New Mediaist is an Internet marketing consulting firm. We help industry-leading firms plan, develop, and grow their online presence.<br /> New Mediaist is in the business of helping companies focus on what counts.<br /> Our measurement focused-approach helps businesses target their online marketing activities, enabling for the further development of recurring revenue sources and sustainable competitive advantages.

Strategy

Engineering a better needle and thread

"Usability" is a funny thing: in order for a large volume of people to use your product, it must meet a minimum standard of usability, as otherwise people won't be able to figure out how to use it.

The strange thing is once a significant level of market penetration has been achieved, most companies assume that the minimum standard of usability has been exceeded - as if it wasn't good, why do so many people use it? Why change a good thing?

Well - just because something solves a problem, does not mean it solves the problem well. Case in point, the need and thread.



(image from Telegraph)

Needles do work, but damn are they annoying to work with. I've got pretty good eyes, and I still have trouble threading the eye of a needle.

But why change something that works? Could 100,000,000+ customers be wrong? Well, it turns out they can:
A better needle and thread - improved!

The Spiral Eye Needle takes a centuries old product, believed by hundreds of millions to be sufficient for their needs, and significantly improves on it.

What are the chances your product or service could also be improved?

Don't hire a marketer unless they keep a calculator on their desk

Marketing is an inherently analytical field:

"We undertook the following X activity, with the hopes of achieving Y result. We will have some measure to check whether or not we have achieved Y. If we don't achieve Y, we'll take a closer look at X to see where we went wrong."

That last part is the what some marketers like to skip. "If we don't achieve Y, we'll take a closer look at X to see where we went wrong." No one wants to fail, especially if their employer doesn't encourage failure. So how do you ensure you don't fail? Don't measure! As without measurement, neither success or failure is possible.

Not collecting and analyzing results has nothing to do with marketing medium, style, or just plain being bad at math. Not collecting results is a reflection of the marketer's desire not to be seen as a failure.

That's why so many ad agencies do a poor job of measuring their own campaign's success.

My advice? In general, you probably shouldn't hire someone if their main goal is not to be seen as a failure. They tend to work hard at maintain the status quo, which itself has a tendency to remain unchanged. Hence, why pay extra?

Recognizing a mistake isn't a bad thing. Having a calculator on your desk doesn't make you uncreative.

sometimes a face can be too pretty

Take a look at the following ads:

Now take a look at the heatmap of the ads

This is a case of design distracting people from the product. A quick change in the eyes of the model corrects the issue. original source via grok

...I am now a keyword?

I just received an email from a friend notifying me that "You are now a keyword". What does that mean? Check this out:

Search results for Ari Shomair

The back story is I am speaking at an SEO/SEM conference later this year, and it appears as though the conference organizer has taken the liberty of bidding on the names of everyone who is speaking at the event.

I don’t know if I should be honoured or worried that my name has made it onto someone’s keyword list…

The Online Marketing Secrets of the Obama Presidential Campaign

Jascha Franklin-Hodge, CEO of Blue State Digital, gave an interesting presentation at the IAB Canada winter conference about the online tactics the Obama campaign used in their fund raising/canvassing/propaganda campaign (see copy of presentation above).

One point that was not emphasized in the presentation was that the online component of the Obama online campaign was planned/managed by Chris Hughes, better known as Mark Zuckerman's college roommate, a.k.a. the co-founder of facebook.

The Wall Street Journal did an interesting article on Hughes participation in the campaign back in 2007:

"After graduating from college a year ago, Mr. Hughes moved to Palo Alto to work on product development full time at Facebook. During the 2006 campaign, Mr. Obama wasn't running yet, but his staff decided to take advantage of the growing interest in him among young people and wanted to set up a profile for him on Facebook. Mr. Obama's Senate Internet director, Jim Brayton, emailed Facebook's support team for help and Mr. Hughes responded.

Mr. Hughes quickly helped the Obama camp set up an official profile on Facebook. It included photos of Mr. Obama, information about his favorite musicians (John Coltrane, Stevie Wonder) and movies ("The Godfather" I and II, "Casablanca") -- and almost immediately drew messages of support from other Facebook users. "Run for president! Save us!" wrote Alex Sheperd, a University of Missouri student, in the first message on Mr. Obama's page.

Four months later, Mr. Obama announced his candidacy. Mr. Hughes, who had stayed in touch with Mr. Brayton, called to see how he could help.

Mr. Hughes was hired after an interview over coffee at Washington D.C.'s Union Station. "I asked him about some of his ideas," for the Web site, Mr. Brayton says. "He basically went on for an hour." Mr. Hughes won't disclose his salary. He has taken a leave from closely-held Facebook but says he retains an ownership stake and stock options."

