A Wider Net

When someone needs reminding, I’ve been known to offer “Do you want an email, a post-it note, a voice mail, or do you want me to put a ginormous neon sign over your desk?” Well, it’s not ginormous - maybe weenormous - but it IS a neon sign, and you CAN spell out whatever message you want and hang it over someones desk. NeonClick is the “Lego” of neon signs, and as you might expect, it will probably get your short message read - so make it a good one.

Apparently these are available from International Robotics, but you can read more about it here since it’s not on the IR site yet.

Thanks Gizmodo

Having seen this in several places now, I finally thought of a way to tie this completely insane USB gadget into aWiderNet. The Striker II is a USB Missile Launcher that allows you to use your computer to adjust its trajectory, point a laser at your intended target, and fire. It has (to my knowledge) absolutely zero work-related merit. It is, however, the best way to get gadget-hounds like me to attend a webcast. Most of your audience has all the MP3 players and USB memory sticks they can stand. This cube warfare device would get them to eat a sandwich at lunch just hoping to score one of these puppies, since they could never buy one for themselves - wives and managers would never approve.

As you probably know, given the hefty promotion, Burger King is offering XBOX videogames right now for $3.99 with any value meal purchase. The games work on XBOX or XBOX 360. The question is, why XBOX? Part of the reason may be McDonalds existing relationship with Nintendo - sure. But there’s probably a good reason why XBOX and not PC or PlayStation.

So far, Microsoft has sold something like 30 million XBOX’s, including 10 million XBOX 360’s. The number of Playstations sold is just a little higher at around 110 million. The number of PC’s is in the stratosphere. Why, then, did they choose to partner with XBOX for advergaming, when either PC or PS2 provided such a larger pond in which to fish? One major reason is that the XBOX audience is far more likely to respond. They know they’re going to get phenomenal response rate from XBOX users – multiple visits from a huge percentage of that demographic (even though the games are mediocre - $4 is a steal, and XBOX 360 users are starving for budget games to feed their habits).

One of the reasons XBOX 360 owners will flock to Burger King is the wise inclusion of two critical elements to the games: Gamerscore Achievements and XBOX Live Leaderboards. Typically gamers must buy more expensive games and beat them to gradually up their gamerscore - sort of gamer bragging rights. The higher the score, the better the gamer (or at least, the most committed). The quest for gamerscore is addicting and it’s one of the key differentiators XBOX has over its competition. By adding XBOX Live functionality and leaderboards at bkgamer.com, they’ve fueled competition - a key catalyst for viral game sales.

Both brands are the edgy players in their space. This is a good example of fine targeting. Ideally they will achieve phenomenal response rates and, given the higher-end demographics of XBOX 360 users, decent counter sales from those partaking. Also, XBOX gets a boost because people who don’t have them now wish they did, because there are these viral-cool games being offered for cheap and they feel left out.

By the way, if the thrill of playing games featuring the creepy yet all-American Burger King himself appeals to you more than the food, you can always partake in another all-American pastime - overpaying for things on eBay. All three games, retail price: $4 each, can be had for the low shipped-to-your-basement price of $26. I suppose that’s cheaper than three value meals, several hours on a stairmaster, and a few rushed trips to the bathroom.

I’m not sure if the reports of myspace’s demise are greatly exaggerated or not, but the possible collapse of the top-five web juggernaut is mighty interesting. The conversations around this have raised some very interesting questions and reminded us of some valuable lessons about putting all your marketing eggs in one basket.

Myspace feels vulnerable for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it’s ugly and clunky. It just screams “give us something better so we can jump ship and quickly end the pain”. The banner ads are obnoxious and the ability to cosmetically tailor the page is limited to those willing to suffer through hours of inconceivably non-intuitive trial and error. It also feels uncomfortably “out-growable”. As Rupert Murdoch tries to leverage the 130 million users he recently purchased, his attempts to restrict music and other file sharing that made the site so appealing may cause a mass correction in the user base.

Puddlegum published a thought-provoking piece about myspace, claiming that myspace is about to collapse as its teenage user base moves on to the next big thing. With 3 million bands using myspace to promote their music, the article points out that many or most of these bands have put too much emphasis on promotion via myspace, and too little effort on their own websites and blogs. There’s also a great comment about the Puddlegum article on Blog Business Summit.
The Puddlegum piece implies that myspace should be prescribed as part of a marketing regimen, but not the whole thing, and not at the expense of ones own website and blog. I agree on all counts - myspace has valuable reach and viral potential. It’s also only one “community” among many. Guerilla and viral marketing in online communities should cover a wide variety of these communities.

