Jane Wamsley
Behavioral Targeting, Branding, Ratings & Reviews, Reputation Management, blog
Do you remember when you read your first blog? I do. It was about five and half years ago when a co-worker recommended I check out this “really funny” blog that chronicled the life of a then twenty-something guy living in the Big Apple. I won’t reveal the blog here, because it’s slightly NSFW (that’s blog speak for “Not Suitable For Work”). But the recommendation turned out to be a good one, because it’s a blog that I still read regularly.
Did I know what a blog was back then? I think I had a general idea. But I remember recommending the aforementioned blog to friends and some of them being a little confused by the concept. It seems strange to think about now, but blogging really didn’t become the phenomenon it is today until the turn of the century. While journalists and writers began experimenting with “web logs” in the mid to late nineties, blogging really took off after Pyra Labs launched the free blogging service Blogger (which is now owned by Google) in August 1999 (Peter Merholz first coined the term “blog” in early 1999, when there were 23 known blogs in existence).
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25Jan
LeAnn Hoksch
Branding, Google, Twitter, facebook
I may be young, but can anyone really recall when a Kleenex was a tissue, a Band-Aid was a bandage, and Saran Wrap was plastic wrap or cellophane?
I’m sure you’re wondering where this thought originated. It all started when I visited my family over the holidays, and I told my sister to “Google” directions. My mother asked why I said “Google,” rather than simply tell my sister to look up directions. This continued into a slightly heated argument on the topic.
This trend of turning a brand name into a general name for a product or action is known as genericide (this has been around long before Google and Twitter). Read the full article…
05Jan
Jane Wamsley
Branding, online marketing
If you’re anything like me, New Year’s Day usually involves nursing a champagne hangover while vowing to really, truly take full advantage of that dreaded gym membership. But if you’re a hockey enthusiast, New Year’s Day involves one thing – the NHL Winter Classic. The 2010 Classic (the third annual) will see the Boston Bruins take on the Philadelphia Flyers at Fenway Park, which will temporarily morph into an outdoor ice rink. But this year’s Classic also brings with it some truly innovative digital advertising sponsorship opportunities.
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31Dec
Michael Solms
Branding, Microsoft, online marketing
I came across an interesting article recently about how comScore plans to track the effectiveness of in-game ads on video gamers’ online behaviors. Advertising on consumer video-game consoles such as Xbox and PlayStation 3 is becoming a popular trend, popular enough that comScore sees value in conducting a study to gauge its effectiveness. For the first time, comScore has partnered with a video-game provider, Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE system, to track the results of advertising on online search. Read the full article…
18Nov
Erin Oechsner
Branding, Yahoo
To accompany the new search format, Yahoo! also reintroduced its brand this week with a new slogan: “It’s You!”
The company is trying to promote itself as not only a search engine, but an online organizational tool. They’re spending $100M over the next fifteen months to get this message across to the public. The campaign will stress what Yahoo! considers its competitive strength: offering services to manage personal matters, like sharing photos and exchanging e-mails, as well as to stay informed and engaged when big news happens.
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22Sep
Nicholas Grohne
Branding, SEM, Search News
It was not that long ago that a consumer’s primary means of finding a business was knowing a company’s URL and typing it in on their computer. However, as is the case with any technology- when a new and improved version comes along, its predecessors are often forgotten. There are four main reasons why a consumer’s knowledge of a company’s URL may not be all that relevant in the near future:
- People are using search engines to find what they are looking for (in fact 80% begin their online session with a search)
- Web browers are making it easier to evade URLs
- Twitter is being used to promote
- QR codes (these allow consumers to take a picture of an image with their phone, which will then take them directly to that company’s webpage. They have not taken off in the U.S. yet, but this and similar technologies will be the future of advertising.)
URL addresses will be important for the forseeable future, but the fact that a customer needs to know it to visit a particular company’s website is diminishing rapidly.
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07Aug
Quinn Sheek
Branding, SEO, Twitter
There has been a lot of discussion around the use of shortened URLs and whether URL shortening is a positive or negative practice for SEO and branding. The need for URL shortening evolved and became popular because of character limitations set forth by Twitter and other social media outlets. Lengthy URL addresses can take up a significant portion of the allotted characters within Twitter updates. To respond to this sudden need, URL shortening solutions were developed by companies including Bit.ly, TinyURL, Digg and Snurl.
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30Jun
