Web Jungle

comment spam...

2005-10-09T19:28:00.000+02:00

due to increased comment spam, I have changed the comment setting.However, since this blog (including all the previous posts) moved to www.web-jungle.com, there shouldn't be any comments on this site any longer anyway :)

New Blog URL

2005-10-03T21:08:00.000+02:00

I had posted about the new blog URl already, but the increasing amount of comment spam on this old blog just remindet me of the fact that quite a few people might still find this on Google or other search engines. This kind of stuff has a long (cache-) memory in open webspace.So pls, remember that this blog actually moved to www.web-jungle.com.

This Blog moved to a different URL - Please update your Bookmark and Feeds

2005-08-24T21:32:00.000+02:00

This Blog has now moved, for reasons I already explained below.The new blog is now fully functional, even though there is still some design & detail work to be done.So please visit, from now on: Web-Jungle.comThe Feed URL is: http://www.web-jungle.com/wp-rdf.php

Long time silence for a reason

2005-08-22T23:51:00.000+02:00

If you wonder, why this has been so silent in the last couple of days - I am currently working on improvements to this site. One of which will be moving this on to Wordpress and on to a dedicated URL. I have already migrated my other blog (German), to test everything. And now that I know (how) it works, I will soon migrate this blog, too.This site was originally just a test to see whether or not

Too much "viral" stuff out there?

2005-08-11T23:02:00.000+02:00

Test of character is something done by Renault. A video (yes, only one, but I assume there are more to follow), trying to be funny I guess. With a send to friend button.Ugly Duck is a site with three clips that aren't bad. But not send-on function.Mitchell Brothers is an advergame that is aparently meant to go viral, Chemical Brothers, too. Funnily enough this seems to be a trend for releasing

And again. Something viral. Or wanting to be...

2005-08-11T22:01:00.000+02:00

There is a microsite for the new AIM Mail. They're promoting the new mail service with fictional characters that are blogging. And movie clips of/about two of the characters you can find here and there. They obviously want it to go viral.Just one thing I don't understand. Clips are still fine these days. If they're at least a little entertaining, you can be sure that they get send around. And

Something's gone successfully viral: a "Bigad"

2005-08-08T00:32:00.000+02:00

Speaking of things that go viral with success: Bigad is one of these things. Not only does this run in quite a few blogs (for example here and here), but I have already been sent this link via by a number of people from different backgrounds...

Just for whom is the Rover advergame really?

2005-08-06T20:29:00.000+02:00

There are posts here and here about a new advergame of Rover. You have to race against the clock, driving past famous landmarks and buildings, at the same time you need to take pictures of these. Nice, but I agree with Ernie Schenk who asks why they have done this, when the target group of Rover is really 47 years on average, high income, etc.Possibility though: the game is in fact for Muffy and

Blogosphere growing by 1 Blog per second...

2005-08-04T22:24:00.000+02:00

Wow, just imagine the implications of this. 1.8 million updated weekly, still 55% of more than 14 million active (posting in the last 3 months - not sure if I would really consider that "active").Imagine the amount of content, that is being added worldwide. And even more: the amount of crap content that will be part of this. Unimaginable. Increase in clutter seems certain. And just how search

Again Yahoo, with interesting stuff this time.

2005-08-04T21:47:00.000+02:00

Ever more of the web is becoming searchable. And Yahoo! seems to be one of the leaders here, believe it or not. Marketing Vox pointed me to the fact, that in addition to video search (which Google still doesn't have) it now offers music and sound search. They are not the first, but the most comprehensive, as Yahoo! is allowed to scan most of the internets commercial sites:a new search engine

Light SEO Advice from Yahoo

2005-08-01T23:44:00.000+02:00

Yahoo offers advice on search engine optimization of websites.However, most of it doesn't seem to be great news to me, without wanting to sound too arrogant. But hey...

the blur between editorial content and ads is not only happening online

2005-08-01T23:18:00.000+02:00

I was just writing about how editorial content and ads (in this case through content-link-ads) merged and that it is even less apparent to users, what's advertising and what's not. And then I found this article saying that the same is happening in a couple of free dailies.This blogpost also links to a page about the ethics of journalism, one them being:Distinguish news from advertising and shun

