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Articles from The GottaQuirk eMarketing blog

Easter eggs, friends, what does it all mean? 2007-08-27 08:32:54 What’s more evil than the devil? People who have it, are happy? Those who eat it, will die? And those who can’t get it; want to die? You might be inclined to think that the answer would be nothing, but as I (and 90% of employers out there) have learnt is that Facebook is more evil than anything on earth. Facebook has been blamed for many things; lack of productivity; increase in bandwidth usage; and getting in touch with all the people who you’ve been trying to avoid for 5 years in a 3 month period! But let’s not go off on an online crusade; that’s not what this post is about. The other day someone mentioned the following phrase to me: “Only the craftiest of quails survive hunting season.” So what is that? A quote from a movie? Quirk’s new motto? Some hidden text on Facebook? (How did you know?) Well, yes. There are some hidden phrases (sometimes referred to as “Easter Eggs”) placed at the bottom of some pages on Facebo ...

Dirty Minds 2007-08-26 00:57:52 Part of what can make a good viral is a fun interactive element. Today's clip from Fresh TV in New Zealand tackles this by loading itself with sexual innuendos. See how many you can pick out: I counted 13, but I'm dying for someone to tell me what's up with the mutated pig holding a sword in its mouth. At any rate, challenging your viewers with a caption such as "See just how dirty your mind really is" coupled with clever content can make an ad like this go pretty far. P.S. Just noticed that Cherryflava got this one up a couple of days before us. Check out Jonathan's write up here. Comment on "Dirty Minds" ...

Coke does it again 2007-08-25 02:44:26 If you’ve been reading GottaQuirk for a while now you’ll probably know that I am a big fan of Coke’s ads. We’ve featured some great examples which you can find here, here and here - if you are so inclined. My favourite was the feel good and fun Happiness Factory – that was until I found Happiness Factory 2 – the mini movie. It is 3.29 minutes long but it is so worth it! I’m sure the version for television will be cut down quite considerably (can you imagine how much it would cost to flight an ad of that length?). There are loads of Coke ads up on YouTube and I tried to see how many views they have collectively - but it soon reached the millions and I've never been one for addition, or maths in general really so I stopped counting. Anyways, to cut a long story short, by placing their ads (or by their consumers placing their ads) on YouTube, Coke has had countless numbers of people watching them (at no expense to Coke), not because they we ...

Search Status 1.21 – very minor changes and still free! 2007-08-24 09:22:37 On the 15th August dnsstuff.com went from a free whois (dns* lookup) service to a paid service. This may sound completely trivial but it had some rather profound implications for Quirk’s very own offering to the online professionals of the world – SearchStatus. SearchStatus provides the functionality to do a whois* lookup on any page, but unfortunately, it also relies on dnsstuff.com to achieve this. Their decision to make it into a paid site left this functionality useless (or so I thought). After arriving at work with this piece of “unique” knowledge I managed to grab a second of Craig’s (Quirk CTO and SearchStatus developer) precious time and triumphantly shared my knowledge with him. Turns out Craig was not only aware of this problem but had foreseen it and coded a natural fix into the system (boy, did I feel silly!). I quickly implemented the fix (the process was: with Firefox/Mozilla open, go to SearchStatus, click Options, click the external tab ...

Online vs. Offline Marketing 2007-08-24 07:25:18 I think most people consider online and offline/traditional marketing as two entirely separate entities. Being a PPC Campaign Manager (ok, ok an Intern Campaign Manager!), I am obviously biased to the paid form of online marketing and believe its success far outweighs the results delivered by offline marketing simply because so many people are turning to the Internet to look for absolutely anything they desire... and will find it! I recently read this article on ClickZ which sheds an interesting perspective on these two forms of marketing. Basically statistics are showing that the integration of online and offline marketing is achieving results far better than they can produce on their own. “According to a new study by Jupiter Research and search marketing agency iProspect, a surprising two-thirds of searchers are led to search on a given keyword as a result of offline marketing”. I think it is essential for companies to integrate online and offline marketing strategies ... Marketing

