Channel 4: Swearing Celebrities

Celebrities share their favorite curse words for this Channel 4 promo spot.

I think f#*k wins hands down. The Brits are too polite. Maybe they should shoot their next promo in India for swear words that would make a sailor blush.

Legal stuff: By clicking on the play button, you certify that you are 18 years of age and above and are not offended by explicit language.

Chinese soldiers shooting Tibetan pilgrims

Dramatic footage captured by a team of Danish and British climbers captures Chinese border guards shooting at Tibetans on a pilgrimage through snow-capped mountains to visit the Dalai Lama in India.

Several pilgrims are killed by Chinese machine gun fire and others are taken prisoner and jailed by the Chinese soldiers.

Our bleeding hearts make a big hue and cry over alleged human right abuses by the Indian Army in Kashmir, but I'm sure all we'll hear is a great wall of silence as these so-called "activists" are scared out of their wits to take on China.

Where is the bitching?

What is advertising?

Is it salesmanship in print? Brand building? Communication? A function of marketing? Art? Science?

While the gurus have been debating for years, those of us in the trenches know what advertising is all about.

It’s about bitching. And moaning. And whining. And jealousy. And big egos.

But the art of bitching is dying, my friends.

Trade journals are peppered with asinine press releases.

Mr Geek is promoted as CMO of FallopianTube . Ms Herrfurher is now Chief Creative Grand Dragon at Foot, Toe and Bleeding. Mr Martian Soreyell has gobbled another agency in Papua New Guinea. Ms Firebreathing client sacked McCanned Erectile Dysfunction because the agency’s account executive broke wind during a presentation.

Sure these insightful nuggets of information are interesting, but where is the glorious mud slinging?

Who cogged what ad from which show book? Which media guy has body odour that would make a skunk run for cover? Who entered ghost ads ? In what shows? Who is the anonymous junior designer whose layout was filched by her burnt out creative director?

The list is endless. But where is the will to whine?

I suggest we take a stand against this rampant political correctness and start a revolution. Take baby steps. You have technology on your side.

Set up a blog without disclosing your name. Send an anonymous mail. Post under a pseudonym in forums.

Rant, rave, revile. Slander, vilify, denigrate.

At first, you’ll be labeled as petty minded, a troublemaker, a tattletale. Soon you’ll find yourself banished to the outer edges of the lunatic fringe. Pay no heed. All great thinkers (bitching does require that your neurons fire rapidly in all directions) were seen as crazy.

And years from now, if your gossip blog about advertising wins the Nobel Prize for Literature, please do remember to mention my name in your acceptance speech.

by Sunil Shibad

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License

Cut this odd coupon and keep

The Reuters Financial Glossary Wiki has been developed to give you quick and easy access to definitions of terms and concepts related to the financial markets. It is a community-created collaborative project, based upon a published book written and edited by Reuters Editorial staff.

Now anyone can edit, build upon and add entries to the glossary to create a helpful source of information.

The Reuters Financial Glossary Wiki covers foreign exchange, treasury, money and capital markets, equities, commodities, sovereign and corporate debt. technical analysis, and macro-economic terms. Also included are a number of IT related references that will help the transition into the new digital business world. It has a simple alphabetical format and is fully cross-referenced.

In invaluable resource for advertising and marketing folks coming to grips with words like mortgage-based assets, pro rata sinking fund, and yes, odd coupon.

Churchillan and other types of beggars

The Churchillian Beggar: Winston Churchill once said, "Never, never, never, never, ever give up." Well, this species of beggars have taken his advice to heart. They are often spotted at traffic signals. Once they sight you on their radar, they home in on you. Tactics like rolling down the window of your Corolla, turning a deaf ear, threats, or apologising for lack of change doesn't work with these doughty scroungers. They never take "no" for an answer. Their brilliance lies in their dogged determination; their single-mindedness. Though they may see richer, more gullible clients whilst they're spouting tales of woe and untold misery to you, they won't move on. It's you they want and it's you they'll get. Real professionals.