Photo Tipps from Sony

2005-07-31T13:45:00.000+02:00

A nice microsite from Sony for their k750 mobile phone cam focuses on the cam and the art of taking pictures. Just like the TV spot which you can also watch there. Amazing. Anything related to the phone, phone features, etc remains in the background.what I do like, however, are the tips they offer for hobby photographers just like myself. Especially since I also have a new camera, the features

Unilever tests Webisodes

2005-07-27T23:07:00.000+02:00

According to the NY Times (found here and here) Unilever is trying webisodes for it's "I can't believe it's not butter" spray.It is done in the style of old-fashioned soap operas, with all the clichees, etc. (I am relying on the judgement of the sources above, as I am not too much into soap operas.) It looks rather cheesy to me, with the product information ("Low calories, low ...") lamely

The rise of sponsored links within the content area

2005-07-27T20:55:00.000+02:00

I have seen these before, but only once (and that was a special promotion for one product). Then I forgot about them again until I saw this today:The link opens a "popup" with advertisement. We're all used to sponsored links in the left- or righthand navigation. But they're kept separate from any editorial content, even if they are directly relating to it (as for Google Adsense).Now they're

The voyeurism of "Watchme change"

2005-07-26T21:15:00.000+02:00

Watch me change of "The Gap" is a site with good ambitions and it just plays on the voyeuristic mind of everybody, doesn't it?You first select your avatar (male / female), then you choose body and face features, then you choose what clothes they should change into, and then: watch them dance and strip to the music.Of course, as a girl, you could choose a girl, personalise your own features,

10 trends from Rubel.

2005-07-25T23:02:00.000+02:00

Steve Rubel has an interesting post about 10 main trends he considers relevant in the near future: [Quote] 1. The Long Tail - small players can collectively make up a market that rivals the giants. As Seth says, small is the new big. This applies equally for journalism as well as for marketers. 2. The Read Write Web/Web 2.0 – technologies like Ajax will make the web more dynamic, turning it

Monty Pythons Nestea Ice Sitelet

2005-07-25T22:11:00.000+02:00

OK, Monty Python is probably not responsible for this site, but they could have been nevertheless regarding all the design, animation and sounds of this campaign site of Nestea-Ice.What I particularly like about this site:- just a gadget, but hey: wheneverthe app is downloading something, the scale doesn't count from 0 to 100%, but down from 100° down to 0° - because Nestea Ice is cold, isn't it?

Crashing Trailers...

2005-07-25T12:56:00.000+02:00

For the new movie, wedding crashers, there is a really neat microsite up now.Whoever did this site (please let me know) has taken the idea further and let's users crash the trailer. Kudos to the technical team - they have actually made it possible for people to paste their face into this trailer so that it becomes part of the film. You can take up the role of, for example, Owen Wilson and

Redesign

2005-07-25T00:23:00.000+02:00

Yes, there was a redesign over the weekend. Not quite finished yet, so please don't complain. I was just getting really tired of the old design...

Yet again a new BK online campaign

2005-07-24T02:28:00.000+02:00

Burger King keeps putting out nice online stuff. I wonder if this is, once again, from CP&B? Couldn't find that out just now...On this sitelet, users can create their own comic strip based on the movie "fantastic 4". You can choose the visuals, add your own copy in speechbubbles and some "sound bites" typical for comics.Of course, on the last page it's about BK: you can put together your

Nostalgia, again...

2005-07-23T23:57:00.000+02:00

The web isn't very old, yet it is fast paced. I work in this business for 7 years (and use the internet for about 10), so in Internet years - which you can may be measure like the good old dog-years), this would be, well 49 years at least. (Given that thought, I should retire soon!)Now CNET has put up a top ten list of the fads of all times. I have to admit I don't know all of them, but may be

Storytelling in Marketing

2005-07-19T21:52:00.000+02:00

Something which I really like and posted about before: Diva Marketing blog had a good post about storytelling in Marketing.

Don't Klick on this website

2005-07-19T20:41:00.000+02:00

A nice experiment in terms of usability: a site, where you must not click. No, really. Everything is accessible via mouse-overs. And if you click, you are being told off for doing so. A bit too confusing at first, but it works. Will be intersting to see if such a navigation has a future...

done.

