotted Bing in your Yahoo results yet? (email link via SER )

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Yahoo: We’re Switching to Bing Next Month…or Maybe Next Year

Is Google Getting Sloppy?

cgseo — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 13:19:44 +0000

I have a question for you. Do you think Google is getting sloppy? By that, I mean, does it seem like Google is pushing new products and updates out the door without first conducting in-depth testing and customer feedback? Exhibit A: Google Buzz. Turns out, it was pushed live without the normal rigorous testing …and Google paid the price. Exhibit B: Google decides to mimic Bing’s background images…then quickly pulls the feature . And, Exhibit C: After launching a complete overhaul to Google News, the search giant is now having to backtrack some– making changes in response to the many complaints: ..some of you wrote in to say you missed certain aspects of the previous design, such as the ability to see results grouped by section (U.S., Business, etc.) in two columns. At Google, we’re all about launching and iterating, so we’ve been making improvements to the design in response to your feedback. For example, we’re now showing the entire cluster of articles for each story, rather than expanding the cluster when you hover your mouse over it. We’ve given you the ability to hide the weather forecast from your local news section. We made the option to switch between List view and Section view more obvious. Of course, you could argue that Google is merely doing a great job of listening to the feedback from its customers. And, that is true. But, it seems to me that Google’s customers are doing a lot more complaining these days. Either we’ve raised our expectations of Google, or Google has lowered its standards. What do you think?

Twitter Beautifies Follower Notification Email

cgseo — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 23:41:49 +0000

With absolutely no fanfare at all, Twitter has thrown the switch on an updated Follower notification email that tells you everything you wanted to know about a person and more. The old notification email greeted you warmly then announced that NAME HERE is now following your tweets on Twitter. After that was a snapshot of their current followers, tweet and following stats. The new format does away with the warm greeting and puts the name of the Twitter account in the notification line: Cynthialil (@ Cynthialil ) is now following your tweets (@TWITTERACCOUNT) on Twitter. That’s followed by the person’s avatar, Twitter name, location and bio info before moving on to the stats which now include lists. The stat layout is now a table that resembles the layout in Twitter. The result of all this is more information delivered to your inbox when someone new decides to follow you on Twitter – but do you care? I would imagine that a large number of users don’t even have the notification box checked in their profile. If you have a busy account, or run a few accounts, it can get annoying, but you should care if you’re running a business. Your Follower list is open for all to see so you should make the effort to keep it free of spammers and inappropriate material. R-rated avatars have no place on your business Twitter unless that’s the business you’re in. Do you review your Follower notifications on Twitter? Or is it just a numbers game for you?

Google Lands Omnicom As Display Ad Partner

cgseo — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 05:05:27 +0000

Google continues to expand its efforts to get away from being a revenue one-trick pony. A recent result of these efforts is the announced partnership with Omnicom who will be using Google’s ad exchange to purchase display ads for their clients. With Apple having some reception issues ( nothing a roll of duct tape can’t fix though ) and suffering the slings and arrows of a bored press that is looking to make someone a target and then deem it news, Google is doing pretty well. Motorola’s Droid X rolls out today and Verizon reports that it is gaining in market share even without the iPhone in its stable of smartphone offerings. As the Wall Street Journal reports this new Omnicom deal is more reason to celebrate. Under the deal, Omnicom, part of New York-based Omnicom Group Inc., is expected to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy display ads for its clients through Google over the next two years, said a person familiar with the situation. In return, Google will work with Omnicom to build a global “trading desk” that allows the company to buy display ads more easily on Google’s ad exchange, an auction-like system that matches ad buyers and sellers to advertising space across large groups of websites. Omnicom says it was already buying ads on Google’s exchange using its own technology system. As part of the deal, Google, which reports second-quarter earnings Thursday, will provide analytics services to Omnicom to help it understand how its display ads are performing, the companies said. There are the typical concerns that by committing to one company like this (although there is no contractual restrictions as to who either side could work with in addition to one another) then Omnicom could ‘alienate’ other companies like Yahoo or Microsoft. Such partnerships also could create tensions among other parties with which the advertising and Internet companies do business. “If you get in deeper with Google, then someone like Microsoft [Corp.] might be less likely to work with you, or Yahoo might be less likely to work with you,” said Michael Brunick, vice president of technology at Interpublic Group of Cos.’ digital-ad unit Cadreon. “Ultimately, we want everything we buy to be in the best interest of the campaign. If you are stuck filling a commitment, that may or may not be in the client’s best interest.” OK, here’s what I have to say to that. What is this, middle school?! Does this really happen in business at this level. The “I’m not going to talk to you because you talk to them!” is usually reserved for hormonally imbalanced teens not multi-billion dollar corporations. Geesh. Just imagine how much incremental income could be made by others who pick up the business from Omnicom that can’t be run through Google for whatever the reasons. If everyone would stop acting like children there would be good business to be earned out there. Anyway, I know I am dreaming here because people are people and they make weird business decisions that are more emotional than logical (another term for this kind of person is a stockbroker). The bottom line here is that Google continues to diversify. It shouldn’t be too long though, before someone cries foul and says that Google is doing too much to grow the economy and create jobs (I do hope you picked up on the sarcasm there). Where else should Google go to diversify and become more than just a search company? We will hopefully learn more today as Google reports earnings and tells the world what else it may have up its sleeves. Join the Marketing Pilgrim Facebook Community

