“I am” - TV ad campaign by Orange prompts users to use search
Posted by: Marketing Guy Date posted: August 19th, 2008 Published in: Advertising, Search Engine OptimisationJust noticed the new TV ad campaign by Orange prompts users to “search online for ‘I am’“. A little bit optimistic? 
They do run a PPC campaign for the term, but with 1.1 billion competing pages, perhaps it wasn’t a great idea to include that particular step in the communication process? The site does rank number 6 after a couple of Wikipedia entries and some other unrelated stuff. What do you think? Is it a good idea to tie in an ad campaign with a search result that you can’t really dominate?
GetCloser.com by HMV - a honey trap to profile the unsuspecting and market to them (in the guise of social networking)
Posted by: Marketing Guy Date posted: August 11th, 2008 Published in: Social Media MarketingAn interesting new development from HMV (UK based High Street DVD, music, etc sales) - GetCloser, a social networking type site for music and movie fans. Basically, you network with other users in a similar way to Bebo or FaceBook - but for films and music.
Let’s call a spade a spade here. It’s a nice big glossy way of extracting loads of reasonably accurate information out of people in order to market to them better. You add in your music and film tastes and preferences so you can “explore other people’s tastes” - what a crock of shit!
Olympics marketing logo comes under fire
Posted by: Marketing Guy Date posted: July 23rd, 2008 Published in: BrandingThe logo for the London 2012 Olympics does not reflect the identity of the Games, marketers have suggested. According to a survey commissioned by the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), more than half (57 per cent) of marketers polled have serious doubts about the logo’s effectiveness.
I hate MINT credit cards!
Posted by: Marketing Guy Date posted: July 18th, 2008 Published in: Rants n DramaQuick rant about how crap MINT have been with me this year.
I stopped using my MINT card a while back and cancelled the card. Or so I thought. Apparently me cancelling the card but not telling them specifically to cancel the card protection plan means that the annual payment comes off. OK so that’s my fault for not outlining that I would no longer need the card protection plan for the card that I was cancelling….
Google agrees animated advertising deal
Posted by: Marketing Guy Date posted: July 3rd, 2008 Published in: GoogleGoogle has agreed a new advertising deal that will see animated video clips distributed throughout its AdSense network.
The search engine giant’s latest digital marketing venture has been launched in conjunction with the creator of adult animated comedies, Family Guy and American Dad, Seth MacFarlane.
BBC ‘overspends on web portal’
Posted by: Marketing Guy Date posted: June 25th, 2008 Published in: MarketingQ: Are keywords in your domain name an important ranking factor?
Posted by: Marketing Guy Date posted: June 12th, 2008 Published in: Domain Names, Search Engine OptimisationKeywords in domain names have very little importance in actual ranking calculations - that’s been the case for years now. The positive effects people see are a consequence of sites linking to the domain using the URL as anchor text - link text containing keywords is what helps the domain rank, not the actual appearance of the keyword in the domain name.
It’s a common mistake SEOs make - differentiating between “direct” ranking factors and “indirect” ranking factors is very important. People just tend to make the wrong assosciations - they optimise a keyword domain site and see it rank for the keyword and assume that this is down to the keyword in the domain. It isn’t.