2005-07-17T21:06:00.000+02:00

First of all: apologies for not having posted in such a long time. I was on vacation and forgot to mention it. While on vacation, I managed to read through the whole internet, or so it seemed, because at some point I reached the end of the internet: the end.But I am confident that new pages will appear, so I just have to go back and surf down other clickpaths...

Come clean or post a secret - what's the difference?

2005-06-25T13:22:00.000+02:00

Companice pointed me to "come clean", a site where you can confess anonymously, while other people can read your confessions on the website, or even within a screensaver (what for, though?).Nice idea, but not so new. I have already seen this idea before (see here - in german). It's Postsecret, a regular blog, graphically not as nice and without a link to a screensaver, but essentially the same

Fad, gadget or trend? How do you rate Tiddlywikis?

2005-06-20T21:54:00.000+02:00

Tiddlywikis are html files enriched with a lot of javascript. The main feature: all internal links, called Tiddlers, are contained within the file, even when their not visible. Once you click on a Tiddler-link, they open. And then you can also edit them. For more details see the link above.A TiddlyWiki is like a blog because it's divided up into neat little chunks, but it encourages you to read

Marketing and Advertising sites list on adverblog

2005-06-19T19:38:00.000+02:00

Adverblog has a good overview of blogs covering marketing and advertising. It seems to be a rather complete list, which can be proven by the fact that even my blog is listed :)

Sidekick: Nice Links

2005-06-16T21:12:00.000+02:00

I really enjoy two sites that don't really write much, but show nice images.1) advertising focused: AdBlather. Here you can find nice print advertising. Ads from magazines or outdoor. But always executions with a nice little idea with it. Really enjoyed most of these sofar.2) Photography: iso800 by Fabian Mohr. Really nice Photography, also some commentary (in german) on how some of these

"A Netrospective": 100 big things in 10 years of the internet

2005-06-10T09:42:00.000+02:00

So Yahoo! is celebrating their 10 year anniversary, and shows the 100 most memorable moments on the internet (since '95 only).Well, congratulations, Yahoo!.

More online gadgets: Color picker

2005-06-07T21:04:00.000+02:00

Cool, just as guess the google was. This one now let's you search for pictures by colour.Love it, even though I have no use for it, it's nice to browse through these pictures.I guess this should be adapted by the getty images online platform - for Art Directors looking for pictures with similar colour spectrum...

With Yahoo you can set your mind.

2005-06-04T16:26:00.000+02:00

Yahoo has just launched a new search from their labs: intent driven search - called Yahoo Mindset. You can fine tune the results you get by moving a slider on a horizontal axis between "research" and "shopping" - admittingly the two most common intents people might have on the net.Typing in the words "Mobile phone" I got the following top two results (after the sponsored results!):Research intent

Play the Mojomaster or be played

2005-06-03T21:26:00.000+02:00

Axe continues to play on the game of seduction (see Evan and Gareth) with an upcoming game called the Mojomaster.It looks much like the "Singles" game to me. Except that they will have some advertising in the game, I'm certain. You can test your seduction skills on virtual women-avatars. Quite sure this will contribute to the stupidification of society.We had the Sims, we have Secondlife and

in the press (again): changes to the advertising and media landscapes

2005-05-26T23:53:00.000+02:00

Some articles about shifts to new media: the nytimes warns advertising agencies that clients are faster in adopting to new advertising opportunities (online being only one option) than the regular ad agency. Disappointing for agencies - they also state the while agencies used to push clients, it's now the other way around... The WSJ warns the new media not to loose grip in keeping up with new

The SithSense

2005-05-26T14:17:00.000+02:00

Again, something from BK: the sithsense. Lord Vader guesses your thoughts. It took him 17 questions to guess what I was thinking. Which was nothing in particular at first and turned into something concrete while I was answering his questions. Funny - did he influence my mind at the same time :)Disturbing: at the end, an odd looking "King" comes in and seems to whisper the answer to Lord Vader. As

3m with a brilliant interactive B2B campaign

2005-05-18T22:36:00.000+02:00

At 3meverywhere.com 3m is boasting about the 50.000+ innovations. In a nice way, however, because the site is actually a lot of fun.You enter an interactive movie telling a story, in which you have to find and pinpoint certain hotspots with your mouse - these hotspots obviously indicating 3m innovations. You'll also get a short explanation every time you find one.And if you don't find all 15

A rush for online videos in some industries...