The English Beggar: This elderly gentleman, with hair graying in a distinguished fashion, speaks fluent English. He is clean and well-dressed and he is not asking you for alms. Noooooo! It’s just that "he has lost his wallet and needs 10 bucks for the bus fare to get back home". Or he has been "thrown out of his house by his cruel daughter-in-law and hasn't eaten a morsel in three days."

The Part-Time Beggar: He is normally a vagabond or a good-for-nothing who spreads out his palms just for the heck of it. If you dole out a few paise, okay. Or you can ignore him, but he is too lazy to pester you like his Churchillian brethren.

The Guilt-Inducing Beggar: This breed's usual habitat is the ice-cream parlour. Just as you are about to bite into a delicious Chocolate Chips cone, the pathetic face of an emaciated woman comes into your line of vision. She has an even more painfully thin child in tow. Silently, she stretches out her hand. Words are needless. The message is clear: "You are rich; we are poor. While you're gorging on ice-creams, my poor child with a perpetual nasal-drip is starving. What does the still small voice within you say?" It says pull out the wallet and hand over a rupee or two.

The Spiritual Beggar: Members of this tribe move around with pictures of a god or saint. They will bless you with eternal peace, happiness, wealth and health. But only if you "donate" a small part of your earnings to the Creator. After all, it's because of His grace that you are whizzing around town in a Zen.

The Clapping Beggar: He or she (one can't be too sure) claps a lot. Threatens you with curses if you don't cough up 10 bucks or more. Or worse, terrorizes you by lifting his or her sari if his or her demands are not met.

The Self-Respecting Beggar: He is a man of honour. You can't insult him by simply doling out a measly rupee. He will fling it into your face. After all, the vada-pav he wants costs three bucks.

The True Beggar: He sports white khadi outfits. Visits you every five years with ridiculous promises. Nowadays, he is likely to badger you more often. Ever since the trend of midterm and mid-midterm polls has caught on.

by Sunil Shibad

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License

Software generates video news bulletins

Software that automatically generates timely video news bulletins, presented by computer-animated characters, could revolutionise current affairs broadcasting, researchers say.

The system, called News at Seven, can produce reports tailored to a person's particular interests, from world affairs to celebrity gossip.

For example, one video shows a bulletin about attempts to corroborate North Korea's controversial nuclear test while another shows a more opinionated celebrity-focused report (both wmv files).

"The start point for News at Seven is a set of preferences for what the report should be about," explains Kristian Hammond at Northwestern University, Illinois, US, who developed the system with graduate students Nathan Nichols and Sara Owsley.

Using keywords entered by the user, the program selects news site RSS feeds and specific stories to focus on. "The stories are edited for length, and changed to make them more colloquial and suited to speech," says Hammond in the New Scientist.

How to make money off your YouTube videos

Entertainment Media Works, a media firm specializing in product placement, plans to enable "plinking" or product linking, in consumer-generated media. Early plans include revenue shares for content creators. Plinking is the process of adding a product or service link to a visible object or image in a video.

When deployed, it will have an interface for users to upload and tag video. Users will freeze a single frame and define an area where the product is located. It can be any product from an iPod to particular jacket or pair of jeans. Once tagged, the item will be clickable throughout the runtime of the video, and will link to an e-commerce page, writes ClickZ.

Now the icing on the cake: Under EMW's plans, content viewers and user communities will be able to take existing video and add links for a piece of the revenue share.

This could well be the monetization model for content creators.

Will YouTube allow others to plink the videos on its servers without getting a cut?

A nice idea nevertheless as it gives content generators their rightful share.

Get paid to search the Web ( No kidding)

Chacha.com is a brand-new search engine, similar to Yahoo and Google, but with the added component of allowing users to take advantage of a human guide to assist with their searches — all for free.

Beyond that, it's also one new way to make money at home via the Internet because all of those guides are home-based contractors who set their own schedules and work as little or as much as they wish.

If you have a computer, broadband (high-speed) Internet access, and a comfort level with searching on the Internet, there's a chance you're ready to become a Chacha guide.