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Google Lands Omnicom As Display Ad Partner

Reddit Asking For Alms. Conde Nast Must Be So Proud!

cgseo — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 11:21:45 +0000

I had to do a double take this morning when I read about the plight of reddit, one of the original social news websites. Apparently things aren’t so good over at the Internet property. It’sso bad that they have started to ask for donations to keep the site afloat. I bet you that their owner, Conde Nast, must be so proud. eConsultancy reports Making money online isn’t always easy, especially when you run an ad-supported business. And that’s not just true for the small fries; it can be even more true for popular, heavily-trafficked sites. That’s the case for reddit, the popular user-generated news site. It was purchased by Conde Nast Digital in 2006, but a blog post last Friday indicates that all is not well at reddit. That post reads We’ve been kinda bummed at reddit these days. It seems like every week something comes up that slows performance to a crawl or even leads to a total site outage. And we almost never get a chance to release new features anymore. Our four engineers — KeyserSosa, jedberg, ketralnis, and myself — are working full time (plus many evenings and weekends and sometimes even the middle of the night) just to keep things going. Perhaps we’re doing it wrong: there might be ways to optimize our code, or technologies that could allow us to work more efficiently, but we’re too busy to investigate these things, or to migrate to the ones that look promising. It becomes a vicious cycle. The bottom line is, we need more resources. Whenever this topic comes up on the site, someone always posts a comment about how reddit is owned by Conde Nast, a billion-dollar corporation like Time Warner or Cobra, and how if they wanted to they could hire a thousand engineers and purchase a million dollars worth of heavy iron. But here’s the thing: corporations aren’t run like charities. They keep separate budgets for each business line, and usually allocate resources proportionate to revenue. And reddit’s revenue isn’t great. Essentially the rest of the post is painting a grim picture of where reddit stands and it ain’t pretty. So how do they intend to solve this ‘revenue isn’t great’ problem? By asking their users to become reddit ‘subscribers’. That would make sense in a world where it is understood that in order to survive any company needs to generate revenue. Apparently the folks at reddit live in the ‘free Internet’ alternate universe thus this apologetic request for their visitors’ subscription help moving forward. We’ve been trying to get this out the door for some time, but it always got held up because we wanted to write some cool subscriber-only features first, like the ability to sort your profile page by score, or have more than 50 reddit communities on your front page, or a button you could press to smack someone in the face over the Internet. We now realize that we’re going to have to put the cart before the horse: in exchange for subscribing to reddit, we can right now only offer you our undying gratitude and an optional trophy on your userpage. It’s kind of a lame offer, we know, but if the program is a success, we’ll be able to give subscribers better incentives in the coming months. We invite you to post ideas in the comments section; in the meantime, I suppose it’s more or less a pledge drive. Unfortunately, it doesn’t wrap up any better. As long as we’re going to be taking suggestions and money from you guys, we might as well also take the name you came up with: this new program will be called “reddit gold”. How much would you pay for this wonderful opportunity? $10? $30? $∞? No, seriously, how much would you pay? We have no idea what we should be charging. So for now, we’re just going to let you pay whatever you want. Geesh, this is just, well, pathetic. I don’t wish any ill will on reddit but I do wish a few classes in business practice and common sense. Can you imagine how the folks at Conde Nast are looking at this plea from one of their business units? Business ain’t so great for Conde Nast overall but I don’t foresee a pledge drive anytime soon to help the bottom line. Am I being too hard on this or does this really appear to be one of the weirdest moves in recent history by a site that has some real power in the online space? What’s your take? Oh and by the way, if you are looking to help out reddit don’t forget ol’ Frank here …….. . (Hey, I had to ask.)

