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 78 4941

Articles from The GottaQuirk eMarketing blog

Christvertising - Please tell me it's satire. 2008-01-03 08:45:37 Dr. Ed van Pelt has started a new kind of branding, one that skips “the strategic deliverables…and focus(es) on the end user: God.” He wants to help you and your brand by providing “the best brand prayer alignment possible” and ensure that your brand becomes the “focus of a targeted and structured prayer channel”. I apologise for the excessive quoting, but his words are so brilliantly astounding that I just had to share them as they are. You may find yourself feeling a tad skeptical, but you shouldn’t – Ed has a multi-coloured diagram on a flip chart to illustrate and back up his process. At one stage he even quotes statistics from a study. Ed has also developed unique terminology for his service, like BTP™ (brand targeted prayer) and his unique approach: Reach-Connect-Pray. Brandspeak at its best. When I first came across Christvertising, I called Carlos over to help me with a sanity check. I have to admit that for a wh ...

The Sound of the Future 2008-01-03 01:44:26 Sometimes my ears bleed. This isn’t due to me suffering from a rare medical condition that would require a diagnosis from one of the characters in House, but rather from the music that the mainstream media bombards us with on a daily basis. Now I know that there are much worse things to gripe about, but I’m always shocked at the scale of an industry where there is a plethora of ridiculously talented bands and artists that somehow will never really crack the market, while those that do go on to reap rewards on a near biblical scale. Unfortunately one wouldn’t normally consider those that are pulling in the big-bucks with being the most talented artists out there. I’m not the most clued up individual when it comes to the industry and all of its intricacies, but it doesn’t take a genius to realise that there has been something profoundly wrong with its accepted business model for quite a while now. How can a derailment of social evolution grunting &ldqu ...

5 Quick Short Blogging Tips 2008-01-02 03:02:55 With the influx of shiny new QuirkStars blogging at GottaQuirk, thought I’d share these 5 quick and short blogging tips by David Armano, VP of Experience Design with Critical Mass. Find your voice. Do something different. Be true to your brand. Provide value. Only write what makes you* happy. A quick/short post. * replace you with Sarah M :-P Comment on "5 Quick Short Blogging Tips" ... Blogging

Good Dog 2007-12-31 01:13:26 While deciding what to write about New Years, I found myself reflecting on the last few that I have experienced. I did initially have the intention of doing something fun and festive so please bear with me if this comes across as a bit of a dampener – I do apologise. The one issue that has for so long been brushed aside or conveniently forgotten for one night a year – or at least it seems to me – is the problem of driving home from your chosen destination for that big night. Let’s be honest here, who has ever voluntarily taken the responsibility of being designated driver for the night?! It is on this one night that the tried and trusted method of paper, rock, scissors just doesn't cut it. Taking a cab? Depending on where you are headed, this can end up being quite pricey not to mention near impossible to find one. Call a cab on New Year's Eve, I dare you. I know I have pointed out some very obvious facts that we are all very much aware of. This is the par ...

Don't Click It - Why Not? 2007-12-27 02:30:35 I found Dontclickit to be both noteworthy and irritating. The project, undertaken by a guy named Alex from The Institute of Interactive Research, describes itself as exploring “a click free environment”. Considering clicking only one way to navigate a user interface, Dontclickit allows you to travel through the site simply by moving your mouse around. The look of the site is great, and at first interacting with it is quite entertaining. Considering that I’m hardly an expert in user interface design I visited uncle Wiki for some light reading, and found a really obvious requirement missing from Dontclickit: “the users need to be able to control the system”. Different parts of the page pop up in (what seemed to me) a rather uncontrollable way. As another blogger Jim pointed out, the site can’t tell when I’m specifically interested in a section or just moving over it, which does become frustrating after a while.   This kind of navigation ...

