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Articles from The GottaQuirk eMarketing blog

What a wonderful world 2007-11-03 03:04:18 I’m not really “the send to ALL your friends” kinda girl but when this viral video for the Helpmann Awards 2007 hit my inbox I could not help myself…. I had to share it! So why this one…. out of the all the other virals I receive daily? The non-marketing version: It has been carefully designed to get me to stop multi tasking (for just two minutes) and focus all my attention on my screen and then say things like wow, ahhhh, how do they do that, this is amazing …. What a wonderful world! … Best I share this feeling with everyone I know. The marketer’s version: It is a marketing machine designed with the sole purpose of hitting my soft spot (yes, I have one of those) with a strong call to action to send to a friend. Campaign goal: Increase brand awareness around the awards. The truth/reality is probably somewhere in between! But creatively I think it’s brilliant, a little funny and well they achieve their goal … I sent ...

Parents regulating Internet usage 2007-11-01 23:59:06 As a result of the overwhelming response that I got to my last blog post, Do we need to teach our kids Internet lifeskills?, I decided to do blog on the topic again. This post deals more with teens and their parents in regards to Internet regulation. I came across an article recently that states that parents are becoming less trusting of the Internet. 59% of parents say the internet has been a good thing for their children, down from 67% in 2004, whereas those who say it has had no effect of have no opinion on the matter has gone up five point, from 25% to 30%. From these you can see that many parents (68%) regulate the Internet sites that they allow their children to visit. 65% of parents say that they check to see what websites their teenagers visit. And two thirds of the parents surveyed say that they have some sort of rules governing their teen's media usage. I'll keep an eye out for more info related to the subject and get back to you when I find it. Comment on "Pa ... Internet

Facebook Developer Garage 2007-11-01 10:48:08 On Tuesday night some of the QuirkStars attended the South African Facebook Developer Garage - Cape Town. It was the first of its kind in South Africa and featured a number of speakers on the topic of how to develop, market and make money out of Facebook applications. If you are like Lyndi and believe that Geeks are the new cool, then the River Club where the “garage” was held was definitely frozen over. The Speaker line up included: Joey da Silva and Trever Kinnear from Moodia (who also organised the event) Grant Flemming from Fontera Eben de Wit from Microsoft Ernst Kuschke from 24.com Dave Morin from Facebook on a Skype video call from the US Christine da Silva from AlterSage Our own System Admin, Riaan Nolan representing his site 3am.co.za Mike Gaylord from Chesscube.com I thought each presentation was relevant, really interesting and I’m thoroughly impressed to see what our South African geeks are doing in the new rea ...

Dilemmas of a computer-bound bunny-hugger 2007-11-01 07:13:28 Oh dear, Oh dear. When pondering the matter of this week’s blog post, my mind turned again to all things green and leafy, and for the first time I considered the horrifying possibility that computers may contribute to environmental degradation. Of course, in an attempt assuage my impending guilt, of catholic proportions, I decided that I had to research this matter further and write about it. A form of confession to Mother Nature if you will.  The first surprise was that while this seems like something of an obscure issue, it is actually one into which extensive research has been carried out, both by the United Nations University and by the Information Technology and Environment Initiative.  The rest of the surprises were less heartening. The danger that computers pose to the environment is multifaceted. Firstly, there’s the question of the labour and energy-intensive process that goes into their manufacture. Secondly, there are the health concerns associated w ...

Social network virtual machine 2007-10-31 05:53:25 Social networks have become topic de jour over the last year, and with good reason. According to Alexa, Facebook now has more pageviews than Google. Pageviews of course translate into profits at some stage, and so the market for social networks like Facebook has become extremely hot over the last while, with Microsoft winning a bidding war against Google and other players to invest $240 mil in a minority stake valuing Facebook at $15 billion. That's a big number, and has some people worried about another dotcom overvaluation meltdown. Financials aside though, Facebook taking over the global social network has worried me for other reasons. Firstly, there is nothing that Mr Zuckerberg et al have done that is really revolutionary - as this Economist article points out, Facebook merely took the idea of social graphing and implemented it more effectively than the likes of Plaxo and other online address books. There is nothing here that cannot be copied and improved upon though. Perhaps th ...

Facebook Flyers Pro - What you think you know 2007-10-30 04:42:56 We’ve been running Facebook Flyers Pro CPC ads for a few weeks now and received many comments our readers on the matter. Here is some feedback: CTRs are very low, as Heidi predicted they would be and as mcrlif pointed out in the comment made on the previous Facebook Flyers Pro post. The landing page of our initial Facebook Flyer Pro ad was the home page of the Wicked Uncle site targeting about 1,729,020 men who are single, in a relationship, or engaged in the United Kingdom (called Wide in the table below). I thought I’d experiment with different types of Flyers in order to improve the CTR and then setup a few Facebook Flyers for specific products linked directly to the product page (Called Deep in the table below). I then targeted those Flyers to small groups of users whose interests matched or were similar to the product advertised in the Flyer. The Maximum CPC was set at the same rate for both Wide and Deep Facebook Flyers. I analysed the stats available to Facebook F ...

27/10 - Another Great Night 2007-10-29 05:28:19 Saturday night saw my second visit to a 27dinner and, once again, it was top notch. With the Stormhoek flowing, very interesting speakers and good conversation I have nothing but thanks for Dave and the team. After a relatively quiet start, caused in part by a missing projector, the speeches began. First up was Graham Knox from Stormhoek who spoke briefly about “shifting the power” in a company’s relationship with its customers. Following Graham’s interesting case study, Phil from UserExperience took the stand and provided a captivating talk on improving “user experience” (believe it or not :p). While he was walking us through a very interesting and informative presentation I was reminded of a particularly interesting part of my undergrad degree where we studied HCI (human computer interaction). HCI is the equivalent to UX (user experience) but for the BSc. brain that needs strict rules and absolutes. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I had plann ...