This is a human-driven search engine so I am intrigued.

More so as Chacha.com CEO Scott Jones says that there's much room for improvement in online search, as roughly half of all searches fail to deliver the desired results.

10% of world's population shopping online

More than 627 million people have shopped online, including over 325 million within the last month, according to a study released by ACNielsen, the world's leading marketing research and information company. Over 212 million online shoppers mention books as among the last 3 items they purchased online. In addition:

- over 135 million people have purchased DVDs and/or video games;
- close to 135 million made plane reservations;
- over 128 million purchased articles of clothing/accessories/shoes;
- over 112 million paid for music downloads and/or CDs;
- over 106 million purchased electronic devices (including cameras,
etc);
- close to 98 million bought computer hardware; and
- over 86 million consumers made hotel and/or tour bookings.

The twice-yearly global ACNielsen Online Consumer Opinion Survey, the
largest of its kind, polled over 21,100 respondents in 38 markets from Europe,
Asia Pacific, North America, Latin America and South Africa.

Seasoned Greetings

You are seasoned
You are a veteran
You get a zillion Diwali greetings
And are up to your gills with them
You positively hate them
You delete them
Here's one more
To immunize you against such repetitive greetings
Wishing you a Happy Diwali and a Joyous New Year.


Sunil

Dream Sheep

An insomniac tries counting sheep to get to sleep, but one rascally sheep just wants to play.




Dream Sheep is written and animated by Ted Nunes, a part of the team at Full Tilt Features.

Watch this space as Full Tilt and The Flea plan to roll out some exciting animation projects in USA and India soon.

Your feedback would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Sunil

Are you tired of search marketing?

Every online marketing plan includes search marketing. Though search marketing is no doubt effective, consider that organic SEO can take anything between 6-9 months to get your site listed. With keyword prices going through the roof, PPC ads are proving to be frightfully expensive.

Getting a decent rank in the major search engines is a long drawn out battle and more often than not, those with the bigger marketing budgets win. What then is the alternative? Viral marketing.

But what is viral marketing? Viral marketing is defined as a strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the marketing message's exposure.

Here are some viral marketing tactics that can help you stand out in the cluttered online world, without paying through your nose:

Email Forwards.

This is the most simple and low-cost viral tactic. You'll get more forwards if your email content is funny, controversial or shocking. It can be a cool photograph or just plain text. Be careful not to let your brand’s message be too overt or your email will end up in spam folders.

Tell a Friend Offer

Put in a “Tell a Friend” box on the end of online promotional offers. Visitors seeing the offer will happily pass it on to their network of friends.

Funny Video Clips

Nowadays, witty and humorous video clips are wildly popular. They go a long way in creating brand awareness with no media spend. With video sharing sites like YouTube getting over 100 million hits day, viral videos more often than not cover their cost of production.

Online Games

Sponsor an online game. On an average, gamers spend up to 20 minutes per play. That's 20 whole minutes for your brand to quietly make its presence felt in the background as a sponsor.

Flash Games

If you cannot afford to sponsor a high-end online game, consider creating a low-budget, fun Flash game. Send it out to all your friends and associates. Remember to include your website URL in the game.

Free Downloads

Offer a free digital download. It could be a free ebook, screen saver or software program, but bear in mind that your free download should be useful and unique.

Branded Microsites
Branded microsites are favored by many of the bigger advertisers. Burger King’s http://www.subservientchicken.com did wonders for the brand online and offline. Ditto with Axe’s http://www.axefeather.com

Branded microsites may be a bit expensive but the more than make up with the buzz factor, eyeballs and backlinks.

Article Marketing

To build effective and lasting online popularity there is nothing better than publishing quality content on a regular basis.

Here is an example: I grant permission to reproduce on your website or blog the article you’re reading "Are you tired of search marketing?" (http://newnimproved.blogspot.com/2006/10/are-you-tired-of-search-marketing.html ) without any alteration whatsoever. Include the copyright statement, too, please. If you have an advertising or marketing website, it'll provide great content and help your visitors learn the latest Internet marketing strategies.


