Someone needs to go back to contest 101

Thursday, February 22nd, 2007

I’ve just started planning my wedding and in going through the wedding magazines, found an ad promoting a contest to win a Honeymoon in Barbados from Sandals resorts. My fiance and I decided to enter for fun – why not? With all the other expenses, why wouldn’t we try to enter a romantic-hassle-free honeymoon contest. Yeah I know I’m a perfect sucker for all the upcoming marketing my way as I plan my big day.

I read him out the url and continue flipping pages, until I hear, “Uh sorry honey, we can’t enter this, it’s only open to U.S. residents.”

I flip to the front of the magazine and see that I am looking through a Canadian magazine, not an American one – so what gives?

Obviously a big resort like that has several ads and marketing campaigns running in magazines all over the world. Most companies have several different ads promoting either contests and/or other items specific to either the marketing vehicle they are using to promote their product, or to the country and/or region. Not everything will be open to everyone, everywhere. I know that, you know that, everyone knows that – but talk about a huge marketing gaffe. The carrot was dangled right in front of our noses and like good consumers we took the bait.

I know I can’t be the only one who tried enter that contest – how many of us Canadian Brides-to-be are now annoyed with that resort because they didn’t actually target their advertising properly. If they can’t run an ad that speaks to me as a Canadian – why would I want to contemplate staying at their resort?

On the plus side, I just proved to myself and all of you reading this that offline really does drive online :)

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22.02.2007 online marketing 1 Comment

Good Parents Pay

Tuesday, February 20th, 2007

The Ontario Government just announced today their new website Good Parents Pay as a way to help “find missing, irresponsible parents who have defaulted on the payments owed to their kids.”

People can view pictures of individuals who are registered with the Family Responsibility Office, have not made support payments and can’t be found.

A very interesting way to approach and potentially embarrass dead-beat parents and a great way of using technology since you can then choose to submit a “tip” as to where this person might be found.

Of course, I have a few issues with this site.. Well multiple from a marketing perspective, but I’ll leave those alone for now and focus on the bigger picture.

Can they really guarantee you can be/remain anonymous? The site does mention the information can remain “anonymous,” but what happens if this person becomes wanted for something else? Isn’t there a legal requirement to then contact “me” even though I thought I was anonymous when submitting my tip?

While name and contact information are optional fields, there is no specific mention of whether or not they might contact you via searching out your ip address etc. I know this gets a bit Big Brotherish, and so I did some digging to try and see if I could locate it in their privacy policy The privacy policy on the site links you to the Ontario Gov’t's privacy policy, which gives you another link to the Freedom of Information and PIPED Acts and other information and so on (I soon gave up as it was becoming a complicated process to find out and I had other things I wanted to do with my time).

Another little bit of oversight. The form you submit indicating you have more information on one of these individuals is not behind an https and I don’t see any little locks in the right-hand corner.

Yes, I have the option of providing my name and phone number and the little disclaimer mentions that any personal info I provide would be collected in compliance with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act so why isn’t anything secure? Even just for a better shot of getting information from people. All these case studies show that show that websites that have (or even just say they are) secured, get a better response. Maybe the gov’t sites are behind such a tight firewall this isn’t an issue? I don’t know.

My other issue with this? Well, I love the idea, but the question is will anyone care to use it? The onus is on the user to hear about the site, go to the site, search through the profiles to see if they know anyone who is a match (I have an idea – add a search functionality box to allow people to search by names). That’s a lot of work for someone who is likely not connected to the child/family and probably doesn’t even know they know someone on the list.

How many of us would really do that to see if someone we know is on this list? Is it this meant to attract the neighbourhood busybodies? If so, are they really online? Aren’t they out watching the neighbourhoods?

Great idea, I just don’t think it was entirely well thought out from an actual user perspective. Too bad.

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20.02.2007 websites No Comments

The fourth search engine

Thursday, February 15th, 2007

Just read my ClickZ Search newsletter today where Tessa Wegert discussed the new search engine on the block – ChaCha Search.