WoW Toyota 2007-10-28 02:04:15 Last week Claire posted the World of Warcraft beer song. Seems like the game is providing a platform for many commercials, although a large number of these aren’t necessarily official. This one from Toyota has already been viewed over 1.5 million times on YouTube – not a half-bad platform then.   Comment on "WoW Toyota" ...

Nothing's Wrong 2007-10-27 01:37:56 Working in a bad environment is a pretty stressful endeavour, and a fruitless, uncertain job-search even more so. A clip like this one from E-Jobs should provide a breath of fresh air and a bit of positivity to its stressed out audience. Comment on "Nothing's Wrong" ...

Virtual World meets Product Placement 2007-10-26 00:58:55 So many companies make the promise of reinvention through the useful aid of their products or services. Reinvention of your home, your lifestyle and, most popular, reinvention of you. Let’s face it the idea of creating a new you tickles the best of us and often these attempts are met with bruised ego’s, a rash or a rather dodgy hairdo but now there is an easy way... creating a new virtual you. Levi’s has just launched the first social networking and public chat-branded virtual world (LevisWorld) in Hong Kong and China. A virtual world is simply a computer simulated environment that its users inhabit and interact via avatars, which are active and available 24 hours a day and seven days a week. The avatar is you, or indeed a version of you - introducing the opportunity to reinvent yourself completely. Users enter a virtual world, or "metaverse", where they can network, hang out, dress up and take on different identities. For marketing this means the creat ...

Apples are green, Windows are blue... 2007-10-25 02:17:48 I’ve been toying with the idea of writing about Apple for a while now and eventually got round to doing it when “it” happened – the not so festive Windows Blue Screen of Death. To cut a long story short I was left to do the arduous windows reboot in anticipation of a simple fact: My work would all be gone, never to be seen again! For years I have chosen a standard notebook computer with Windows over the “this mouse only has one button” Apple Mac – I am now willing to concede that my allegiance has truly faulted and I am finding myself in the MAC camp with a desperate need to for a computer change (Rob, Janine… nudge nudge – say no more.). Last weekend a couple of us QuirkStars went through to the first South African PodCamp (read the post here). It was an excellently produced event and the speakers were incredible. Of the speakers, two stuck out for me. Firstly, Apple’s Brad Shrimpton gave an incredible presentation on the ...

Computer Nerds Really Are the New Cool 2007-10-23 23:59:09 Although only recently initiated into the weird and wonderful world on online marketing, I am already noticing a new, if slightly disturbing trend; in this business, nerds/geeks are the new cool. While that may sound like a contradiction in terms and thus an inappropriate error for a copywriter, lend me your ears, former trendoids: you are in big trouble. If eMarketing, and indeed the Internet and computers, are the way of the future (which, lets be honest, they are), you (we?) are in big trouble. And I can almost hear the triumph emanating from DotA-playing, WarCraft-loving programmers everywhere, for they are the Masters of the Universe. So much for the ‘Power of Grey Skull’. If I think about it, this was an inevitability for which I should have been prepared. The signs were all there… When I was young(er), computers were a relatively new concept. ‘Advanced gaming’ was a one dimensional little orange man scuttling around the screen, collecting little ...

Grow your family tree with Kindo 2007-10-23 02:40:27 I spent some time this morning on Kindo, the social networking site that moved out of its beta period yesterday. Kindo is “where families get together, build their tree, and grow.” Ok, so if your family is anything like mine they’re littered across all four corners of the globe and you very rarely get the opportunity to all be in the same room at the same time (to be fair those situations are quite stressful and shouldn’t be attempted too often anyway). We keep in touch mostly via email and Facebook (they’re quite a progressive lot) but really connecting, especially with those I haven’t seen since forever, is quite difficult. The idea for Kindo was born from a need to connect with our families. Unlike any other social networking tool its focus is solely on families and what families would want from a social media site of this nature. I think it was a school project that first sparked my interest in family trees and while there are many genealogy ...

Podcamp at the Wild Fig 2007-10-22 06:54:22 I’m feeling a bit guilty here. We were planning on doing a live post from Podcamp on Saturday but somehow between the presentations, lunch and conversations we never really got around to it. Well, better late than never, and the event is still worth a write-up. Being held on the day before the night of that game I was a little dubious as to how well the attendees would settle in and I didn’t really know what to expect. But the weather, location and the event itself meshed really nicely into what turned out to be a very relaxing and interesting day. There’s nothing quite like a Cape Town summer day to get everyone into a good, chilled mood and the Wild Fig provided a cool venue where we weren’t locked indoors. The usual suspects were all present, along with a good dose of new faces, and despite the underlying excitement regarding the inevitable thumping that was occurring later that night (sorry, I could wax lyrical about this for the rest of the month) every ...

Beer, Glorious Beer 2007-10-21 03:15:57 Being the weekend of the most prominent sporting event  South Africa has seen (since the ICC Cricket world Cup) -  The Rugby World Cup - I have chosen beer as the theme for this post. Aside the beer, the following all have viral properties, but that is where the similarities end. This commercial was made by Carlton and United Beverages to promote the first pale lager in Australia to be marked as low-carbohydrate, containing a mere 0.9grams per 100ml. This pure and ethereal scene - the fact that both blonde women and men ('bout bloody time) are floating around in minimal pieces of white cloth and  the humorous angle (barring the opening of the beer  with the dove, eish) - attracted me to this ad. As it had been viewed close to 89 000 times by the time I got to it, I am gathering that some of the above has appealed to many others too... Finding this next clip was one thing, including it is entirely another – and I stand by my decision to showcase the&nb ...