Copyright © 2006 Sunil Shibad, http://newnimproved.blogspot.com.
All rights reserved. Permission granted to reprint this article on your website without alteration if you include this copyright statement and leave the hyperlinks live and in place.

'Tis the season to begin online marketing

The rush to attract online consumers will begin early this year, rather than wait for the Thanksgiving weekend. By Nov 4, more than half, 62.5 percent, of multichannel retailers said they would start holiday promotions, and 38.5 percent would at least begin to market sales.

Retailers plans to tap blogs, RSS feeds and viral marketing to attract more online sales this year, according to the 2006 eHoliday Mood Survey released Wednesday. The study was conducted by BizRate Research for Shopzilla and Shop.org (via InternetWeek.)

Now is the time chalk out your online marketing strategy for the holidays. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds is a powerful and cost-effective way to boost your search engine ranking, get more holiday shoppers to visit your site and possibly increase sales.

My Cubicle

Sweet Joan just sent me, “My Cubicle” , a wickedly funny parody of James Blunt's "You're Beautiful".






“My Cubicle”

By Morning Sidekick

My job is stupid my day’s a bore,
Inside this office from eight to four
Nothin’ ever happens my life is pretty bland,
Pretending that I’m working, pray I don’t get canned.

My Cubicle, My cubicle
It’s One of Sixty two
It’s my small space in a crowded place
Just a six-by-six foot booth
And I hate it that’s the truth

Well, I give a sigh as the boss walks by,
no one ever talks to me or looks me in the eye.
And I really should work but instead I just sit here and surf the Internet.

In My Cubicle, My cubicle
It doesn’t have a view.
It’s my small space in a crowded place
I sit in solitude.
And sometimes I sit here nude.

How to run a successful ad agency

Of late I have been noticing posts around the blogosphere that basically give tips to us moronic creative types on how to run a successful advertising agency.

They are as follows:


1. Snag a client. Preferably your maternal uncle.

2. Take down his brief (no pun intented).

3. Pad it with four or five words of jargon and pass it on to the creative team

4. Ask for several options.

5. Reject until deadline looms.

6. Curse creative team and show client ad anyway.

7. Client incorporates necessary changes and wants the logo increased by 500% with 50 starbursts and 5 coupons.

8. Kick creative ass. Give them lessons on how to be “business-minded” and a “mature professional” (which they have heard N number of times in their prior agencies).

9. Focus on bottomline, forget headlines.

10. Please client, his wife, his golfing buddies and his great grand aunt ( all who indirectly add their own two bits).

11. Release mediocre, dull, committee-driven ad which downright insults the customer’s intelligence.

12. Back it up with million bucks of media spend and brainwash customer rather than gently persuade him.

13. Claim success for sales which had nothing to do with the advertising but other factors: monopoly, weak competition, great distribution, dealer push, strong existing brand equity, etc.

14. Reduce creative director to figurehead.

15. Rationalize bad ads.

16. Suck up to potential clients at trade gatherings.

17. Go to Step 1 and repeat entire process till you can sell out to big network agency.

~ Sunil Shibad.

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0

Dove : Evolution

This amazing TV commercial from Dove takes a fresh look at the old adage: beauty is just skin deep. Does wonders for a woman's self-esteem.

YouTube is not king of the hill

Last week's big news was Google's impending purchase of YouTube. Some might argue, however, the more interesting news was Mark Cuban's comments days earlier about Google's move: "Anyone who buys [YouTube] is a moron." The reasons for his comments are based on the copyright issues YouTube potentially faces.

But did you know YouTube isn't the top video site in the U.S.? Interestingly, the biggest one is MySpace. At least if you count the number of streams viewed. If you're counting the number of people streaming, Yahoo ranks number one. Surprised? Read on.

The rich get richer

This short cartoon film, Social Engineering, about the growing disparity of income between rich and poor gets the point across cleverly.

Calvin and Hobbes on writing

This is the one of four panels where Calvin and Hobbes talk about writing.

Click here for the full strip.