Bands may want to check out purevolume, and companies should have a look at secondlife, gather, facebook, and squidoo (at least). All of these allow you to add a free to inexpensive presence that, ideally, directs traffic back to your own site. You will, of course, have to take the time to learn what people are looking for on these sites. Once created and in use, the benefits to search engine optimization are also significant - the links and traffic back to your site make you more appealing to search engines. If you’re interested in the heavy details, consider this paper from eMarketer.com, that indicates that ad spending on social networking, currently at $280 million, will balloon to $1.8 billion by 2010.
Spreading your marketing efforts among multiple communities while focusing on your own information hub should sound a lot like a sound financial investing principle. Keep a balanced portfolio, stay alert to trends, and build a solid foundation.

One thing is for sure - there are a lot of people hoping myspace fails and gets replaced with something better. I, for one, will be watching - popcorn in hand.

I’m a fan of Alexa, but this article has some good points. Alexa is a great tool for looking at the relative activity of a website. You can look at trends dating back several years in terms of reach or rank, and even compare several sites on one graph. Buy any internet usage metric has to be used appropriately. If you’re looking for trends and comparisons about a website’s reach and rank, Alexa still makes good sense, but understanding how the data is gathered is key to understanding what conclusions you can draw.

Ironically, Alexa appears to be down as I write this article. I’m not sure what their problem is, but I hope they fix it soon.

If you manage to get it to load today, take a look at the articles on the front page. There’s a terrific explanation of the difficulty in measuring site traffic on the long tail, and a startling graph of traffic on YouTube that shows a flattening trend since the acquisition.

With all the news about Michael Richards’ (Cosmo Kramer) recent standup comedy freakout, I find myself pointing out that Cramer starts with a ‘C’ far more frequently. You might overhear “no, it’s not spelled like the psycho from Seinfeld” coming from any cube at the office. There are plenty of examples of unfortunate product and company names out there. Some are bizarrely inappropriate homonyms, like the new Nintendo game console named “Wii” and pronounced “wee”, and others have unfavorable meanings in foreign languages, like the infamous Chevy Nova which, if you stretch it to “no va” means, sadly, “does not go” in Spanish.

So, when you set out to name a product or company, you can follow procedures like this from MarketingSherpa, but be sure to check a wide variety of language translations and soundalikes too.

In the meantime, please don’t confuse Cramer with Kramer. We don’t know that dude.

Confabb launched recently, providing a comprehensive online index of over 16,000 conferences (and rising). Using Confabb, you can “search, track, discuss and review any conference, speaker, or session.” This is one amazing tool. A coworker tipped me off to an article on Techcrunch that describes it quite nicely. It does a nice job of gathering information and assets from other sites, as well as building a community of users who provide first-hand accounts and ratings. If you manage a conference or are thinking of launching one, then you will want to leverage this site extensively. If you’re a compulsive conference attendee, unable to resist attending any conference remotely related to your field, then bookmark the site as your homepage and prepare to burn all your miles and points.

This is a bit techno-geeky, but on a sunday right after the Patriots smashed the Packers 35-0, what can you expect?

With any bundled retail PC you typically get a desktop full of “free” installed software. Companies like AOL have paid huge sums to be on the desktop of new PC’s.

What I want to know is: Who will be the first to buy a “key” when these babies become mainstream:

Each key contains a tiny color display using the same technology as cell phone screens. Software drivers allow the key labels to change for different languages or different applications. What not different websites? Wouldn’t it be interesting if, while browsing mtv.com, a function key suddenly changed it’s label to a Burger King logo? Or, maybe the manufacturer will attract certain sites (Amazon, Ebay?) to buy pre-programmed keys that ship with the unit, but that can be reconfigured by the user.

I think it’s a great device, although the initial $400 price puts it well out of the range of “need to have”, far beyond “nice to have” and firmly within the realm of “only if I was swimming in disposable income”. Marketers pay attention, however, as this may be a sneak peek of a new micro land rush.

Here’s a nice post about something I was noticing in our kitchen just the other day - Equal sugar packets with bold messaging. Since I’ve spent far too much time ranting about the fact that salt packets have “ingredients” on the side, which really really bugs me, it’s nice to see a marketing campaign on sugar packets that makes lots of sense.

Frankly, I’d rather see more edgy billboards on these packets, and I’m sure that has been done, but I imagine this hits the target Equal demo fairly well. I’d love to see how these little buggers boost brand perception.

Originally spotted on Seths blog.

I’ve been looking for a company like XYZ Imaging ever since my favorite large-format color hologram company, Zebra Imaging, dropped out of the exhibit and retail markets to focus on military and architectural applications.

Full Color holograms have been a reality for over a decade now but steep pricing, long lead times, and printing irregularities have made it a bit of a crap shoot for exhibits. Now it appears there’s a new option.

I like full color holograms over lenticular prints for exhibits because they have considerably smoother animations and outstanding depth and realism. Lenticular 3D has it’s place, however, wherever you need larger displays, backlit displays, or a low cost option for direct mail.

Take a look at their site (they even have a cost calculator), and consider how cool it would be to use these eye-catching, high-tech displays in your next exhibit, then raffle it off to one lucky attendee in return for everyone’s badge swipes.