European Bank (EBRD) ventures into blogging
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has launched a blog which is described by the bank’s Communications Director Reijo Kemppinen as an opportunity “to build dialogue, share knowledge and exchange lessons learnt in an informal forum.”
The first article, by Chief economist Erik Berglöf, describes how the global financial crisis has changed the bank’s operations, and sets the tone for analysis and future articles to come. Four bloggers are currently signed-up to contribute to the blog, and others are planned to follow, to ensure a constant flow of articles.
The blog was created for the bank by digital consultancy Blogminster Media, which is also advising EBRD on its digital strategy. Danny Dagan, Director at Blogminster Media said: “to succeed, a corporate blog not only has to look good and work well, it also needs to have something interesting to say. The illuminating point about the European Bank launching a blog now is that it obviously sees a need to communicate more openly with its stakeholders at a time when financial markets and their players have such high visibility.”
Computer Tan Hoax Draws in Crowds
Tan at your computer screen!
The invention of the vain century: Computer Tan is a campaign launched to raise awareness of skin cancer-related deaths in Britain.
It has drawn in the crowds, reporting tens of thousands of visitors in its first 24 hours.
The site was launched for the Karen Clifford Skin Cancer Charity by advertising agency McCann Erickson.
It gives the user a "free screen tan session", then highlighting how tanning can cause skin cancer.
Hair removal cream Veet bids: “Goodbye Bush”
Some campaigns are brilliant and of their time. So much so that people mention them to their friends and write about them on the blogosphere - a clear sign of a winning idea.
The ad campaign for hair removal cream Veet in the Australian Daily Telegraph was launched by Creative agency Euro RSCG, to note the departure of President George 'Dubya' Bush and in of course to promote Veet's hair removal cream.
And even better in context:
15,000 shoes cover Dam Square in War Child campaign stunt
Dam Square in Amsterdam was covered with 15,000 single shoes on Monday (17 November) as part of a campaign run by the Dutch chapter of charity War Child.
War Child is a network of independent organisations, working across the world to help children affected by war. The Dutch campaign is running with the slogan "one present less, one friend more" (concerned grammarians click here).
The campaign encourages people in Holland to give up one present from their Christmas list and donate the money to the organisation's efforts instead. This specific campaign highlights the plight of 250,000 child soldiers around the world.
Sharks? Dead in the water? Guys, these are lists of dead people! HELLO!
Is everything in Marketing fair game, Daahr-ling?
Marketing agencies use something called Deceased Suppression Files to save money and embarrassment. They contain the details of people who have recently died, and are used by the agencies to ensure they do not market to these people or contact them with sales calls (e.g. to stop a marketing agency from contacting a deceased about a trip to Disneyland).
One of these products, Mortascreen in the UK, has excelled itself in its marketing campaign. Or rather, it seems to have overegged the death metaphor a little.
Sharks? Dead in the water? Guys, these are lists of dead people! HELLO!
Marketing Week, 16 October 08:
detail:
Doh!
Understanding Website Statistics – Five Pitfalls to Avoid
Website statistics: what's wrong with the following statements?
1. My website gets 20,000 hits a month!
2. My website gets three million unique visitors a year!
3. Our statistics show that users spend an average of 30 minutes per visit to our website!
When you boast to your friends that your blog gets 10,000 hits, or tell your boss that your company's website has one million annual unique users, you may be setting yourself up for a fall.
Like most statistics, website stats can be misleading, and this article shows you some common pitfalls when quoting site numbers.
Website statistics – common mistakes:
1. Using ‘hits’ as an indicator – ‘hits’ are an old-speak term that expresses, well, absolutely nothing about the popularity of a website. A ‘hit’ refers to any file or part of a webpage that is downloaded by a user. For example, if your web page has seven images on it, then it will be counted as eight hits (the page itself is one hit, and then each image counts as an additional hit). It is no indication of traffic or popularity or anything meaningful about your users. quoting it shows you haven’t got a clue.
2. Annual unique users – website unique users (or ‘uniques’ as old hands like to call them) are a well accepted measure of a website’s popularity, but only when used daily or monthly. Not yearly. It is ignorant to say that your site gets ‘x unique users a year’. Here’s why: your website tracking code can only count ‘uniques’ by leaving a ‘cookie’ on the user’s computer when he or she visits your site. A cookie is a small file that the website checks for whenever the user views the site. The cookies tells the site that it 'knows' the user, and that it should not count him or her again after her first visit. Once you understand this mechanism, some of its flaws become evident: if a user accesses the site through two different browser types (for example Chrome and Internet Explorer), then they are counted as two separate visits. Visits from two different computers (e.g. at home and at work) are counted separately too. Overall, the industry has come to accept these compromises, and treats ‘uniques’ as a good indicator, for lack of a better statistic. However, this works well for a period of up to a month. Longer than that, and your statistics become too distorted. For example, over the course of a year a single user is likely to get rid of the cookies on their computer at least a couple of times, or even replace their computer entirely. If each one of your unique annual users looses the cookie that counts them as unique twice or more over a year, then your annual count of unique visitors could be half, a third, a quarter or even less than what your stats package is showing you. There’s no way around it: annual uniques are a fallacy.