2005-05-16T22:01:00.000+02:00

AdJab and Marketing Vox have pointed to it, so I might as well: An interesting Article on Business Week (again) about some companies / industries putting more budgets into online campaigns with videos vs TV campaigns.Nothing really new, but getting the business week perspective is nice - and also shows that the topic is more than ever being discussed...

Another big Nike thing - choose your sneakers on the billboards

2005-05-16T21:55:00.000+02:00

Adage reports, that Nike has a billboard on the NY Times Square (1.5 million people see it every day!), where people can interact with the billboard via SMS and customise a sneaker they like. And once they're done, they get an SMS with the picture of the shoe and a URL, where they can purchase it.Nice. I just wonder: the service is only available a few hours per day. How do you manage a couple of

The One Show Interactive is up

2005-05-15T20:42:00.000+02:00

Some might have seen this. The One Show Interactive is up, so you can now browse the fantastic entries - and see what was hot in 2004 in interactive advertising.Most applauded was all the stuff Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Miami did - mainly for Burger King, of course. Burger King was also named the client of the year. Well, with the amount of interactive stuff they were putting their money to, the

Some more web-storytelling by Axe

2005-05-15T20:09:00.000+02:00

Evan and Gareth are sent on a mission by Axe: They need to find out the best way to pick up chicks, tagline: "play or be played". They have a playbook with different ways to approach and pick up a girl and are now testing all the moves. More or less successfully, but funny nevertheless.The site has all the ingredients you would expect: a journal (a blog so to say), little 48 sec clips of all

A good idea to counter Googles Adsense

2005-05-11T21:29:00.000+02:00

This seems to be a good idea: Vidsense. A program working similar to Googles Adsense. Only difference: the context-sensitive input are little video clips. They are, of course, preceded by short adverts - 15-30 secs long. The clips are about 45 secs to 90 secs long. And the videos don't start to play, unless a user initiates them.This can be, of course be much more effective than Googles Adsense,

Good article on gawker on nytimes.com

2005-05-11T21:10:00.000+02:00

NY Times has an interesting Article about The phenomenon of Gawker Media run by Nick Denton. It reveals a little on how it works (and how they - the bloggers - work), plus a little unofficial information on the finances behind it.

Excellent fun: Guess-the-Google

2005-05-09T22:42:00.000+02:00

The Guess-the-Google is fantastic. We all know the Google feature of searching for visuals by entering a certain search term. Now this site turns it around. It shows 20 images and you have to guess, which search term produced these images. I had an easy start. All 20 images showed maps. So I entered map and voila. But the rest of the game was in parts rather difficult.And, turned around again -

Now there even is a virtual ad agency - unbelievable.

2005-05-08T23:05:00.000+02:00

...truly amazing, what kind of developments you can even find in the virtual world of multi-player online role-playing games, as an article on clickz says about a virtual ad agency. It's within the game "second life", which let's users craft and sell virtual products. And because you can sell products much better, if people know about it, one guy decided to open up an ad agency within this world,

Will a new group blog with celebrities make the race?

2005-05-08T22:06:00.000+02:00

Arianna Huffington is launching the huffington post tomorrow. It's a group blog with 300 celebrities blogging, says an article on Newsweek.Mrs Huffington's idea:Its really taking the two things that worked great on the Internet—which is news and the blogosphere—and combining them, bringing to the Internet voices that haven’t been there, as well as voices that are there. I’ve believed for a while

Even more TV Ads online - hurray

2005-05-05T14:21:00.000+02:00

Levi's 501 has a fairly new site up, that shows TV-like ads (except their at least 60 seconds long...).It's all about the world getting too complicated (and 501 helping you to "uncomplicate" - hhmm).Here is one about a dog getting mad at the complicated world, and here is a Ken-like doll getting mad at all that metrosexual stuff men have to go through these days.Not sure if I like that - or maybe

Fight the mundane, join the insane

2005-05-05T14:08:00.000+02:00

Another microsite with little film clips is the one for pepperami noodles in the UK:goneabitnoodles.co.uk.And it's truly insane. You can see people dressed up like, what I assume at least, pepperami noodles. And if not that, they look stupid nevertheless.In the clips you get to see a boot camp of the pepperami noodles army training the three STs: strength, stamina and stealth.It's silly, all in

