DISQUS

Todd,
I use to work for these guys. Trust me, that's nothing. Consider the ads they run in France: http://wetamericandream.com/american-apparel-en...

With the way that media evolves so quickly now, I wonder if Ogilvy would've ever even succeeded in advertising today....

Amen...

They are so sly...

But this doesn't surprise me at all. I only wonder why they bother with Firefox (I guess brand recognition). Either way, it looks like they're simply out to get MSFT....

Link love earns you brownie points, Todd.... ;)

You know that an industry is reaching maturity when ethics becomes a point of interest. I think that sorting our the ethics of affiliate marketing will be invaluable in terms of getting major brands to understand that affiliate marketing is an integral part of their overall marketing strategy.

It remind me of the ethics debate that waged across the blogosphere in previous years, and even even prompted me to blog about the "ethics of affiliate blogging": http://www.bloggingtips.com/2008/09/25/ethics-o...

I am so f**king sick of hearing about how everyone loves this guy. He's just a shoe-in because he's neither Bush nor some 70+ war veteran. Woopty doo. As much as the country needs change, I can't wait until he turns out to be the same anti-climactic dud that every other presidential hopeful looks like at the end of their term.

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The man is also a Rhodes Scholar...

Behavioral targeting is something that's obviously becoming more of a big deal. Maybe that's the idea behind lifestyle marketing -- i.e. branding your products as items that fit in with certain behavioral patterns.

The title, though, reminds me of this anti-branding video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RN7mTobPOI

I don't think that they're bored. I think Google gives them the 20% time because it prevents exhaustion. I might be great at search development, but as a person, I have other interests too, so I probably have some good ideas there.

Just consider how the likes of gmail and chrome probably came out of someone's 20% time, and have actually enhanced search.

Besides, Google moderator could very well create an addition crowd source for Google by brining more corporate info into the online (i.e. Google) world.

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Ah, brevity is a breath of fresh air, especially on the internet. Don't you think, Chris?

Your last point about Cirque du Soleil, Chris, reminded me of a concept that Zach Braiker mentioned (albeit not as his own): Return on Experience.

It seems a bit of a fluffy concept at first, but in the digital context alone we emphasize user experience. So in the real world, the WIIFM and Takeaways might just be part and parcel of the "audience's experience."

Who sells these shirts?

Did you ever hear of the social network Capazoo? I did 'cause I worked for them.

They had a tipping system for users, and they got nothing but flack for it -- well, that and a kind of referral program that tipped users for referring their friends.

The point is that users tend to be very suspicious about anything that compensates them for their participation. It carries the connotation that the product is (1) not good enough on its own, and (2) if you're actually paying users, there must be some ulterior motive for luring them in.

Hopefully for Salon, the fact that the entire tipping system is peer-to-peer will remove some of that anathema of a virtual micro-currency. It did, after all, work for SecondLife. However, there might still be a danger that users will be too suspicious to participate just because the incentivization system is there.

This is precisely the kind of approach to blog seeding that we advise our merchant-partners to do. I think, however, a lot of retailers just don't get it. With marketing staff who are from a FMCG world, anything that doesn't directly lead to a measurable sale (e.g. coupon, CPA ad, etc.) they are just not willing to entertain because they can't measure ROI.

What did this really cost Garmin, however?
Google Alert: $0
Communications Personnel: Annual Salary (doing other things anyway)
A single Garmin unit: cost

The Google juice from Brogan's blog post alone would be worth that, but I would be very surprised if 10 of Brogan's readers/followers didn't end up buying a Garmin.

I think that there are two things going on with how email marketing is evolving.

(1) A generational effect: younger demographics see it all as spam (in my opinion).

(2) The idea of permission based email marketing is changing. It's now more about community -- e.g. marketing a product to me that I'm already a consumer/user of. That is, I think that users aren't interested in being pitched through their inbox. Rather, they want content that's relevant to them, and if that content is what's in the email, then your open and click through rates will probably be a lot higher.

I think that right now, Google (and Yahoo) might just be facing the potential risk of being bought out by MSM company. If Congress decides to mess with their behavioral ad targeting model, they can end up in dire enough financial straights that someone like Rupert Murdoch could easily swoop in and snatch them up.

Consider: http://gypsybandito.com/the-real-google-killer/

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Just about anything would be an improvement on PR Web's email subscriptions. I've been on both sides of the PR flow, Chris, and I really feel that the web has only confounded the press release process -- but you know that already.

Now I'm just waiting for an invite :)

I like the sliding scale a lot, Chris. The only thing I'd disagree with is moving from left to right rather than right to left -- but only for poetic reasons: it seems to me that since communism is traditionally left, that's where the community managers should be, and since capitalism is on the right, that's where the impersonal banner ads should go.

It's a moot point, though, 'cause your progression in engagement seems bang on.

Jerry: I should have bought you guys out when I had the chance...

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All you just told me is that Obama has the youth vote. We knew that already.

The youth vote wasn't enough to stop Nixon in '68, and it might not be enough to stop McCain now. It helps to have it behind you, but it is no guarantee.

This is politics, not Google analytics. There are so many variable that we just can't measure.

Obama has the digital natives in the bag: so what. What about dejected Clinton supporters. They could either vote GOP or abstain altogether.

As crazy as the Democratic National Convention was in '68, none of those youths who supported McGovern or Kennedy were going to vote Nixon just because their candidate was nominated. They voted for Humphrey at election time, and Nixon still one.

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I think one of the DOJ's biggest concern is that, although the deal wouldn't prevent Yahoo! from making similar deals with other companies, they wouldn't have much of an incentive to do so.

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I think that something bloggers (and most people) need to learn to appreciate is that life is a series of trade-offs, and when it comes to your opinions, you can either say what you want, or get what you want (by keeping your mouth shut and focusing no influencing others) because if there's anything I learned in college it's that if you want to convince someone that THEY'RE right, all you have to do is argue with them.

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Your point about many SMEs not having the budget or know-how to get ecommerce enabled reminds me of MySpace. That network started out as a website solution for bands; it just turned out that there were more fans than bands, and some unsustainable growth ensued. The only questions now is whether MySpace will survive that unsustained growth long enough to revert back to being a network of band pages.

Something about the "Centralized Me," however, is at odds with social media -- namely that it's egocentric. I think that a huge advantage that social network pages have over a run of the mill website is they are integrated with other pages and (therefore) individuals. That gives them a lot more reach, I think, in providing some kind of trust-meter.

Then again, that just underscores your point about data-portability and how we need a way to carry trust from one network to the next. I agree that there's a huge impetus for something like Friend Connect or Facebook Connect.

This all goes to beg the question, then, with that kind of data-portability, will anyone really need their own site anymore?

I mean, wouldn't an eBay or CafePress site suffice?

After all, with portable personal data, the communities to which we belong would be accessible from anywhere on the net we go.

@Andy Beal - No doubt that they're having trouble with YouTube. I was thinking more along the lines of office-oriented applications, however, such as Google docs and, your main competitor, Google alerts. :)

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