The GottaQuirk eMarketing blog The GottaQuirk blog is a great resource for information about internet marketing. It’s an up-to-date resource on the happenings in the fast-moving eMarketing industry. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 0 0 2 4686

Articles from The GottaQuirk eMarketing blog

SA Drama (oops, Blog) Awards 2007-03-19 07:03:09 I thought the drama that resulted from several bloggers massacring Nicole’s design for the blog awards logo on GottaQuirk was bad… that was until I got in this morning and picked up on the drama around the actual awards themselves this weekend (I had an Internet free weekend… it was sublime). Sure there are some valid points “It strikes me as inappropriate that most panellists are also nominated for awards”. What would really strike me as odd was if they were judging the categories they were nominated in. I guess I’d rather have a host of people that really know something about blogging judging the competition than a group who didn’t. I must confess that I’ve also thought of it as a bit of an old boy’s club from time to time but they’re not the bloody Illuminati for god sakes. Controlling the blog awards today – taking over the world tomorrow – I doubt it. As the SA blogosphere is still relatively small the ...

A Short Film Called Hands 2007-03-18 05:01:48 We featured two of the Guinness “Good things come to those who wait campaign” ads on GottaQuirk a while ago. “A short film called hands” is another of their great ads from the campaign. Once you’ve had a look at the viral check out the website created around it which allows you to “Express your own creativity by directing the hands in a clip inspired by the cinematic genius of the director.” Enjoy. Comment on "A Short Film Called Hands" ... Film

Tidy Up 2007-03-17 03:44:16 Ikea, creators of fantastic and functional furniture are responsible for today's viral fun. Furniture is not a particularly interesting, sexy or funny topic but Ikea’s ad agency have managed to make it all three. Check out these three commercials for their “Tidy Up” campaign. I love the second commercial (now you know why I moan about you leaving your trainers lying all over the house Dave). Which is your favourite? Comment on "Tidy Up" ...

Presidential Redesign 2007-03-16 08:13:55 Smallz mentioned Barak Obama in his post “President 2.0” a while back, but it would seem as if it isn’t just social media that he is embracing.  He started by hiring Chicago based Sender LLC, a brand consultancy and design studio to do his initial branding.  His campaign logo and general identity have elevated him far above the traditional blandness of his rivals. Now he’s upped the ante by posting these videos on YouTube.  More MTV than Capitol Hill, he seems to have faultlessly gauged the message, the medium and his audience. Let’s face it, the sentiments are clichéd, but it’s all about the delivery.  Lets be honest, most politicians speak the same hollow language, so it’s hardly likely that this will be noticed by the average voter. I’d vote for him just on his perceived “cool-factor” and one wonders how many others may do the same. Comment on "Presidential Redesign" ...

The Onion takes a bite out of The Apple 2007-03-16 07:58:18 The Onion is a hilarious and astute site dedicated to the fine art of satire. Someone recently sent me a link to one of their articles, entitled 'Apple Unveils New Product-Unveiling Product’. It definitely deserves a read, even if for nothing more than its entertainment value. This article is a great parody. What is a great parody? Those which present humour at surface value and critical social commentary at a deeper level. Sometimes the humour is lightly sprinkled over the serious underlying issue, and other times lavishly drenched. It is the serious component however, that is the reason for the parody’s existence. In the case of the Apple article, the apparent absurdity of the concept at first humours us, and then makes us think more deeply – of our sometimes extreme dependence on automated devices to survive in this day and age. This is complemented by another worrying aspect: what are the limits of automation? What is the saturation point of this technology-hun ... Apple

eMarketing tips for some random guy 2007-03-16 07:39:18 During my recent travels around YouTube, I found a very interesting video about some random guy who goes by the nickname Chudnovsky. With 528,179 views, 2,705 comments, and being on 2,817 peoples’ favourites list, I thought to my self: “Why all the attention?” It’s not funny. Nobody dies. Yes, it might classify as being a bit weird, but this guy might be onto something. I investigated… Alex Chudnovsky, male, aged 33, living in Sydney Australia, Loves music and wants to make friends. He’s got 48 original videos, with loads of views (952,926) and comments (11,116) from other YouTubers. He’s got 1, 2, 3 websites, each with a PageRank of 0, and surprisingly, 0 inbound links. Ok, except for being Australian, and not having enough friends at 33, he’s a pretty normal guy. But why does no one know about this? 10 things Chudnovsky could do to improve his stuation: 1). PPC Bidding for popular phrases will get you traffic. Traffic will ge ...

Bowled Over as the World Cup Knocks Us for a Six 2007-03-15 09:25:30 Sorry about the title, I really couldn't help myself.  As many of you may know, at Quirk we take our cricket pretty seriously. The office is full of obsessives, regularly arguing the merits of the current South African squad, who should be dropped, who should be selected, and who should bat where. In short, we’re a real bunch of armchair coaches. So it should come as no surprise that the World Cup has caused more than it’s fair share of excitement. We have a private league on the Sky Sports Fantasy Cricket League, (which I’m fairly confident I'll win),  and we’re all busy running around, debating which team South Africa will face in the finals. So far the Windies are the only team that have beaten a test playing opponent. Sadly we missed the first innings of the game, as we were busy crushing incuBeta in an indoor cricket world cup of our own. Australia’s thrashing Scotland barely counts, and Kenya’s 7 wicket victory over Canada has har ...