Online Reputation Smearing 2007-08-24 01:28:18 As more and more of our everyday lives move online, people are becoming aware of their online reputations. Not only are millions of people representing themselves online everyday, but they’re becoming aware of the reputation smearing power of the Internet. For instance the website Don’tDateHimGirl is supposedly a social network for women to share their dating stories. In reality it’s an ever growing list of men who have been shamed for being ‘damaged’ in the hopes of warning other women with horror stories about the individuals. Don’tDateHimGirl is just a drop in the online ocean. Disgruntled ex-partners, employees, garbage men, clients, next-door neighbours, and even that guy you cut off in traffic this morning now have the power to publicly embarrass you on the Internet at the drop of a hat – without you even being aware of it. Soon enough it won’t just be businesses that’ll need Online Reputation Monitoring services. Co ...

Viral campaigns are effective 2007-08-23 11:25:05 So generally I tend to think, great, viral campaigns work but I’ve never really placed a tremendous amount of faith in them… I mean you just never know if something will actually go viral or not. Today my opinion changed… To back track a little, I am completing my thesis. With this in mind, my thesis group have been discussing ways to get people to fill out our online surveys (a near impossible task, let me tell you). After various (read long and torturous) discussions, we decided to start a Facebook group. The next problem was how to get people to join this group and fill out the survey… (people can be so fickle). So after discussing various alternatives we decided the best way, was to start a group called “If 1000 people fill out our survey, we will flash Gareth Cliff”(Gareth Cliff is a DJ for all our international readers). Now this bold move, has gathered both scorn and praise. On the plus side we had 50 surveys filled in within the first h ...

YouTube to Start Using Overlay Ads 2007-08-23 04:56:15 According to Yahoo! reports, YouTube are starting to use semi-transparent overlay advertising at the bottom of selected videos. The advert will display for ten seconds and then disappear if not clicked on. If it is clicked on then the full video advertisement will launch. The preference for overlays, as opposed to pre-rolls, is that the overlays aren’t as garish and obtrusive, so people are less likely to close them. Because there is choice involved in watching what the overlay promotes (thereby insinuating interest from the viewer when they click on it), the video that launches can be more substantial, giving it a chance to better target the audience. Currently there are some big media conglomerates are involved - Warner Music Group Corp., News Corp.'s 20th Century Fox and Time Warner Inc.'s New Line Cinema – so it seems that most of the overlays will promote new music and film releases for the time being. They are paying per person exposed to the overlay - $20 per 1 ... Youtube

www.mango.co.za not bearing fruit for Mango Airlines 2007-08-23 04:35:01 If you fly regularly with Kulula.com in South Africa (and I’m guessing that quite a few of you do) then you might have received an email voucher in your inbox a few days ago as part of their 6th birthday promotion. And if, like me, you can’t resist a bargain, you also might have gone online to check out some flight prices. Yes Kulula, I am your target market and I love “free” stuff. Please send more. However, also being the savvy online shopper that I am, I decided to compare the Kulula flight prices with those of Mango – another South African low cost carrier. I couldn’t remember Mango’s URL so I tried out www.mango.co.za – a decent guess I thought, but it wasn't the right site. Instead of the airline, that URL points to the South African Mango Growers Association. Mango the fruit has been around a bit longer than Mango the airline after all! I was a little surprised Mango didn’t buy the URL, considering how many people prob ...

Social Networking - You can never have too many friends 2007-08-22 06:39:34 With today’s newsletter we released Part 2 of our “How To” series on Social Media. It’s a good read for anyone who struggles with the concept of social networking or is looking to start getting involved and is having trouble deciding which of the sites to start out on. There are also some tips for marketers looking to explore the avenues social networking sites are offering. We looked at five of the top social networking sites and let me tell you... it was not easy to find concrete stats – each website said a different thing. In the end I decided to take the stats from a comScore study on the expansion of social networking across the globe. As always there are some really interesting industry articles, viral videos and a note from Rob about the importance of planning your end of year campaigns today. If you haven’t subscribed to our fortnightly newsletter yet what are you waiting for? You can do so here. Comment on "Social Networking - You c ...