The creator of Calvin and Hobbes is Bill Watterson.

10 most valuable free Google marketing tools

Google has become the dominant search engine on the Internet. It would be hard to imagine a web without Google. For that matter, it would now be hard to imagine a world without Google. As frightening as that may seem to many people, it is none the less true.

For better or worst, Google has permeated into almost every aspect of our everyday life. Being Googled is now a common expression and an act carried out by millions of users around the world each day. New Google products and services are coming on stream at a frightening pace, further increasing Google's impact on our lives.

Despite this dominating presence, many people still don't realize Google offers some excellent free marketing tools for marketers and webmasters. Marketing tools which can prove extremely valuable to any webmaster or marketer trying to promote their sites or products online. Useful tools that will make your promotions easier and much more profitable.

Don't be fooled by the 'free' label, these marketing tools might be free but there are also valuable. One even wonders why Google would be giving away these tools and services for free? It probably makes good business sense in the long run, by providing these free tools Google is fostering a lot of company good-will and building up the Google brand name in the process. Good PR is good business.

Every marketer and webmaster should be taking advantage of Google's good-will and snapping up these professionally run services and marketing tools. Here's a quick run-down of the 10 most valuable free Google Internet marketing tools:


1. Google Analytics

Perhaps the premier marketing tool offered by Google. It will prove helpful to both the marketer and the webmaster.

Google Analytics gives you a daily snapshot of your web site. Google Analytics analyzes your traffic, where it comes from and what it does once it enters your site. You can monitor up to three sites for free.

Google Analytics is extremely valuable in analyzing your marketing funnel, it tracks all the steps leading up to your sales or checkout page. Vital information for raising your conversion rate and ROI.

You may be placed on a waiting list for this highly in demand service from Google.
LINK: http://www.google.com/analytics/

2. Google Sitemaps

Webmasters can use Google Sitemaps to almost instantly place newly created pages on their site into the Google Search Index. This is an XML file that is uploaded to Google as new pages are added on your site. Needless to say this can be a valuable service for any webmaster or marketer who wants to get their information on the web quickly.
LINK: https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/about.html

3. Google Alerts

Be notified when someone or another site lists your site or mentions your name. Great way to keep track of all your online activities. Great way to monitor all your online business interests and products.
LINK: http://www.google.com/alerts

4. Google Froogle

Froogle is Google's price directory! It simply lists all the cheapest prices for different products on the web. For marketers and webmasters who are promoting products, it should be studied and analyzed. Optimizing your site's content for Froogle may prove to be very beneficial.

Follow Froogle or Google directions exactly on how to list or display products on your site. Froogle will spider your site and display your prices and products to thousands of targeted customers. That, as they say, is priceless.
LINK: http://froogle.google.com/

5. Google Checkout

Not exactly free but for those marketers who use AdWords - for every $1 spent on AdWords you can process $10 for free. You can also place the shopping cart logo on your AdWords ad and take advantage of the prestige and trust the Google brand name has built up.

Over time marketers may find this tool to be very effective and valuable.

LINK: https://checkout.google.com/

6. Google eBlogger

Blogging has become vitally important to the health and functioning of your web site. No site should be without at least one blog and RSS feed. Creating a blog (online journal) on the topic of your web site or product will bring in extra traffic and targeted customers.

eBlogger is a simple free blogging service that even lets you publish or post your blog files to your own web site server. Keep in mind, each blog has that all important Google Blog Search bar.
LINK: http://www.blogger.com/

7. Google Toolbar - Enterprise Version

Try the new enterprise version of the Google Toolbar for your company or business. Integrates countless features with all your employees or corporate network. These could include a common customer database, company calendar, financial news...Keep in mind, Google also ranks every page it indexes on a scale of 0-10.

While it is important to know the Page Rank of your own pages, it is even more important to know the PR of your competitor's pages. You can use the toolbar to get the PR of each page you're visiting.

