the little things that matter

Adam Kmiec is an Interactive Marketer at Colle+McVoy.  His presentation on Slideshare about micro interactions is well worth looking at.

A marketing moral dilemma

It’s rare I get marketing related moral dilemmas.

“Tell the truth“, “live and breath an authentic story“; and I’ll be alright. That’s my perspective.

So is it wrong to positively promote a green agenda? Am I jumping on a bandwagon for commercial gain if I do?

Here is the dilemma.   Albeit, its very mundane and tactical (or is it?). Is it wrong (or innapropriate) to promote FSC and PEFC logo’s on newly designed letter head and stationery – promoting sustainable managed forests; or is it perfectly acceptable?

Take it as read that we will be printing on the appropriate stock either way.

Advice and comments welcome.  Is it just me who occasionally procrastinates on stuff like this…..

I’m ready for one of these……

I’m ready for one of these….so is my wife, my kids and my parents….read the story here.

Just how influential is Word of Mouth?

Buzz marketing: “low key”, “just for small enterprises”, “simply non-core” “not for serious businesses.”  Wrong. Buzz Numbers HQ report here some statistics about buzz and WOM marketing that every serious marketer should read right now.  For a more complete list of stats about buzz and WOM try the full article at FreshChat too.

The stat for me to commit to memory: Consumers trust friends above experts when it comes to product recommendations – (my guess is you knew that anyway, or you wouldn’t be reading this…..) but remember the numbers:- 65% trust friends, 27% trust experts, 8% trust celebrities. (after Yankelovich)

Update 22/07/08: Casting the net slightly wider than just WOM – I can’t really argue with these 50 Brilliant ways for Marketers to start using Social Media.

The mobile web gatecrashes the marketing mix

(Update 22/07/08 – dotMobi, the company behind the .mobi Internet address designed specifically for mobile phones, and AKQA Mobile, the mobile division of the AKQA agency have launched the results of an extensive consumer study of mobile Internet usage and attitudes.)

With the news that 40 million US mobile subscribers (15.6 percent) actively use the mobile Internet, the mobile web is set to be a sure-fire line item entering many B2B marketers marketing plans in 2008/9.

According to a recent Nielsen Company’s report (with 16 countries tracked) the US is the leader in mobile Internet adoption (by penetration #’s), followed by the UK (12.9 percent) and Italy (11.9 percent).

Whilst I believe there is an element of ‘lies, damn lies and statistics‘ about this report (are US citizens browsing, or simply downloading email / how endemic is sophisticated use in the US compared to Europe or Japan?) the reality is I probably shouldn’t care.  The bigger picture is that the mobile web is going to gatecrash the savvy marketers marketing mix quickly.  Very quickly.  You ignore 1million iPhones sold in a weekend, 4G wireless plans and the EC slashing of roam rates at your peril.

Which brings me neatly onto MoFuse – which allows webmasters& bloggers to launch and manage blog content (providing it is available as an RSS feed) in mobile friendly format.  All that you need to do is provide the feed, and in a few simple clicks your blog is viewable on mobile devices at a url like yoursite.mofuse.mobi.  Potentially very nice.  I’ll certainly be checking it out.

So to recap.  Why mobilise your blog?  Well MoFuse believe you should for 5 reasons.  I can’t argue with these, (even if i instantly take a disliking to the fact that a mobile advertising platform seems to be built in, Yuk!….I should be paying my readers not subjecting them to crappy ads) but the real truism is that people want to read content on the go.  Plain and simple.

How are your plans for m. or .mobi coming along?  Can you share your thoughts or best practices?

Bad news travels fastest

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to pull his pants up.

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965)

So lies travel too fast to handle AND you have a lot more fun with the truth.

Update 17/07/08: Using the same quote, eConsultancy blogger Drama 2.0 extends the analogy

Beautiful Word Clouds

I like tag clouds and have just found Wordle – a playful service for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.