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Reddit Asking For Alms. Conde Nast Must Be So Proud!

Mobile Status Updates Done By Only 10% of Mobile Phone Users

cgseo — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 13:50:09 +0000

Attention all members of the social media industry! Attention all members of the social media industry! It’s time to consider how the REST of the world uses social media in its various forms especially from a mobile phone perspective. I say this only because the chatter amongst social media experts, ninjas, gurus and Maharishi’s seems to lean toward the idea that everyone is accessing social media from mobile devices but reality may be very far from that. The Pew Research Center’s Pew Internet and American Life Project puts out some great data n its report called Mobile Access 2010 and it seems (as best as I can tell at least) to be free of the influence of someone who is doing PR disguised as research (another popular industry practice that needs to end). Here are a few findings. Please note the last bullet point in particular. Now, there is a lot more to this study like age specific breakdowns and also the use of cell phones for data applications amongst various ethnic groups which is fascinating. Please check out the report if you would like to learn more (PDF) . Honestly, I couldn’t get my mind off the 10% number because it seemed very low but at the same time seemed very real. At first I thought this can’t be right because everyone is using their mobile phones to access social media. Isn’t that the point? Being able to tell all of your ‘friends’ what you are up to at the moment and the place that you are up to it? If you read only industry media about this phenomenon you would suspect that this kind of thing is widespread and going mass market. Whoa there big fella! It’s not there yet and likely won’t be for quite some time. As with most everything I have ever seen in the Internet space the hype is usually about 5 years ahead of that nasty thing called reality. We get all lathered up about what is happening even though it is only happening for a very small percentage of people. This kind of overheating and over hyping is both annoying and dangerous. It’s annoying because it fuels the egos of those who are pushing this kind of irrational exuberance for their own gain (to be a quoted ‘expert’ etc). Secondly, it makes people lose sight of what they need to be doing right now to succeed. There is no doubt that this kind of activity will be more pervasive moving forward. We all have to remember though that when we attend a conference with thousands of people walking around staring at their iPhones, Android devices or BlackBerrys that we are experience this activity in a bubble. It’s not how most of the world operates yet. It just feels like it because like attracts like. The people that are married to their smartphones and record everything at every moment are a small percentage of the overall population and it may not make sense at this point to be getting all giddy over just how impactful this all is. Let’s face it, we are some 15 plus years into the commercial Internet era and A LOT of people are just starting to understand search marketing! We chuckle and say “Gee, I can’t believe that there are people that still don’t get search!” Huh? That’s pretty arrogant and actually stupid to say (you can complain that I may have called you stupid but I am first in line in having made that statement about search as well, so we are all in this together). Honestly, Google is still figuring out what is deemed ‘traditional’ search so why should we expect that everyone already has as well. Man, get with it, right? Search is so 2009! The masses haven’t caught up but we keep on running and leaving them further behind. That’s not good policy. I am glad that there are voices of reason out there like Pew so we can all have a head slap of reality and really help each other to concentrate on things that will help us today to move this economy out of the crapper. Pie in the sky business idealism will not get it done. Believing that the whole world is going completely mobile and will do everything from their mobile devices in even the next few years is silly. Segments of society will adapt and grow faster but where a lot of consumers are and will remain to be will not be part of this revolution. The truth is that there is a lot more money being held by people who are not part of this revolution than there are those who are. As marketers that should be your focus for today. Well, thanks for allowing my rant. I would love to hear the opinions of our readers on this subject. Is the use of mobile and social more widespread than this study suggests? Are we stirring up a bunch of industry Kool Aid that is keeping many from making good decisions for their business in today’s reality? Let’s hear it please!

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Mobile Status Updates Done By Only 10% of Mobile Phone Users