I Hate Ads

This is a recent video released by Microsoft aimed at...

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 23:35:44 +1100

This is a recent video released by Microsoft aimed at developers. Can anyone seriously watch this and tell me that Microsoft isn’t one of the tackiest companies around?

There's Nothing There

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 18:20:37 +1000

There's Nothing There: A brilliant post by John Gruber on Microsoft’s advertising campaign and their branding in general.

Here’s another reason I’m not so fond of ads:...

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 13:02:18 +1000

Here’s another reason I’m not so fond of ads: sometimes they just make my head hurt. Like this Microsoft one, part of a $300m campaign. What in the hell are they trying to achieve???

Some food for thought

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:01:10 +1000

In 2000, Google launched AdWords, changing the entire landscape of internet advertising. AdWords is now Google’s main source of revenue, earning over $16 billion for Google last year.

AdWords refers to the contextual text ads which now populate many sites on the internet. Three short lines of text related to the content on the page they’re displayed on. They include ads on the websites of third-parties as well as those that appear next to your search results in Google.

Users and web developers alike love them because they mean less clutter and less annoying flashy things on the web.

But here’s the thing: who actually clicks on them?

I’ll occasionally click on one that appears next to my search results, because I’m actually looking for something. But I think I can pretty safely say I’ve never clicked on one of these ads outside of a Google search results page. And I’m not alone here, everyone I’ve spoken to has said the same thing.

So who is clicking on these ads and where is Google getting all its money from?

The home telephone is dead. OK, that might be a little premature...

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:29:00 +1000

The home telephone is dead.

OK, that might be a little premature as almost households in the Western world still have 1 or more landlines in service. But the trusty home phone has been dealt a fatal blow and will wither away slowly to a similar status that the fax machine currently holds. Already, cap plans giving consumers “hundreds of dollars worth” of calls (a brilliant marketing ploy) meant that homestarters could simply add an extra $10-20 to their monthly plan and negate the need for a landline which costs $30 just for line rental alone.

But now, having a a home phone is not just unneccesary, but a flat out waste of money for most Australians who can now get unlimited calls, SMS and MMS to any phone in Australia for just $50 a month. That’s right, unlimited. With 200MB of data and some other goodies thrown in. All you have to do is sign up to the oddly-named Data Blaster plan on Optus Prepaid. What hope does the landline have?

R.I.P. Home Phone.

UPDATE: The Terms and Conditions for the Optus ‘Data Blaster’ plan were hidden away and the details of the plan were misleading - unlimited calls on this plan are only to other Optus Prepaid phones. Nevertheless, the home phone is still on the death bed as mobile phones plans include more and more calls. Of my friends who have moved out of home, none of them have a home phone.

Ads like this which use a popular song and change the lyrics...

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:45:34 +1000

Ads like this which use a popular song and change the lyrics should be banned. If I were to run for parliament, I think this would be one of my principal platforms. It’s been done to death and it’s extremely tacky. Ad agencies and the brands who commission them take note. I’m looking at you, Smiths.

This is a letter I received recently from my membership in the...

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:51:33 +1000

This is a letter I received recently from my membership in the Snowgum Club. The Snowgum club gives you 10% of your money spent at Snowgum back as a voucher - a clever idea! But the reason I’m posting this letter is because I was impressed when I noticed the sentence I’ve highlighted where they reminded me that I hadn’t used my last voucher yet and said that it didn’t matter if I’d lost it, I could simply use this letter instead.

In fact, I happened to be at Snowgum a couple of weeks later, without my voucher or this letter. But knowing that they didn’t need the actual voucher, I asked if they’d be able to look it up for me, and they did. This meant that I wasn’t hesitant to spend my money there and then, and spent $200. Good marketing, Snowgum!

Simplicity. It’s a very valuable thing.

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 23:03:49 +1000

Simplicity. It’s a very valuable thing.

Bad apple

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 18:32:00 +1000

Apple is a company I have a great deal of respect for and their marketing of late has been pretty damn good. Most of all this comes down to their fantastic products which sell themselves, something I believe should be the cornerstone of any marketing campaign. Their new 3G iPhone is no exception; a truly remarkable product. I also tend to think of Apple as a respectable company, with their products leading the market in minimising environmental impact, for instance. So it saddens me to say that I find their marketing for the 3G iPhone to be misleading and deceptive. This is from the front page of Apple’s U.S. site:

“Twice as fast. Half the price.” If only if this were so. Apple has been at pains to not mention the fact that although the upfront cost has been cut in half, the price of the contract it is tied to has increased, meaning the iPhone will actually end up costing customers $160 more over the 24 months of the contract, for the same service (or only $40 more if the customer is willing to forego SMS).

A sneaky marketing ploy by Apple that will taint their trustworthy brand image.

Web 2.0 terminology

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 17:46:50 +1000

Wiki

A website, or the software used to create such a website, in which users can easily create, edit and modify the content of interlinked pages using a standard web browser with a simplified mark-up language.

Wikipedia

A large and well-known Wiki site used as an encyclopedia, operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation.

Please don’t use these terms interchangeably, they have extremely distinct meanings, and it makes me cringe. Thank-you.

Google speaks on favicon

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:25:36 +1000

Google has finally released a blog post discussing their recent change to their favicon, which I discussed earlier. Google explains:

“The reason is that we wanted to develop a set of icons that would scale better to some new platforms like the iPhone and other mobile devices. So the new favicon is one of those, but we’ve also developed a group of logo-based icons that all hang together as a unified set.”

A worthy reason, but I fail to see that the old icon wasn’t scalable. Here’s their complete set:

To me, this doesn’t look like a unified set at all, and I also question the need for a contrasting favicon for the mobile platform, surely this will cause greater confusion for customers, not less? Google’s blog post also shows a selection of other designs they explored.