Bring Me the WikiScanner! 2007-08-22 01:52:16 The power that Wikipedia has on our lives is really something. For many it's the first port of call for any information on a topic. Some (myself included) often search for a topic on the public encyclopaedia before even Googling it (inevitably, Googling a subject almost always brings its Wikipedia entry as one of the first two SERP results). I have lost count of the times at varsity that the core of our last minute research would, to our lecturers’ disdain, be drawn from the online encyclopaedia’s entries. And I can’t even hazard a guess as to how many hours I spend every week hopping from one random subject to another. It’s gotten so bad that this addiction is mutating, and as a Star Wars fan I now find myself hopelessly trapped in the clutches of Wookieepedia. Don’t laugh… Unfortunately, as with so many offerings, Wikipedia’s main strength is also its greatest hindrance. The fact that users can edit entries has detracted greatly from its ...

When Viral Bites 2007-08-19 03:39:06 Sometimes commercials go viral for all of the wrong reasons. Take a look at this clip from Flea Market Montgomery. Now I'm sure that whoever made this ad did so in the hopes of it going viral and probably had high expectations of it achieving a high view count. Well, that it did - 1.2 million views on YouTube to be precise. What they definitely weren't hoping for was the fact that it would be under the title of "Worst Commercial Ever." Much like the Star Wars Kid this clip has done the rounds due to how ridiculous and embarrassing it is. (Be warned, it runs in at nearly two minutes and it's a painful experience to watch it - I only lasted 30 seconds) Apparently that's Sammy Stephens in the clip, and to be fair there have been reports of this clip still generating traffic to the stores in the form of people who want to meet him and see him do the dance in person. I don't know - it's one thing to see businessmen not taking themselves too seriously, but I can't h ...

A viral with a bit of finesse 2007-08-18 03:28:27 I don’t know about you, but I despise adverts for hair products – whether it be shampoo, conditioner, dye.. they’re all the same. Some modely looking woman with thick, gorgeous hair down to her bum prancing around like a pony on show day. I mean come on – every woman knows that it took a ten person team of silicone bearing, flat iron wielding hair geniuses to achieve that – they are sooo unbelievable. And that is why this video appealed to me. It didn’t focus on a wildly unbelievable hair do but on something we as females love - thinking about how stupid men can be… :-) While the Pantene, Sunsilk ads of the world alienate me (cough, cough the actual target audience) this Finesse ad does the exact opposite. I would definitely send this one on to the girls on my mailing list. Comment on "A viral with a bit of finesse" ...

Another SearchStatus Video 2007-08-16 04:53:36 Last week we featured Vittorio Bosio’s great video tutorial on the SearchStatus extension for Firefox. This week we see another video from Oleg Korneitchouk who has this to say about Firefox, “I love Firefox. I love the skins, the tabs, and the add-ons. Especially the add-ons.” His number 1 add-on? You guessed it …. SearchStatus. Like Vittorio he will be putting together a range of videos featuring various Firefox add-ons so be sure to keep an eye out on his site,  Webmaster ToolBox. According to his profile Oleg is only 17 years old. This really blew me away when I considered how much I knew about the Internet when I was 17 (read less than sweet FA). Oh, how times have changed. Comment on "Another SearchStatus Video" ...

Leakage Crisis or Marketing Ploy? 2007-08-14 02:29:39 A couple of weeks ago I alluded to how movie studios and networks are using online channels to stimulate and better target pockets of demand. Now comes news that at least 6 pilots aimed for a US autumn release have been leaked online. Or have they? There's currently a popular opinion that these “leaks” are actually carefully calculated marketing ploys orchestrated by the networks themselves, and I must admit that when you look at it a lot of evidence points in this direction. To start off take into account that a high proportion of the leaked content is made up of pilot episodes. The leaking of episodes of ongoing series is nowhere near as frequent. Although this may be as a result of the fact that there’s a lot more buzz surrounding a new series, it’s worth bearing in mind the addictive nature of series often results in viewers craving the next episode of an existing show more than the first glimpse of a new program. Interestingly a large part of ... Marketing