Extremely helpful information for webmasters and marketers to know when forming online linking or business arrangements.
LINK: http://toolbar.google.com/T4/enterprise/

8. Google Groups

Every marketer knows the important of having a large contact list of people with a similar interest. Social networking will play an ever increasing role in your success on the web. Just look at the growing popularity of sites like MySpace and LiveJournal.

Google groups is another form of social and business networking that every marketer should be aware of and pursuing.
LINK: http://groups.google.com/

9. Google Adsense

One simple way to monetize your web content is to use Google Adsense. Just place the Adsense code on your site and receive a check from Google each month. For webmasters who are not really into online marketing (does such creatures exist?) Adsense can be a painless way to earn extra income from your site.

For professional marketers using the Adsense system can supply a tremendous amount of marketing information on the keywords in their particular niche. It keeps the marketer informed on what keywords are being bid on and how much advertisers are willing to pay.

Adsense also has an excellent real-time tracking system you can use to keep track of all your important web pages.
LINK: https://www.google.com/adsense/


10. Google Writely

A recent addition to Google's stable of free products. Writely is a full featured online writing editor with spellcheck and great collaborating features. It also lets you publish your content directly to your blogs. One feature that may be of interest to marketers, it lets your save files in the popular download format of PDF.

Let's face it, until video takes over the web in four or five years time - the written word is still king on the net. It is the medium that markets, promotes and sells your content or products. Writely will help you write better.
LINK: http://www.writely.com/

Honorable Mention - Google Trends

This Google program will let you search popular trends, important for marketers searching for the latest hot product to promote. You can also break down these trends by different regions.
LINK: http://www.google.com/trends

Final Note: Please take note that signing up for a Google account will usually help you in obtaining most of these free services or programs. Some of these programs may have to be applied for individually. But be assured, all these free Google marketing tools are well worth your time and effort. They will make your marketing easier and they will help any webmaster or marketer run their online business more efficiently.


About This Author: The author is a full-time online marketer who runs numerous web sites, including two sites on Internet marketing. For the latest web marketing tools try: http://www.bizwaremagic.com/ Everyone is profiting from Google, why not you? Go here: http://www.bizwaremagic.com/Google_Cash_File.htm2006 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Fool around with cheerleaders

Do you love cheerleaders? Yes? Then you’ll love dragging and dropping cute cheerleaders around the page in an attempt to make your own commercial.

The website is a promotion for CMT's The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Making the Team reality show.

A neat idea indeed ( via Adrants) .

The immediate effects of quitting smoking

Here’s a little timeline about some of the more immediate effects of quitting smoking and how that will affect your body right now:

In 20 minutes your blood pressure will drop back down to normal.

In 8 hours the carbon monoxide (a toxic gas) levels in your blood stream will drop by half, and oxygen levels will return to normal.

In 48 hours your chance of having a heart attack will have decreased. All nicotine will have left your body. Your sense of taste and smell will return to a normal level.

Read more of "What happens to your body if you stop smoking right now?"

Will Web 2.0 leave India with a zero?

There may be more than a billion people in India, but even an Internet superstar like Google Inc. has trouble recruiting talented locals in its South Asian operations, reports MSNBC.

If Google is facing problems finding good talent, I can imagine the plight of our very own Infosys, TCS, Wipro, Satyam and others.

True these tech companies are darlings of shareholders, but how are they seen by your average Joe in America?

If you enter the call + center + hate into the popular search engines, you get over two and a half million pages.

Have our IT and BPO companies done anything to build a positive brand image with the people of America?

IBM organized the famous Deep Blue versus chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov face off, Amazon sponsors online short film festivals, Apple designs iconic products like the iPod. Sun Microsystems holds an 'in-world' press conference to show off its new pavilion in Second Life, the popular 3D online world. The list is endless.

Now name any consumer initiative from Indian tech companies?

Can you think of any breakthrough recruitment advertising even in India?

Do Indian technology companies come across as innovators?

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.

Is it any wonder then that Indians are seen as “job stealers” and “cyber coolies”?

If our vaunted tech companies continue with their current staid ads and investor PR events, then not only will they face the ire of jobless Americans, but will also implode from within due to high attrition rates and lack of people who understand Web 2.0.