ChaCha Search (Cha means search in Chinese she explains) takes a bit of a different approach to search in that there is a human element involved. While you can search yourself just like on normal search engines, with a click of a button you can enter your query and have a human guide do the search for you.

You carry on a chat within an IM window where the guide asks you specific questions about your search query and then performs searches for you, relaying results as they find them.

I found it an interesting experience, I tried doing the same type of search myself in their engine as well as in Google, and truth be told, albeit a little slow to show up, the results were quite good and many of them were not ones I had found before on my own (maybe I’m just a lousy searcher who knows).

Here’s what I liked and didn’t like about this engine:

Likes:
- Able to validate how accurate my searches were and if there was a way to get more information that I didn’t know how to access
- The guide asked questions to ensure they understand the intent behind my query so they could try to make sure the results were relevant
- The guide asked me if the results were helpful and whether or not I wanted her to keep searching after display about 5 very targeted results
- I could rate the guide to tell the company whether or not I liked her results
- It was free for someone else to do the work for me

Dislikes:
- No way to send the link to a coworker to show them the results (or even email them), trying to copy and paste the link starts your session again and connects you to a new guide
- You’re asked to rate the guide right away before you’ve been able to review all the results
- Didn’t notice a way to be able to contact one specific guide if you’re a regular user and like one particular guide (granted I didn’t check this too thoroughly)
- A little slow, yes it was a human searching and they found relevant results, but when I search Google pops up results in less than 1 second usually
- For Canadians – the ads that I saw (both display and PPC were VERY U.S. based. I didn’t come across one Canadian ad, in fact everything assumed I was American and targeted ads at me in that way

A little trip to Alexa shows that while traffic is increasing to this site, our friends at Google.ca have what appears to be at least double the amount of traffic. Granted, according to Tessa, the site has only been around since September so it needs time for the word to spread I guess.

From a paid ad perspective, the ads you see are actually not based on keyword, but on subject category as defined by your guide. A very different approach to the way the big engines do it now.

Will this work? Is there room for another engine? Is this a scalable model if it takes off? How will they be able to pay for enough human guides to be accessible if the reach increases tremendously? Will perforamce-based ads alone be enough to pay these folks? How/Will this benefit Canadian marketers? Will there be a Canadian version? How robust is or will be the targeting of ads for Canadian advertisers?

I don’t know the answers to any of the above questions, but I am definitely intrigued by this concept and will be paying close attention to see what happens in the near future.

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15.02.2007 search marketing 6 Comments

Cool free web app

Monday, February 12th, 2007

Has anyone ever heard of this company called Competitious?

Seems like a very cool web application that allows you to track your competitor’s activities. It can be set up to share information across an organization so that all members of the team or project can post “clippings” so that the entire team is in the know. It also shows web stat information (from Alexa) as well as monitoring blogs for recent posts about your company or product and your competitors.

Interesting thought – would love to hear if anyone’s used this and whether it is all it appears to be upon first glance…

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12.02.2007 web applications No Comments

Toronto Police embrace technology

Monday, February 12th, 2007

More often than not these days we hear about the Internet as the “offence” part of the crime equation. However, we are starting to see what might be a new trend emerging, using the Internet to help solve a crime.

It’s not the first time, the The Toronto Police have taken this approach and it likely won’t be the last, but last week they shot and posted a video specifically to place on YouTube asking the for public help in solving a murder investigation.

A simple search for “suspect wanted” shows many other video pleas from other police departments including York police (though I am not sure if York police posted that of their own accord, or if a user has just posted it).

Making a plea for anyone with evidence to step forward is not new and we see this done on television all the time, however, the question you ask yourself – especially when dealing with a teen homicide – is whether or not the people who might know anything about this murder would be watching the news. So it appears that the police and Crimestoppers have teamed up to start placing these pleas on YouTube in hopes of reaching a different audience segment (or at least to try and spread the word more). Judging by the fact that almost 600 people have viewed the spot in the 5 days since it has been posted, you tell me. I would just like to applaud them for trying to use all means possible to solve a crime.