The Nissan Drama - another good example of what TV can't do

2005-05-02T22:25:00.000+02:00

The Nissan Drama - a site showing a film in bits of 1 to 1.5 minutes. It's a drama, as the title says, but what it is all about, we can only guess. It starts off with a guy in a car (a Nissan, as the rest of the cars in this movie's world), reading a letter, crying. He takes all the money out of his bank account, buys a car (yes, a Nissan) and drives away. Of course, on his way, he comes across

RSS Ad invasion

2005-04-30T01:24:00.000+02:00

OK, of course I read about this in the past, but it I guess personal experience reinforces memory and thinking much better. I'm talking about advertising in RSS feeds.Some days ago, I read about Google starting to do that, but I never gave much thought to it.Now I actually saw the first ad in one of my feeds:I was quite surprised admittingly, but then I found some information at Network Landscape

Open beer - err source marketing

2005-04-26T23:16:00.000+02:00

Link update:in the by now really interesting discussion with Martin, he pointed me to bowfly and in the comments of Martins post, Markus pointed me to Netzpolitik, which had an article about Vores Oel.Both breweries, bowfly and Vores Oel, are excellent examples of OSM, as people can create their own beer, and in the case of bowfly, people also receive shares of the company, so they become

Is Open Source Marketing the answer?

2005-04-23T12:57:00.000+02:00

Much has been written lately about open source marketing. (So I thought I add to the rumble.)The trigger for this movement is simple: Publishing has become extremely easy with the internet and a range of simple tools for easy publishing text, images, videos, etc.And because they can, they do. Wikis, Blogs, etc. are all a result of this.People publish thigns about all sorts of stuff they feel

A recent debate on the shift from traditional to new media

2005-04-18T23:21:00.000+02:00

24/04/05The Economist also refers to Murdochs statement. And though being part of the traditional media, it objectively admits that the media need to rethink their future profile.22/04/05:Marketing Vox has a short article on this matter: the decline of classifieds in the papers will decrease by 20% by 2007.And Adrants announces a study by Forrester and Headlight Vision, which will be released

Powershift from online ad agencies to media sites and media agencies

2005-04-12T22:40:00.000+02:00

Power these days is more than ever a matter of information. Whoever controlls the information has the best access to power. Might not use it effectively, but that's a matter of strategy. First comes access to information and thus (theoretical) power.Being an employee of a creative online advertising agency, I noticed that the most crucial information - actual campaign results and performance of

Can I have that E? Turn it around, please.

2005-04-07T23:23:00.000+02:00

motorblog has sold all its letter E's to BMW, who made a 3 out of it, linking to its site for the new BMW 3 series.Nice idea, and I am going mad, because I wanted to do this thing for a different client, but because they pushed their campaign from January to god knows when, we couldn't do this sofar. shit shit shit.Anyhow, I now know this can actually be done (if only in Blogs - still fine).

Don't let the Q button become a trend...

2005-04-06T21:28:00.000+02:00

OK, another German site, but the idea behind this can be tested by anyone. quelle.de has a script on it's website that opens the "what's new" page (including a video with the "news-cast" - an advert) when you press the Q button, no matter where you are on the site.Now that in itself is a good idea. But what happens if everyone does it? Wouldn't you get totally confused about which buttons you can

Machsbesser.com

2005-04-06T20:30:00.000+02:00

A nice idea from Austria: produce a shitty TV ad aimed at people <30 and then ask them to make it better (which is the translation of the URL: Machsbesser.com You have to send in your script or a little clip, and if you win, you get to participate in the professional production of your own spot. Unfortunately this is in german, so some might not be able to understand it. But basically, the big

radio42 : closed

2005-04-04T00:31:00.000+02:00

radio42 finally had to close down. The big corporations like SONY-BMG, UNIVERSAL, EMI and WARNER - who are responsible for most of the sh** on the music market, managed to close down (amongst others, I assume) one of the few web radio stations who actually didn't play much of the big guys sh** but rather good music from small labels. But because the big guys are going to court against ALL web

