Gimme a second...

I'm loving the Superbowl campaign that the Miller High Life brand is running during the game. The spots are all 1 second long. And with the cost of a SB ad running $3MM, this may be the way to go.

The beauty of this campaign, for me, though, is that Miller isn't even buying a true SuperBowl ad from NBC. They are buying a bunch of 1 second ads on the top 25 NBC affiliates for the 'local' rates during the SuperBowl. So while Anheuser-Busch is spending around $18MM for their 'true' Superbowl ads, Miller isn't spending anywhere near that.

Miller is also getting a good buzz on (pun somewhat intended). People are talking about it. (Over 3,000 blog posts about it according to Technorati).



It's a great campaign, and I love the way they marketed 'around' AB, got some word of mouth going on, and are spending less than their competition. There's also a Youtube channel and a Facebook page, but both of these probably need a little more PR from Miller, as the traffic doesn't seem to be that high.

I recently had a startup come into the office saying that they are going to raise all kinds of money, and that they want their ad to be in the Superbowl in 2010. They actually have what seems to be a solid, competitive product, in a growing industry. They may just make it. I tried to convince them that the $3 million dollars they were going to spend on 30 seconds in the SuperBowl would be much better spent on creating a true interactive marketing plan using search, email, viral, social media. For that much money, you can create an amazing campaign that will truly drive the business, be trackable, and drill down to a true ROI on their investment. Oh well, they have their sights set on the big game, with a one-shot campaign. I guess I'll wait and see if they can raise the $$ they are looking for. Maybe the VCs will get them to see reality.

The greatest campaign I've ever heard of which hardly cost the advertiser anything, killed the competition and totally drove the business: New pizza shop in Australia had a very limited budget, so what did they do. They ran a series of inexpensive radio ads, asking listeners to rip out all of the pizzeria ads in the yellow pages, bring them in, and receive a free pizza with a sticker with their phone number. Well they basically put their competitors out of business, as theirs was the only phone number everyone had from that point. And the budget was all of $700. Love it! As a marketer, this is the type of campaign we should all be trying to bring to our clients.

It's not always about doing the big, obvious thing.


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Obamicon Me

What a great little website. Basically lets you create a posterized version of yourself, to look just like the style inspired by Shepard Fairey's iconic poster of Barack Obama.

Love these little webapps, that do nothing but be totally creative and allow a few moments of escapism.

If you do Obamicon yourself, post a comment with the link. Would love to see what everyone else does.


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Obama Inauguration Panorama

Very cool app. A panorama of Obama's inauguration from Gigapan. I love the way it zooms in on the thumbnails to give you an idea of the spatial relationships between everyone.

You can zoom from this:




To this:




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Back to basics marketing

In my day job, where I am responsible for sales, service and strategy for my agency's Interactive team (the agency is Starmark International, 31 years old and going strong), we are focusing on 'the new,' the emerging media and social media marketing techniques and technologies that most other agencies are also trying to bring to their clients.

I was thinking about that a couple of weeks ago, and felt that while these are incredibly valid programs, there are so many 'traditional' techniques that could be implemented, and if they were would have tangible benefits. So I created a list of 100+ items, from very simple techniques that could be implemented in a day, and others that would take a little bit of planning and work. the idea is that before one implements these newfangled social media programs and start inviting people over, clean up your house/existing marketing programs.

We are releasing them one business day at a time on our blog, Livefeed. We've categorized them into areas such as SEM, SEO, Analytics, Blogging, PR, Email, Research. So far, we've release the first 15, and to give you an idea of what they are:

#1 Create a blog, it’s not for everyone, but it may be perfect for you

#2 Keyword rich press releases, why they are important

#3 Long tail keywords: a smart SEM strategy

#4 Anchor Text: Easy to do Right

#5 Track ROI Across All Channels (online and offline)

#6 Market to search engines with an XML sitemap

#7 Build your email database with a co-reg campaign

#8 Diversify your search engine marketing

#9 The more keywords the merrier

#10 Paid inclusion is always a sure thing

#11 Put your website on the map with DMOZ

#12 A spider simulator helps you market to search engines

#13 Promote your URL: Put it on everything

#14 Increase web visits by buying your own branded keywords

#15 Customer surveys

I will be posting updates every now and then, or you can check them out each day on Livefeed.

If you have any ideas of some topics, comment and let me know. Thx!

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This is a test...

I'm sitting here in my son's tae kwon do class, accessing Twitter, Facebook, email, the web, all from my mobile phone.
So I thought to myself, the only piece missing was to be posting to BigWordzProject.

Well, here goes. My first fully mobile post. This will open up entire new vistas of never being disconnected for me. I'm sure my family will be thrilled that I can now blog while at dinner, the movies, or when on the road (but hopefully not driving).

No Breastfeeding on Facebook

A recent ad I saw on Facebook for American Apparel:


As far as ads go, a little risque, maybe. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's a terrible ad, but then again, maybe I'm not the target demographic for it. And I'm certainly no prude.

But then again, with FB's targeting capabilities, it should probably have not been shown to me at all. So, all in all, it was a bad execution, and also failed on the placement.

But that's not the problem. The problem is that Facebook took down all profile pictures last week that showed women breastfeeding, whether or not there was exposed breast. There was quite a bit of uproar over this, both within and outside of FB. Either ban all (semi) nudity, or don't. But don't allow ads to run like the one above

In my opinion, this is friggin ridiculous. I mean, FB is a private company, so they can do what they want. Their platform has become THE social platform on the Web. I don't know what the statistics are, but I would think that maybe 50% of its members are women? Just seems like a huge PR opportunity missed by Facebook. How different would it have been if FB had reversed their decision to not allow breastfeeding pix, and then had donated some $$ to a related charity. That would have made the news, even more so than their original ban did. Totally missed opportunity.

As an aside, the divine Miss J breastfed all 3 of our kids until they pretty much weaned themselves, and I thought it was absolutely wonderful. And much, much less expensive than formula :).

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Understanding the purpose for social media campaigns

I was having a conversation about social media campaigns with a buddy of mine, who is not as 'interactive' as I like to think I am. Basically, he was asking me what the purpose of doing all of 'this social media stuff' was. He wanted to know why he should spend any of his valuable resources, time, and $$.

I explained to him that it all depends, of course. What was it that he was trying to do? He asked me, 'What do you mean, what am I trying to do?"

Like a lot of people out 'there' he was under the assumption that social media is an end unto itself. This thing that we are calling social media is just one (or many) channels available to reaching customers. And that like all marketing campaigns that would use any channel, two things that you have to understand are what are the goals for the campaign, and based on those goals, what channels are the best for reaching the customers.

Basically, what are you trying to do, and who are you trying to do it to. Based on those, go and find those people.

So before embarking on any social media campaign, truly understand is it a branding campaign, is it direct response, or maybe even customer service. By understanding what you are trying to accomplish, you will make the appropriate decisions about what social media platforms you use, and how you use them.

Technorati Tags:
social media, purpose of social media campaigns


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Very funny commercials

Doesn't really need anything more said from me.