There appears to be one comment from someone who has named a suspect – but other posters are quick to comment asking if this person is truly being honest. Given all of the talk on “flogs” and general cynicism around user generated content can anything be trusted?

Of course it can. But it all has to be taken with a grain of salt – just as if you were reading something in the newspaper. Think about this question which has been around long before the Internet: “Do you always believe everything you read?”

I don’t think the police feel this will solve all their crimes and they won’t need to do anything else. Really, nothing will or should ever get rid of good ol’ fashioned policework, this is simply just another tool to help them collect “evidence.” They still have to sift through it all and determine what is relevant and what is not – just as they would with any other “tip” received. What difference does it make where it came from?

It doesn’t matter whether it appears on the Internet, in print, or some other form of media, the point here is that everyone should spend the time reading the facts and making their own decisions and judgements; including whether or not you like or agree with the comments and opinions expressed in my blog.

In summary: Way to go TPS for embracing the Internet as something other than a tool to potentially commit crimes.

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12.02.2007 Integrated marketing No Comments

Think like a consumer

Wednesday, February 7th, 2007

Next time you’re looking at an email campaign, an online ad, or any sort of call-to-action-type direct-marketing “thing,” just ask yourself one question:

“If I weren’t a marketer/client” would I open this email/click on this link etc..?”

If the answer is “No” – and you would consider yourself to be a likely candidate for this product or service, then no offence, you need to ask youself why you think your consumers would be likely to take the “fill in the blank” action you are asking them to do?

If you would find that email subject line “spammy” or boring, why do you think it is so important to use it in your newsletter or e-promo? Who exactly are you trying to target that wouldn’t for even half a second ask themselves if they find your subject line appealing and non-spam like in nature?

Tamera Kremer recently posted a brilliant blog post about her p-SWOT theory which takes my rant to a whole new level of thinking. If you involve your customers and prospects at every stage of the game they’ll be your friends for life.

All too often we get caught up in the coolness of the idea, or the latest and greatest trends and forget that before we were marketers… we were all consumers.. Wait – that hasn’t changed. No matter how you slice it, ultimately, we’re all consumers first and nothing will ever change that.

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07.02.2007 Direct Marketing, Email Marketing No Comments

Feeding Frenzy

Sunday, February 4th, 2007

Okay – so thinking back to my first post, everything really is true about practicing what you preach. I have to be VERY honest – setting up a feed is not as easy as one thinks, especially if they are not entirely sure how/where to go about doing it.

Having a basic html knowledge, I did some searching for code to input on my site so I could get that “cool orange button” (the RSS reader code…). I found it available on some website and thought piece of cake. Input the code, done in 30 seconds. Was very proud of myself – until I realized that the code was out of date and only a few of the chicklets actually worked. Searched for fixes to some of the codes, got some right, took others off that I couldn’t find fixes for and thought all was fine. Emailed a few friends, started telling them about my blog – then in came the replies… “Your feed doesn’t work.”

Tried more fixes, finally gave up and asksed for help. That was when I was told that I should just be using Feedburner. Feeling like a very silly fool, off I went to Feedburner and within minutes I was all set up. Granted the Feedburner site is not all that friendly and I was going back and forth a few times until I realized where I needed to be within the site to get it up and running properly. (Read: Once I swallowed my pride and went to the “first time bloggers” information page).

Lesson today? I can now tell my clients from personal experience how to make sure people can read/find their blogs and what not to do!

Also – just want to say thanks to those of who who’ve provided feedback, advice and help to me as I get my blogging legs under me. Much appreciated and hopefully some day I can return the favour one way or another… I have it on good authority that my cooking skills are quite a better than my new-found blogging ones :)

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04.02.2007 blogging 1 Comment