Multi-function ad absurdum

2005-04-03T22:40:00.000+02:00

Ever wondered, if the multi-function approach can stop? Here is someone who found a not extremely important but very nice gadget that has no mp3 player integrated. But it should do, according to him. And if you also always felt like there is an mp3 player missing in your PEZ, then you can pre-order this thing. You don't have to pay - it's only for Patrick (who has a license agreement from PEZ) to

The relevance of stress

2005-04-02T23:50:00.000+02:00

Having spent the last couple of weeks working late (and on the weekends) I have had rather unpleasant stress levels. Short timings, insufficient briefings, incomplete teams and a bunch of deliverables. And of course I asked myself the one question: what happens if we (I) fail. But at the end of the day, I calmed myself with the one reassuring thought that every advertising person can and should

Who will have the last shot in the spamming war?

2005-03-24T22:41:00.000+01:00

Adfreak references an article that announces IBMs new tool which spams the spammers. It basically sends all spam back to its originator. But, as Adfreak rightly assumes, this will probably just result in a huge trench war... And honestly, can this program really differentiate between actual sender and possibly faked email addresses? Will innocent people be spammed, because people hijacked their

long absence - sorry. but here is a nice ad in an unusual place

2005-03-24T22:04:00.000+01:00

I have been overwhelmed with worked the last couple of weeks. Tight projects with unpleasant working hours. You know what I mean.But on one of my flights I found this in airport bathroom:The copy says, more or less: "even more sweatier hands you can get in the new mercedes cls from Sixt". However, here it doesn't say "sweaty" in German, but instead they chose a word which means almost the same

Pimping Burgers for 52MB

2005-03-01T22:07:00.000+01:00

Here is a campaign I like once again: pimpmyburger.com from, well of course, Burger King. And, apparently an agency from Germany. I like this, because it once again shows, how much better the internet is as a storytelling medium. The TV campaign (if there is one - I haven't seen any ads yet) will again show only 30" worth of content, driving to the site, which tells the whole story (some 52MB

JWT wants to trailblaze again

2005-03-01T22:03:00.000+01:00

JWT have changed their way of thinking: they want to "stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in." While the idea is nice for the consumer and certainly the right approach in todays cluttered, ad-tired world of TiVo & Co, I wonder how they will manage to persuade their clients to fully commit to this path, too. If JWT does this 100%, they will have to

Choose RSS Spam!

2005-02-26T22:53:00.000+01:00

Micro Persuasion doesn't know how new this is, nor do I. But it is absolutely fascinating. One advantage of RSS was the avoidance of spam, because RSS feeders "pull" the info when you want it to, and in addition, you can look at the preview without any graphics, ie ads. And now USAToday.com offers classified advertising feeds. So you can choose (!) to have advertising via your RSS tool.

Advertising in online games increases sense of realism?

2005-02-26T13:34:00.000+01:00

A news clip from clickz:Game Developer Signs a 'Massive' Ad Deal. Not new, this concept, but seemingly a trend developing strongly. Online games with live ads on billboards within the gaming environment are shown to non-subscribers only. A research has apparently shown, that gamers like the ads (as long as they don't interrupt), because they increase the sense of realism in the game. Funny, isn't

The idle potential of the blogosphere

2005-02-26T13:21:00.000+01:00

Everyone surfing blogdex or other sites of this nature will already have experienced it: you find an interesting topic, but when you land on the blog itself, it's in a language you don't know. So you can't digest the info, you won't link to it and the information is hence not transported further down the network of blogs. This is the one reason I write this blog in English, which is, like it or

Cupid's Catapult - simple and viral?

2005-02-26T12:54:00.000+01:00

A small and simple game for Hilton Worldwide Resorts: Cupid's Catapult. You have to catapult yourself into the arms of your lover. You can enter a prizedraw to win a romantic holiday... The nice feature: you can challenge your friends - not only by sending them an invite per email, but also by setting up your own exclusive league in which you only compete against each other. But will this little

Kill the Autolink

2005-02-26T12:39:00.000+01:00

Nothing on the web can bother people too much until someone codes a solution to it. To continue the google story: here is a code for Killing Google AutoLink. Haven't tested it yet, but will do later on.