It’s not a development of rocket science proportions – but what I like about it, is the ability to tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.  I think that this might be very useful for the promotion of online collaterals – as an additional tool for online précis.

Here is a word cloud derived from a piece of collateral written for Salmon (where I work)

Word Cloud

Incidently the images you can create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

The Top 50 UK Marketing Blogs

WOW. RawStylus (just) made the Top 50 UK Marketing blog chart. I’m thrilled.

But the irony isn’t lost on me, as I have been very busy lately (@ Salmon) and posting thoughts, ideas and ramblings has been entirely impossible. The listing is based on the AdAge Power 150 and here it is in full.

——-

UK

Global

Blog

1 (+1)	37 (+19)	russell davies
2 (-1)	48 (-3)	David Airey
3 (+1)	56 (+6)	NevilleHobson.com
4 (-1)	62 (-2)	Blogstorm
5 (-)	77 (-)	adliterate
6 (+2)	96 (+32)	Only Dead Fish
7 (-1)	102 (+3)	Crackunit
8 (+1)	103 (+28)	PR Blogger
9 (-2)	119 (+5)	The Engaging Brand
10 (-)	157 (+6)	Welcome to Optimism
11 (-)	180 (-12)	HERD
12 (-)	191 (-17)	A PR Guy’s Musings
13 (-)	194 (-17)	Make Marketing History
14 (+2)	199 (+13)	PPC Blog
15 (+2)	208 (+8)	Crenk
16 (+2)	220 (-1)	Blog Till You Drop
17 (-3)	222 (-34)	Modern Marketing
18 (+2)	227 (+13)	Spinning Around
19 (-4)	242 (-35)	Fraser’s Affiliate Marketing Blog
20 (+2)	278 (+17)	greenormal
21 (-2)	295 (-56)	Hobo SEO UK
22 (+4)	305 (+40)	Faster Future
23 (NEW)	318 (NEW)	SEOCO Blog
24 (-1)	321 (-18)	Life Moves Pretty Fast
25 (-)	324 (+14)	Wadds’ tech pr blog
26 (-2)	329 (-8)	Beyond PR
27 (-)	349 (-1)	livingbrands
28 (-7)	350 (-58)	Drew B’s take on tech PR
29 (-)	359 (-1)	Interactive Marketing Trends
30 (+2)	375 (+16)	50-Plus Marketing
31 (-3)	382 (-33)	Simonsays
32 (-2)	399 (-40)	mediations
33 (+2)	423 (+23)	Nick Burcher
34 (-1)	426 (-33)	Brand Strategy Magazine Blog
35 (NEW)	439 (NEW)	rubbishcorp®
36 (+2)	453 (+37)	Simon Wakeman
37 (-3)	454 (-41)	Raw Stylus
38 (-7)	456 (-75)	Living in a digital world
39 (+5)	474 (+43)	The Way of the Web
40 (-4)	477 (-18)	(Almost) Always Thinking
41 (-4)	495 (-25)	Pudding Relations
42 (-2)	502 (-306)	The New Marketing
43 (-4)	503 (-12)	[Bluurb] stuff and things
44 (-3)	521 (-18)	A Mountain Dweller in the Thames Valley
45 (NEW)	526 (NEW)	Vincent Thome’s Blog
46 (NEW)	539 (NEW)	London Calling
47 (-1)	557 (-24)	Unleashed on Marketing
48 (-5)	563 (-48)	Brandgym Blog
49 (-4)	568 (-37)	All Things PR
50 (-1)	592 (-10)	In the Cowshed
51 (-4)	594 (-47)	PR Voice
52 (-1)	606 (+1)	Indolent.com
53 (-5)	613 (-39)	Offer and Acceptance
54 (-1)	642 (-30)	Creative in London
55 (-5)	666 (-74)	PRwordSmith
56 (-4)	680 (-72)	Yet Another Planning Blog
57 (NEW)	688 (NEW)	From PR to Eternity