automaticable

The company I work for, BKV, is sponsoring a new site which just launched, The 60 Second Marketer. This site aims to bring snippets of information in the form of 60 second videos to busy marketing professionals. The site was created in-house, but many of the videos and articles were submitted from marketing professionals around the country. From a semi-official release statement for The 60 Second Marketer:

The site has a video library of short, 60 second tutorials on the latest trends in marketing. It’s perfect for marketers who want to stay on top of things, but don’t have time to read all the trade publications or lengthy white papers.

The site is brand new, so additional videos are being added all the time.
Current titles include “What are the most common search engine mistakes?”, “How consumers think,” and “What are the 10 forbidden words in an e-mail subject line?”

Contributors to the site include marketing directors, authors, Ph.Ds and advertising directors who want to share their expertise with other members of the marketing community.

As mentioned in the release, this is actually still a work in process, so not all of the videos are launched yet.

Let me know what you think of the site. It has a different tone than most sites, and I’d like to hear feedback on what your feelings are on the site overall. Also, if you would like to be featured on the site as a contributor, feel free to email The 60 Second Marketer here.

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I saw this advertisement today while I was browsing around with Adblock Plus disabled.  Is this not the creepiest thing you’ve ever seen?  It looks like they tried for a computer-generated face, but things just went terribly wrong.  Does this actually bring it customers?

The original ad is an animated Flash file, so it gets even worse.  I found it on AllRecipes.com, so you can browse around if you want the ad in all of it’s animated glory.

Even though I work in an advertising agency, personally I do everything I can to keep unwanted advertising out of my life. I have Adblock Plus for Firefox, I subscribe to the National Do Not Call registry, and I filter out as much unwanted junk mail as I can. Because of this, I have only seen a handful of the ads we have created at work out in the wild.

Because of this, I was quite surprised to see one of our ads for the March for Babies, a non-profit affiliated with the March of Dimes that was previously called WalkAmerica, show up in multiple Google Reader feeds today. I forgot that as part of our campaign we had decided to host RSS feed ads through Pheedo, meaning all of my traditional ad-blocking techniques would not filter out this message. This made me realize just how powerful RSS feed ads can really be; they are targeted to a specific audience, can be served in many banner sizes, and will reach people who generally block those types of ads. I’m sure there are RSS readers that block these ads, but Google Reader, as one of the most popular available, does not.

I guess more than anything I am happy to see one of our non-profits being hosted successfully through Pheedo and reaching a large, captive audience. I am glad I haven’t taken steps to completely cut advertising out of my personal life, as I wouldn’t have been able to see the results of what I work so hard on while on the job!

As promised earlier, here is my first post regarding my new position in the interactive media department at my job. I am specifically learning search engine optimization (SEO) and social marketing, so it is a hip new department to be a part of.

One of the problems with being part of emerging media is people often hear very little about the subject but have been told they NEED to be a part of this new and exciting marketing technique. The problem here is that social marketing does not work for everyone. The basic idea of social marketing is that you let your message spread virally through social networks, blogs, etc. That only works if you have something people want to talk about, and not every product or service is exciting enough to be considered newsworthy.

The hard part is convincing a client that their product or service, which they are generally passionate about, is not “cool” enough to spread socially. Nobody wants to hear that, and if you say it the wrong way you may lose their business altogether. This is even harder to deal with because of the mantra “The client is always right!”. As an agency our job is to please the client with the results they want to see, so if they specifically say they want to move into social media then darn it we better get them into every blog and network we can possibly find! While that would be an easy short term solution and would bring in more money to the agency up front, when (not if) the campaign fails, we as an agency will not look good and will have a hard time picking up repeat business. I am proud to say I work at an agency that prides themselves on their honesty about these types of things and hope all of our clients see the value in such honesty.

(photo from flickr)

In a few days I am going to be switching gears at the advertising agency I work for and move into the interactive media department, specifically working on SEO for our various clients. Other than what I have read in passing over the last few years I know very little about SEO, so I’m sure it is going to be an informative and exciting journey into the new department.

As more and more software and services become free online through open source and web 2.0 methodologies, everyone from student programmers to CEO level business people are going to need to know how to make money off of what they provide for free. Advertising is going to be a great way to create a profitable business and still keep products and services free, and properly implemented SEO is one way to increase those profits.

I want to take this opportunity as I learn about SEO to share some of the intricacies and processes that I stumble upon and share them so the every day person can get a handle on just how much goes into achieving great search engine optimization. This should be a unique view into SEO since I am learning from scratch, so the information will be as interesting and new to the reader as it is to me.

Here’s to starting fresh in a brand new department and bringing you along for the ride!