Why SA?s broadband price plummet can shoot your business to an online summit 2007-03-14 10:48:39 With the latest broadband price cuts from pretty much every animal in the broadband zoo, Internet access in South Africa is set to soar to great heights – and the view will be good. First off the mark was MTN. Give them R399 each month and they’ll give you 2GB of data usage each month at very brisk HSDPA speeds. Vodacom promptly arrived at the now-in-full-swing party and offers the same package for R10 less, a drop of 61% from their previous rate. These rates are excellent in the international context – in fact, South Africa has one of the cheapest mobile broadband rate structures in the world. Sentech and iBurst are also in on the action, cutting prices and upping bandwidth, and although their wireless services are convenient, they lack the widespread coverage and portability of MTN and Vodacom’s mobile offerings. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that even Telkom have also now dropped their wholesale broadband prices, but alas not by much at all. The dr ...

Proof that Mango Airlines is harder to find than free porn! 2007-03-14 08:47:46 I’ve just been looking through Ananzi’s search data for February and trying to spot trends of interest. It’s actually pretty cool to have access to raw data like this for change – it gives an insight into the mind of the South African web searcher. I really wish Keyword Discovery had a South African keyword research function… So what can I say about Ananzi users? Firstly, it looks like they’re keen on “Mango Airlines” – the term was searched for nearly 6000 times! Of course we’ve known about mango search popularity for a while now – Rob ranted about it a while back. Interestingly, GottaQuirk received 216 search-driven visits during the month of February from terms relating to “mango” – I suppose this post won’t hurt our Mango-related ranking either. Coming at number 2 on Ananzi’s list is “email” with 1706 searches, representing a huge jump from Mango’s searches. Number ...

We Have a Winner 2007-03-13 08:55:44 Right, let me start off by saying while competitions, like the SA Blog awards unofficial logo design competition may improve traffic and interactivity on your blog they are hell to run. HELL! Right mini meltdown aside, it all started with some negative comments on the official logo which looks like so: So we decided to run an unofficial competition to see if the critics could do better and we asked coda, Rich…! and Jon Cherry to be judges. After an overwhelming response of 86 entries and reading Stii’s post, about having competitions on muti, Neville offered to help us out and get the  and open them up to voting. I thought this was an awesome idea and possibly the most fair way to decide (silly me)…. That was until the rather obvious vote spam started! One logo went from having a few votes to 77 over the space of a few hours – all hail the power of the group email. And the bitching resumed… Neville and I reevaluated the situation and decided to ...

Twitter, Twitter... 2007-03-13 02:24:36 Twit is one of my favourite words; I find it to be a nice apt and succinct way of describing certain individuals. The Twits is one of my favourite books – you’ve gotta love the “dreaded shrinks” but the word “twitter” makes me think of birds and while it may not be normal I have somewhat of an irrational fear of the little sky rats. I’m more of a dog, hamster, ferret type of gal. So perhaps I was inherently put off by this Twitter rage initially but as I read the volumes of posts that are being written around it my opinions are starting to change. Twitter is the social networking buzzword of the moment, and essentially allows you to share messages (of sms length) with your social network via a mobile device, IM or on the web. Your Twitter messages are sent to your own personalised Twitter page from where you can add friends and grow your network. You can check out what everyone is up to and subscribe to their Twitter feeds. While Twitter is p ...

Creative Commenting 2007-03-12 08:35:11 As you may already have noticed we have enhanced the commenting text box by adding a rich-text editor. So for all you commenters out there who love to add a personal touch to your comments feel free to express yourself. The editor gives you the following functionality: bold, italic, underline, numbered lists, bullet list, inserting a link, removing a link, adding special characters as well as an undo/redo function. Let’s see how creative you can get with your comments on this post using this new functionality. Comment on "Creative Commenting" ...

WebPR+ Conference Presentations 2007-03-12 06:06:51 We’ve had a few requests for the presentations used at the WebPR+ conferences to be put online… so here they are: Session 1 – New Media Habits & New Technology Affecting the Practice of PR: Sally Falkow Session 2 – Online Reputation Management: Rob Stokes Session 3 – PR & Marketing Opportunities in the Web 2.0 ‘Attention Economy’: Sally Falkow Session 4 – Responding to the Conversation: Rob Stokes Enjoy! Comment on "WebPR+ Conference Presentations" ...

Listen with your Soul (unless you use Firefox, in which case bugger off) 2007-03-12 05:51:17 Musica are trying to be all Web 2.0 by offering "Over 1000 songs to download from only R8.33* each"... that's unless you are a Firefox user of course: "The site you have tried to enter requires Internet Explorer 6 (or better) with Windows Media Player 7 (or better) on Windows XP, 2000, Me or 98. Click Here to use our Doctor Download application to help you check your configuration alternatively Email Dr Download". When are South African companies going to wake up and smell the rooibos? Anyone know what percentage of South Africans use Firefox? And more importantly, what percentage of South Africans who are Internet-savvy enough to actually make use this service use Firefox? Ya, my bet is a LOT of percent. I could be wrong. It’s rare, but it has been known to happen. Anyone out there still using Explorer? Thanks to the Hyrax for freaking out about this first. Comment on "Listen with your Soul (unless you use Firefox, in which case bugger off)" ...

Logo Competition Announcement 2007-03-12 01:07:30 Ok, the voting on the muti poll is over! Although nothing can be proven, the voting did look a little dodgy so due to the concerns that there was some cheating going down we have selected the five designs that received the most votes and will be letting the judges decide on the winner (in the spirit of fairness). The winner will be announced by the end of the day so hold thumbs! Comment on "Logo Competition Announcement" ...