Ford makes bold move into advergaming

Ford has launched a Hollywood-dollars budget video game "Ford Bold Moves Street Racing" for PC and console platforms (via Clickz).

Ford models featured in the game range from the 1968 Mustang GT to the 1973 Escort RS2000 to the hot-off-the-assembly line 2007 Shelby GT500. The game takes Ford's new brand message, "Bold Moves," as its title.

One of the features in the "Street Racing" title that's certainly a bold move for stodgy Ford is the decision to allow its cars to show damage as drivers dent them on the virtual road. Damage will also affect the cars' performance.

How to create buzz for your company

There's a famous saying that goes like this, "If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying 'Circus Coming to the Fairground Saturday,' that's advertising. If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk him into town, that's promotion. If the elephant walks through the mayor's flowerbed, that's publicity. If you can get the mayor to laugh about it, that's public relations. And if you planned the elephant's walk, that's marketing."

While this may seem like just a cute anecdote, there is an important lesson to be learned from it: A well-timed public relations (PR) campaign can increase your businesses' chances of reaching your target market with exactly what they want to hear, when they are ready to hear it.

The art of building a successful PR campaign revolves around creating strong relationships with the media and your customers, planning special events and building an image - elements that when combined gain publicity, or "buzz," for your company. You need not spend thousands of dollars creating buzz about your company, however. Innovative methods, such as identifying a media niche, creating a theme, and using trade shows and celebrity spokespersons are all publicity-generating vehicles for budget-minded businesses. Read more.

Why lovers SMS

A really witty video with a twist in the tale.

Bollywood heads for the Web

According to estimates, there are 38.5 million Indians online. About 3.6 million homes in the country have a personal computer and about 1.5 million of them are powered by broadband. About 20 million Indians live outside the country and most of them use the Internet. And these numbers are only set to grow.

With Internet usage increasing by the day, Bollywood moviemakers are slowly waking up to the possibility of exploiting the Internet to give their movies a slick tech edge.

Movie sites may not be a new phenomenon, but movie promotion certainly is with film producers queuing up online to market their movies. And on offer are smarter and interactive sites with activities galore - games, contests and blogs - with superior multimedia effects and crisper audio and video packing quite a punch, reports The Hindu Business Line.

My take is that we are still in the nascent stage and Bollywood producer have yet to fully exploit the potential of the Web.

A newspaper or television ad may be here today and gone tomorrow, but a web site will continue to generate awareness. In the area of theatrical releases, movie web sites are not only building awareness for a movie before and during the theatrical release, but they continue to promote media properties once the conventional mass-media advertisements have stopped running and the films have moved on to secondary markets.

In addition to generating hype, web sites can also vastly improve the experience that visitors have with a film by creating on-line communities. These communities are areas where visitors can find more information, take part in interactive activities, subscribe to newsletters, and chat with other like-minded individuals, with the eventual aim of creating greater audience loyalty.

Given that the Bollywood is churning out films like there’s no tomorrow and that the biggest market is the overseas territory, we should hopefully see a Blair Witch Project style online promotion in the near future.

Mobile advertising: What's in it for the consumer?

Perhaps the most significant benefit will come through consumer access to richer content and media. Content is expensive to generate and offer to consumers, and advertising provides a means to offer richer content at more reasonable cost.

John Styers, general manager of mobile advertising at Sprint, explains that given the increasing costs to generate content, carriers are developing new methods to subsidize or recover costs on the more expensive content.

Mobile advertising may also provide consumers with access to content they previously were unaware of. Lots of new content providers will want to pay to be featured on the carrier deck (again, lots of opportunity for consumers in terms of broader access to rich media).

According to Jones, "Mobile advertising allows us to have a viable business," by adding more content, features and richness to their site – ultimately, improving the experience and opportunities for the consumer. Read more of Mobile advertising: What's in it for the consumer?