Santa's Little Helpers 2007-12-24 07:09:52 There is a very good chance that at some stage during this festive season you will find in your inbox an elf or two doing a tribal / river / Saturday Night Fever / line dance. One of these elves may in fact even have your face. No, this is not secret camera footage taken during those few blank hours that you lost at last year's Christmas Party. This is the new advertising campaign for Office Max this festive season called Elf Yourself.   You can now customise these elves and send them as a greeting to your friends. Spreading like wildfire, it is not difficult to imagine that we may see a lot more advertising of this nature in the future. This is especially true if you consider reach and interaction with customers than can be achieved at a fraction of the cost of more traditional media. For a bit of perspective, I have graphed its reach against that of Facebook and Ask.com courtesy of Alexa. Now that you've taken a moment to sit back and take that all in, I'm sure you ...

Christmas: Out of the Home and into Cyberspace 2007-12-24 07:07:04 Like everything else in the world, Christmas in 2007 is in an online affair, particularly for the 20 to 30 some-things among us. The days of trawling crowded malls for gifts and wrapping, and tape and cards are over. In these consumerist domains, we have been replaced by teeny-boppers in search of a little Christmas ‘spirit’ and the oldies for whom ‘online shopping’ is still a dirty word. And while real gifts are bought and sold online, there is also a growing culture, evolving out of social networking and email, of intangible communication, particularly over the festive season.  With such dazzling Christmas trees available as Facebook apps, who needs a real one that requires dismantling after the festivities of New Year? Much easier to just press ‘delete’ on the 12th day. Cyber gifts too, are a growing trend, leaving little room to worry over spending good money on an unwanted gift. Why spend hours handwriting Christmas cards that will eventu ...

Feedjit your hungry blog tasty new visitors! 2007-12-24 00:43:55 Hi. My name’s Matt , and I’m a Web Convert. Usually I come across new and interesting developments via the cerebral assault that is my oversubscribed Google Reader account. So I’m rather chuffed to tell you this little tidbit comes via good ol’ word of mouth and a frosty beer in the Cape Town sun… Just yesterday Carlos and I were debating the merits of aggregators like Digg. Without doubt they provide a much needed pathway to juicy content (as voted by like minded peeps), but often we don’t explore the host site’s content any further, choosing rather to go back to our trusted aggregator for our next hit. The guys at Feedjit are hoping to change this. Feedjit provides high performance real-time widgets for the blogging community that help you show off your best content  as well as quantify and make sense of the traffic you are getting. The implications for bloggers and independent websites are quite exciting. Currently there are 4 widge ...

One for the QuirkBoys 2007-12-23 01:45:53 Riaan, Rob, Nic, Craig and all the QuirkBoys this one is for you!   Not quite the same as an exploding photocopy machine (sorry!) but I’m hoping the visual stimulation will keep your “viral idea” on the 3rd floor for a while longer!   Hugs and kisses, Jay Comment on "One for the QuirkBoys" ...

I want a magic fridge. 2007-12-22 01:55:31 Once you’ve watched this viral from Budweiser, you’ll want one too. The ad was originally flighted during the Superbowl in 2006, but has successfully transitioned to the Internet. It’s been viewed more than 290 thousand times on YouTube, which proves that the ad has some staying power (to be honest it makes me dream about a time when all TV ads could be as entertaining as this). It’s funny, surprising, and has likeable characters who (I’m slightly ashamed to admit) I can easily relate to my own friends. One of the reasons for The Magic Fridge’s success is that it’s based on quite a universal idea: people appreciate free beer. Without giving too much away I’ll just say that I identify with the sentiment of the ad – and know quite well which side of the wall I’d be on. I’ll risk saying that most of you would be there with me, quietly wishing for your own Magic Fridge. Comment on "I want a magic fridge." ...