Apparently however, this move by Google isn’t permanent:

“By no means is the one you’re seeing our favicon final; it was a first step to a more unified set of icons.”

This indicates to me that the change of favicon was premature. It’s good to know that we’re not stuck with this one, but I would have expected Google to be a bit more careful when messing around with their logo. Changing it around haphazardly will only serve to weaken their strong brand image and confuse consumers. Hopefully they find the right image soon and stick with it.

They’re also seeking user-submissions, so if you think you can design something good, submit it here!

What people dislike most about TV? Commercials. No surprises...

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 10:00:24 +1000

What people dislike most about TV? Commercials. No surprises here.

So should we keep annoying our customers?

(via Brand New)

Some remarkable business card designs

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 21:21:43 +1000

From dailypoetics’ Business Cards set on Flickr

Google's new favicon

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 00:02:00 +1000

They’re the most recognisable, known and trusted brand on the internet, and they’ve just done some incredibly stupid marketing. Google have changed their favicon.

What’s a favicon? It’s short for ‘favourites icon’, and it’s the icon that sits next to the URL in your browser and identifies a website in your favourites/bookmarks as well as in tabs.

It used to look like this: . This was a good design, using the first letter of their logo and incorporating the red blue and green colours used in their logo (curiously omitting yellow) on a white background. If you were presented with this without knowing which brand it belonged to, you could quite easily attribute it correctly.

Now, they’ve changed it to this: . It’s not obvious, so I’ll point it out: this is the 4th letter of Google’s logo, which just so happens to be the first letter in lower case. A truly bizarre choice. This logo does nothing to portray to the user what brand the website belongs to, and is completely inconsistent with Google’s brand. Even the grey gradient in the background and the rounded corners present inconsistencies with the rest of Google’s brand. Quite frankly, it’s just worse in every way.

The design of this tiny 16x16 pixel logos may seem relatively trivial, but it does have a large effect on users. It’s the logo you look for when you’re looking for a bookmark to click on. It’s the logo you look for when you’re looking for a tab to go back to (for those of us who use tabbed browsing). Now that it’s changed, customers who are used to looking for the old one will have to adjust to the new one. But most importantly it’s a part of Google’s brand, and it’s no longer a consistent brand.

Television 2.0

Sat, 31 May 2008 16:29:00 +1000

Currently, TV is a very imprecise medium. Take American Idol for example. 48% of viewers are aged between 18 and 49 (according to Jaffe Juice). 52% are not. The audience for this show - which is highly coveted by advertisers - is more or less as diverse as the population itself. This is great for mass marketers, they get to speak to lots of people. But it’s difficult to think of anyone who wants to speak to everyone. Only a very small handful do.

This is bad for both advertisers and consumers. Advertisers, because they have to pay to show their ad to customers who aren’t in their target audience in order to get to those who are. Consumers, because they have to watch ads they have absolutely no interest in.

So what if advertisers were able to show their ads to only their target audience? In the past, this hasn’t been possible, but technology is catching up. What if, instead of tuning into a broadcast TV channel, you could go into a menu, and select whatever show you wanted to watch, when you wanted to watch it? Then, based on your geodemographics, psychographics, purchase habits, interests, and so on, a small number of highly targeted ads were shown to you prior to and during the show.

The number of ads you had to view would be a lot smaller, since you wouldn’t be watching the ads that weren’t relevant. Therefore, the ones that you were shown would have more impact, because there would be less clutter.

The technology is here, it just needs to be implemented.

Finally, some honesty in Connex’s marketing! [The first of...

Fri, 30 May 2008 13:42:00 +1000

Finally, some honesty in Connex’s marketing!

[The first of what I anticipate will inevitably be many posts on Connex]

(via Brand DNA)

Sat, 24 May 2008 14:09:25 +1000

(via Brand DNA)

ANZ withdraws ads from The Footy Show

Thu, 22 May 2008 23:33:00 +1000

ANZ have reportedly pulled advertising from The Footy Show following a controversy surrounding co-host Sam Newman’s treatment of women. An interesting move on the part of ANZ. I doubt that any negative brand reactions to ANZ would have occurred had the ANZ not withdrawn their advertising, after all, the people watching the show are probably the ones that like Sam Newman anyway. So I don’t think this move is about preventing negative brand associations. Rather I think ANZ is hoping that the publicity surrounding the withdrawal of advertising will garner positive brand reactions for the ANZ and create some goodwill towards the ANZ bank for taking somewhat of a stand on the issue.

But come on ANZ, if you’re going to make a stand on an issue, at least do it properly. This is not the way to do it:

“We are not currently running adverts on The Footy Show. It was a commercial decision, as The Footy Show in its current format does not allow us to connect well with the customer base,” an ANZ spokeswoman told The Age.

Weak. Of course, it could just be that the ANZ do not want to support The Footy Show for Corporate Social Responsibility reasons, rather than simply for marketing reasons, but they should at least do it properly and be prepared to make their opinions known.

“Christian groups complain when they see programs they think are too progressive. This is the first time I can remember that an advertiser has objected because a show is too regressive.”

Good move ANZ, but you can do better!

Marketing Today Episode #61

Wed, 21 May 2008 22:06:11 +1000

Marketing Today Episode #61: Check me out on the latest podcast of Peter Wagstaff’s Marketing Today, along with fellow student bloggers Zac Martin, Simon Oboler and Julian Cole!

A really creative ad for bird food! Bird food was placed along...

Thu, 15 May 2008 10:58:00 +1000

A really creative ad for bird food! Bird food was placed along the top of the sign to attract birds. Just brilliant. [Quietly ignoring the fact that their ugly birdfood ad has been shamefully placed in front of a beautiful old building.]