I hacked Bruno's Desktop

2005-02-25T21:29:00.000+01:00

Here is a great online advertising campaign from Cisco: Hack the hackers desktop. Yes, you can. Go to http://217.110.32.100/ (it's in German) and you can "hack" into Brunos desktop. Once you're there, you can see his desktop, with everything on it (including photos of his Girlfriend Cisca). And you can see who's also online on his desktop through an intrusion detektor (you can also see what they

The hype of blog advertising is sooo 90's

2005-02-25T00:30:00.000+01:00

One of the headlines these days is that one of the Gawker advertisers pulls out of the deal.NetworkLandscape has a long interview with Jason Calacanis of weblogs.inc, who tells us a lot about blogging and advertising and the merry future of both together.But, reading about all these ad-eager bloggers I also read an article in clickz which writes about tracking of online advertising in blogs. Not

Using blogs and commentary to underline your ad message

2005-02-24T23:28:00.000+01:00

A great idea I read about at adrants: in addition to linking your banner to your own microsite or landing page, have links underneath it, that send the user to a blog or other site that comments in a favourably way about your product. Let others talk, it's much more credible. Look on the banner for a Haruki Murakami book and the text underneath it here.

Enemy on board

2005-02-24T22:38:00.000+01:00

A nice idea of Financial Times Deutschland that backfired, because their rival Handelsblatt had a mobile phone cam with him.Take a look at the photos in this Handelsblatt Blog.The first one, a truck-billboard, was parked outside the Handelsblatt Offices, with the billboard saying: "a little note for you not to forget to congratulate FTD turning 5 years old".The second one shows the driver of the

Help radio42 !

2005-02-24T00:01:00.000+01:00

Do you like lounge music? Chilling grooves, downtempo sofasurfer music or latin funk vibes? Or as radio42 says it: FINEST ELECTRONICA CHILLED WITH AMBIENT & DOWNTEMPO, MIXED WITH HOUSE & LATIN, STIRRED WITH NUJAZZ AND BLENDED WITH SOULFUL FUNKY BEATS. Well, if we want to keep listening to radio42's great music, as I do most of my time at home or at work, we need to help Bernd, who is running this

Want to catch the viral marketing virus? Buy it at eBay!

2005-02-22T21:04:00.000+01:00

So, having written about viral in the last post, I now found an hint at adrants that you can now actually buy a viral marketing idea at eBay! Viral Marketing specialist Asa Bailey has an idea for video clip that he expects to reach several million people in 6 months. And now he is trying to find a sponsor, who can, in return, stick his logo and web address into the clip. A nice idea, but whoever

Let's catch the viral marketing virus

2005-02-21T22:34:00.000+01:00

Viral Marketing has long been a buzz word. And continues to be. It is amazing the kind of things advertisers do. McDonalds had the Lincoln Fry campaign, which started as what looked like an ordinary blog (except some people soon expressed doubts about the seriousness of this blog - and they were right).The blogosphere has finally been "found" by the advertisers. And while some try to influence

Glas vs Greed

2005-02-21T22:32:00.000+01:00

A nice thing Werbeblogger refers to on their site: 3M has produced security glas. And what better way to prove their point than actually challenging the public into trying to break it? The incentive: a large stack of cash, as some photos shown in this PDF. I do hope this was (is) a real outdoor campaign and not just a web-thing with fake photos, because I really like the idea!

The Top 100 Gadgets of All Time

2005-02-20T23:47:00.000+01:00

This is not really linked to marketing at all, but being a gadget-geek this truly fascinated me: The Top 100 Gadgets of All Time

template change

2005-02-20T01:13:00.000+01:00

The layout has changed. And I had to re-install Haloscan. For some reason, The trackback feature disappears, when I delete or change the Haloscan post below, so that's why it's still there.

2005-02-19T22:17:00.000+01:00

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Blog pundits clip

2005-02-18T22:46:00.000+01:00

Jackson's Junction refers to a clip of a TV show with an interview of the instapundit (Glenn Reynolds), the wonkette, (Ana Marie Cox), Joe Trippi and Andrew Sullivan - some of the most read bloggers in the blogosphere... Here is a direct link to the clip (a 'highlight'-reel; the full clip needs to be purchased - there is a link for that on Jackson's Junction). Not so much exciting stuff they talk

Google doing the MS thing

2005-02-17T22:48:00.000+01:00

Gary Price of the Searchenginewatch Blog writes about the new Google Toolbar.It offers- Spelling Correction (obviously working well with Gmail),- Autolink - which, as Gary rightly says, offers many commercial opportunities: Google inserts links into the webpage whereever the context allows for relevant links.I wonder if this will not get too annoying at some point? Addresses on a webpage can even

Are customers really sheep? The myth of corporate image...