Fresh faces and fused brains 2007-12-21 05:24:21 With the year winding down, the last few months have seen the addition of a number of new Stars to the QuirkStation. Including our new array of Trojan interns along with some fresh faces in the various departments, our reinforcements haven’t arrived a moment too soon. While many workplaces start to wind down around the December period, at Quirk we don’t like to conform to the norm. As such we have hit a period of frenzied madness that has resulted in many a near-aneurism, and in many much-needed Friday drinks sessions. I must admit, when the coffee machine finally kicked the bucket earlier on in the week, I did have my doubts whether we were going to make it. However, a short trip to find a replacement messianic device got us quickly back on track. At any rate, I digress. Our new complement of interns are proving to be real lifesavers for both Tim and myself. They’ve helped us out quite a bit already, and Tim and I owe them a large measure of thanks for keeping our ...

£750,000 spent in one Mega Monday Minute 2007-12-21 05:05:52 As the shopping malls brace themselves for the last few days of Christmas madness, the online retailers are shutting down Seasonal PPC campaigns and preparing themselves for New Year sales. Most online shops in the UK will only guarantee delivery if you order before 12pm today, so if you haven’t ordered yet, do it NOW! About three weeks ago I posted predictions for the busiest online shopping day in UK for 2007, with Monday 3rd and Monday 10th December being the contenders. The results show that Monday10th has won, with the Times Online reporting that £370 million was predicted to have been spent on that day, beating Monday 3rd’s record of £291 million. 1.09pm was the busiest minute of the day, with a staggering £750,000 spent in the “Mega Minute” of the UK online shopping year. Now you know what all your employees do during lunch…. And what were the top 10 selling items? Wii games Apple iPod Shuffle, 1GB Wii accessorie ... Amp

How Far We've Come - 10 years of Blogging 2007-12-20 07:48:21 This week not only marked the 10th anniversary of blogging but also the first time a blogger has been accredited with covering a major political event in South Africa. In the ten years since John Barger coined the term “weblog”, blogging has become recognised as one of the cheapest, fastest and most versatile publishing tools around today. It has also brought with it an unprecedented interaction between businesses and their customers. A business without a website is a business that does not exist, but now without making use of the blogosphere businesses might find themselves heading in the same direction. In fact one could almost say that blogs have come to dominate the net to a certain extent. According to Technorati, there are more than 100 million active blogs, which represents a massive rate of growth over the last few years. Do we see this letting up? Not likely. As an individual who until recently had limited exposure to the blogosphere or the plethora of informa ... Blogging

Evolution or greed 2007-12-20 03:40:50 First off, I would like to introduce myself (I have been informed that this is the norm) - my name is Julia Jakobsen, and I am new intern here at Quirk. I really look forward to getting to know the crew here and to discovering more about the exciting and ever-changing world of eMarketing. Besides from being an intern, I am a pseudo-rockstar - my band is called Jules & the Fools - our website will be up and running soon, the blog is up already though; we also have a MySpace page and Facebook group. Okay, enough shameless self-promoting, there are more important things than me going on in the blogosphere (yes, it is true). According to Mashable, Facebook is on the brink of change. In fact, they have commenced beta testing of a new system that will let applications accept money for their services as a Facebook supported service. Some may claim that Facebook is following in the footsteps of the world's oldest profession… prostitution. Others call it the spoils/glory of capi ...

Social Networks - The spirit of 2007 2007-12-19 02:58:33 One list I like to see at the end of every year is the Google Zeitgeist. The word Zeitgeist (literally "time spirit" in German) describes the culture and feeling of a specific time - in this case the year summed up through the most popular searches on Google. These might not be the topics that were searched for most (I'm thinking porn-related searches would dominate) but those that have grown in popularity over the year. The Google Zeitgeist forms an excellent picture of what the world was obsessing about in 2007 – which was definitely social networks. Nine out of the "Fastest Rising Global Top 10" were social networks, except of course for iphone which took the number one spot (surprise surprise). Fastest Rising (global) 1.    iphone 2.    badoo 3.    facebook 4.    dailymotion 5.    webkinz 6.    youtube 7.    ebuddy 8.    second life 9 ...