3. Average minutes per visit – I often hear statements like ‘my users are spending 45 minutes on average on my site'. No they’re not. Your workmate Kirsty looked at your site just before she went home last night and forgot to close her browser, so it remained trained on your website all night. In the morning, she came back, browsed it for a couple of minutes and then closed her browser. By doing this, she has skewed your stats big time – and the fewer users you have ,the more distorting the ‘Kirsty effect’ is. Some web statistics packages now use more sophisticated methods to track viewing time, for example by showing you the median time spent on your site, but if that’s not available, don’t quote this number. It’s not really that helpful.
4. Page impressions – a trusty statistic, page impressions (PIs) or page views (PVs) are still an old favourite, but they too are not without their problems, and it all depends on how your tracking code is set up, so be well informed about your settings before you start brandishing PIs. Here’s why:
-
a. There are a lot of files that aren’t actually viewed and are sometimes counted as PIs, for example stylesheets (ending with .css) are also counted, and many sites have more than one, which are loaded every time someone visits your site, thus inflating your PI count. You have to check what's counted and what isn't before you use PIs.
- b. Every time a search engine indexes your site, it imitates a user, often by loading all your site's pages which may well be counted as page impressions. If you have many pages and your site is indexed regularly (for example by Google), you’ll get lots of irrelevant PI counts. Some stats packages exclude them and some don’t – you need to know which is yours.
5. Content groups and folder structures – and finally, you may want to beware how you present popularity of areas on your site. Most commercial website statistics packages allow you to define categories for different areas of the site, and then report on the popularity of those areas. The problem is that the categories in the tracking code often become obsolete in the time between when they were initially put in place and the many site changes and iterations since. You have to ask yourself how different areas are defined: is it by site taxonomy and structure, or simply by a category given to the page by the tracking code. Site taxonomies in themselves aren't a guarantee of accuracy either, because over time they erode, and an urgent patch here, a temporary page there - make them less reliable as an indicator of structure. I'm not saying that either of these can't be powerful analysis tools - they most certainly can be. It's just that you need to make sure you know what you're counting.
And that's really the endgame here –you need to make sure you know what you're counting. If you do, you can make more informed statements about your site's visitors. If not, well... Do not pass GO, do not collect 200 page impressions.
Vodafone Tops-up the English Language
There's nothing wrong with new language trends - and I've noticed how some companies (especially those in new media and technology) are now removing spaces from their names and capitalising mid-name instead, as in SalesForce, WordPress and many others.
But much like with text speak (txt spk), I think we aren't quite ready for this trend to spill into the rest of the language. It would appear that formerly-hyphenated words are the first victims, as is evident in this campaign by Vodafone:
EXHIBIT A:
EXHIBIT B:
EXHIBIT C:
Notice how they use both versions in one ad?
Design Agency Wisdom – How to Fail a Client Pitch in Three Minutes!
I got a call from a web design agency yesterday. The lady on the other end was cold calling the company I am consulting to, and somehow got through to me.
Here is a summary of the interaction:
'I'm calling from agency X', she said, 'and I was wondering if you were planning any web design projects in the near future?'
Now you see, I am this cold caller's dream target: I am actually looking into a design project for my client, and I was willing to hear her out.
'Yes,' I said, 'you actually called at an opportune moment. I'm looking for agencies to pre-qualify for a tender, do you guys design as well as code?'
'Erm, yes, we do both,' she said. She mutters some client names that I don't recognise and can't remember.
'Great! How big is your agency, how many people work for it?'
'I don't know exactly, in the 20's,' she said.
'OK, and what's the split between technical and non-technical at your agency?'
'erm, I don't know, I only started two weeks ago. I'm just... I can arrange a call for you with someone to discuss the detail...'
At this point I stop asking questions, she's obviously wasting my time. Why would I want to arrange another call with someone from a company I know nothing about, who has just cold called me with no further information?
'I can send you some info,' she offers, 'what's your email address?'
So I give her my email address, but on reflection she didn't verify it with me, and she obviously didn't catch it. I never got that email.
And here's the thing: I understand that the agency put an intern or rookie on cold-calling duty and that's entirely not her fault, but if you are out to catch a client - make sure the person on first-contact duty is prepared for the call that will actually get you what you want. If she could have answered my questions knowledgably, and talked me through some good portfolio examples, I would at least have considered her agency.
Now, but for this entry, I would have forgotten their name.
Update: Five days later I did get an email with more details. Five days?