From the tone of this article it appears as though Blue State Digital acted as production house under the direction of Chris Hughes, rather than as the strategists behind the campaign. Either way, way to go Chris & Blue State Digital on probably the best executed political campaign to date.

Chris Hughes will also be on the cover of Fast Company magazine next month (April 2009).

How to separate your business from the masses

Sorry for the long delay in blog posts - I recently switched jobs (don't worry, it was at my initiation), and have had to focus elsewhere for a short while -

I'm also still having problems with my blog template for a continued unknown reason - hopefully I'll find some free time to get to the bottom of that problem soon.

Anyways, back on topic. For all those viewers who tune in regularly, I was in Scotland last month at the Edinburgh festival. It was a grand time, and I highly recommend you all visit it. It was also a great "case study" in how difficult marketing can be in a highly competitive marketplace.

2007 Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Hundreds of thousands of people pass through Edinburgh during the festival season, as do thousands upon thousands of acts. In fact, there are so many acts that the light poles get deformed from having such a large quantity of posters stapled on them at eye level:

Posters at the Edinburgh Festival 2007

This causes a big problem: with everyone trying to stand out by having the most posters / flyers handed out, no one really stands out at all, as the consumer (in this case, me) just gets overstimulated by all the commotion. Interestingly enough, some of the performers realized this, and therefore changed their strategy - they adopted more of a Immersive Advertising - making people more aware of their advertisement by better integrating it into their natural surroundings.

Here's one example of immersive advertising for a play about vampires:
Dracula Coffin - Immersive advertising at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Pretty cool, got my attention.

Here is another neat example. One of the shows I saw at the festival was "Macbeth: Who Is That Bloodied Man?", a re imagining of Macbeth using Motorcycle, Stilts, and guns. Very cool show, albeit a little abstract at times. The producer's of Macbeth generated publicity for their show in the classic circus style - by prancing one of the "wacky characters" which are central to their show through the city center at a busy hour.

Macbeth - Who is that bloodied man in Edinburgh

Those characters were the witches by the way. They were carrying noise makers as well - you know, just in case the fact that they towered 5 feet over you didn't catch your attention.

I found the Macbeth interactive/immersive advertising stunt more effective than the Dracula one.

I didn't really interact with the guy in the coffin. I didn't see anyone actually take a flyer - almost as if everyone thought he was a theatre/art piece. If you look in the photo you'll notice how people just surrounded him, giggled, then walked on. Somewhat of a passive experience.

The Macbeth stilt walkers though, they were mysterious! They were interactive! They passed right by me, not even giving me the option of taking a flyer. I wanted to know more! Who were they, and what were they advertising?

Luckily the Macbeth: Who is that bloodied man? show was well reviewed, and therefore had enough additional publicity that I was able to put the stilt walker together with the show name. Publicity stunts only really work if there is enough information about the stunt maker floating around that the masses can make the connection.

That being said, I can't say I ended up seeing the show only because of the stilt walker - it happened to be very well reviewed as well. But there is no question it did play a part in my decision.

I mean heck - at least I knew the show would have a guy walking in stilts!

Negative SEO: How to hurt your competitor's rankings

While at the Toronto Search Engine Strategies conference a few weeks
ago I had the opportunity to attend a discussion about the potential
for malicious SEO practices, held by employees of the big 4 (Yahoo /
Google / Ask / Microsoft).

You can't avoid the Taxman

The South Korean Government has stated they are going to begin taxing the real money made via virtual transactions: In American terms, that means such things as selling gold on World of Warcraft, or buying property at Secondlife. Taxes will be collected at the service provider level - an automatic VAT (Value Added Tax) will be deducted from seller's monthly revenues.
Governments have been taxing the licensing and sale of intellectual property for a very long time; the real surprise here is they didn't start taxing real money game transactions sooner!

How to manipulate Wikipedia Entries

Searchengineland has an interesting article today about different methods one could hypothetically use to manipulate a wikipedia entry.

Manipulate may actually be too strong a word, as you can't really manipulate a wiki for an extended period of time (as another member of the community will undo your edits). Instead, you can make subtle changes to a wiki entry to influence the readers impression of its content.

For example, as suggested by searchengineland.com:

1. Add content to the top of the entry, pushing content you don't want people to read below the fold.

2. Change the organization method (i.e. lettering/numbering) to influence what people focus on. If volume numbers are quoted without sources, erase them with an explanation that they have no reference.

3. Manufacture paragraphs which hide negative content. People rarely read full paragraphs - make sure the first and last sentence of each is positive.

4. Super-extend a post: Internet users are lazy - the length of a wikipedia entry is directly proportional to the likeliness it will be read completely.

5. Include pictures to draw attention away from statistics. Use different sized pictures to push negative content in a low visibility area.

Just on a side note, does anyone else find it ironic that searchengineland.com does not have search engine friendly URLs?

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