Investor relations and blogging

Here is a nice post on an idea whose time has come, Investor Relations and Blogging by Ross Dawson. Dawson says:

Investor relations is the art of managing relationships with your investors. It used to be easy: tell them whatever you felt like telling them. Shareholder activism, new regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, and the internet have dramatically changed the landscape, giving far more power to investors. So now companies are increasingly using the internet to present their side of the story.

Governance is all about transparency. Blogging is a fabulous tool for giving greater visibility to the governance process, and providing investors with a chance to provide their input and perspectives. Certainly the traditional annual meeting is completely ineffective as a system for getting investor participation and involvement.

I agree with Dawson and corporate blogs and can provide boards and directors with a low-cost, highly-effective means to establish a dialogue with investors.

Figure out what the client wants, do it, and get paid

I have always believed that post India’s economic liberalization circa 1993, creativity in advertising took a turn for the worse.

The big holding companies gobbled up the local hotshops and brought along with them their cookie-cutter global branding ideas.

For years I kept these thoughts to myself for fear that I would be seen as an old codger.

Now Steve Pearlstien of The Washington Post holds the network agencies responsible for the shoddy work we see these days in advertising.

Snippets from his “What Happened To Creative in Advertising?":

In the search for what went wrong, one path leads to industry consolidation.

Starting in the early 1980s, the storied independent agencies that bore the names of their witty and intelligent founders -- Ogilvy & Mather, Young & Rubicam, J. Walter Thompson and Doyle Dane Bernbach -- were bought up by big holding companies.

In practice, however, things haven't exactly worked out as planned, including for investors, whose annual returns have ranged from mediocre to awful.

Creative-services firms have proven ill-suited to the demands of public shareholders and analysts, with their fixation on quarterly earnings targets and double-digit growth. The emphasis on cost-cutting and meeting financial goals dampened the enthusiasm for risk-taking at the heart of creative advertising.

"The mantra became 'Figure out what the client wants, do it, and get paid,' " explains Lee Clow, the legendary creative director at Chiat/Day. And because agencies are generally paid on the basis of fixed retainers, hourly billing rates and media commissions, there is no financial difference between delivering a blockbuster ad and delivering a mediocre one.


How true. Happily, this may be about to change.

More of that in Steve’s follow up article here.

Guinness: Surfer

"Once in a while a piece of work comes along that defies a simple description of the craft used to achieve it."
~ John Smith, Jury Foreman of the British Design and Art Direction Awards.

This brilliant TV commercial was directed by the critically acclaimed director, Jonathan Glazer. Aired in 1999, it had such an impact on the British audience that two years later, it was voted number 1 in the 100 Greatest TV Adverts of all time.

Do newspapers have a future?

Once you've rented an apartment online, you know that traditional newspaper classifieds, with their tiny type, have no future. But only slow-footedness has kept newspapers from dominating online classifieds. Technology can be bought, but the brand value of a local newspaper cannot (unless you buy the paper). Maybe it's too late, but if newspapers have missed this boat, it's their own fault, asserts the venerable Time magazine's Michael Kinsley as he asks the big question: "Do Newspapers Have a Future?"

While I agree with most of what Mr Kinsley says, his description of bloggers as "random lunatics riffing in their underwear" is inaccurate. No, not the lunatics bit but I am sure most bloggers have their trousers on as they post away.

Understanding engagement marketing

Engagement is one of the hottest topics in advertising. With zapping, surfing, media message overload, and plummeting attention spans, advertising can no longer be effective by just putting it in front of a lot of eyeballs — unless a lot of hearts and minds are attached, too. How does one choose what works best?

Advertisers and their agencies that increasingly recognize the need to make real connections with their potential customers know that understanding and utilizing engagement is the key to creating the potential for more effective advertising. More.

( Reader Involvement PDF report by AdAge and Guideposts)

All eyes on viral videos

TV watching, moviegoing and music listening all took a backseat to the internet for Americans under 25 this year. So it's no surprise the viral video has made such a strong impact on the ad industry in recent months, reports Adage.

It is out-of-the-box, irreverent approaches to marketing that are catching on with consumers and generating the most of what drives today's advertising campaigns: word-of-mouth. Read more.