2005-02-17T22:26:00.000+01:00

A nice article that, in parts, supports my view in this post: Are customers really sheep? The myth of corporate image.... It basically states that big advertising dollars do no longer necessarily translate in to big corporate image or brand perception...

Praise the Blogs

2005-02-17T21:31:00.001+01:00

Peggy Noonan of OpinionJournal has a very interesting article about blogs vs MSM (mainstream media). Something that could actually be the start of a longer discussion. Some of her arguments are clearly striking!Bloggers should enjoy this and journalists should at least read it...(via)PS: this column is referenced in many blogs (surprising?). Here is a good quote from Rex Hammock:After spending

Not News: Google pay-per-click fraud

2005-02-15T23:58:00.000+01:00

I have no idea how the german manager-magazin.de thinks that it is really delivering a newsworthy story about fraud with the pay-per-clicks, since CNN already had this story 2.5 months ago?I guess for some things I will always have to read international press in order to stay on top of things.For those interested in a quick reminder: it is about companies hiring people, or using software, to have

Revenge of the Right Brain

2005-02-15T00:26:00.000+01:00

Wired opinionates about the added value western civilization can offer at a time, when Asia, Automation and Abundance will have made many typical jobs of the last 10-20 years obsolete. Left-brain jobs, requiring left-brain intelligence, but still jobs of a certain routine to it. Just like machines replaced muscle-power, these routine jobs will be (or have already been) replaced by cheaper means -

Design Matters

2005-02-14T23:31:00.000+01:00

What a praise to the value of design in todays web-world. This article says why Design Matters. Working in such an agency as he describes, myself, I agree completely (of course). It's one of the only things to differentiate in a web-world, where tools become more and more commoditized, as the professionalisation of this channel continues. And look at what bloggers first do, when they start a blog

2005 -- The Year of the Blog

2005-02-13T14:34:00.000+01:00

...says this site. So how do you stand out being only one of a gazillion blogs? This site has some useful tips. I have not yet tried all of them, but will do later.

Will there be any spot on the web without Google?

2005-02-12T01:28:00.000+01:00

Google offers hosting for Wikimedia projects is one of the headlines of the last couple of days.Just to be more precise: Wikimedia is:a super project of free content wikis and a wiki engine called MediaWiki that runs them. The Wikimedia wiki projects so far include (oldest first): Wikipedia, Sep11wiki, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikisource and Wikispecies.John Hokes hopes:that this is a

Are You Ready for the Cyborg Consumer?

2005-02-11T01:29:00.000+01:00

asks Sean Carton of clickz. I have already hinted at that in another post. This article of Sean says what I wanted to add in a later post about the all-ways on consumer, who is in control of where and how he communicates, as well as how he can be reached by any communication, expeciall including advertising, or, more to the point, dialog marketing. And by that I mean (and Sean writes) not the

Sidekick II

2005-02-10T22:03:00.000+01:00

BUUUAAAH!!! Why do we germans always lag behind when it comes to the coolest toys&trends? Being a gadget freak myself, I am sooo fascinated by the new Sidekick II, even though I already have a blackberry! What bothers me most: T-Mobile is a german company, yet we are supposed to get excited about the latest "push-to-talk" feature of phones!!

Bad Idea Jeans: Bloggers as Models

2005-02-10T21:28:00.000+01:00

Gawker has a post about levis jeans looking for Bloggers as Models. I ask myself the same question as probably most people out there: why? Do they just want to jump onto the blog-bandwagon? Being "cool"? Will it be cool, just because it involves bloggers?? Or what is their objective? I am curious to see how that develops and what kind of blog-posts I will find around the web concerning this

Gmail Drive shell extension

2005-02-10T21:19:00.000+01:00

An interesting tip I found at Lifehacker: the Gmail Drive shell extension. Now you can use the 1GB of your Gmail account as a normal drive on Windows, using this little app to access it like any other drive on you PC. However Lifehacker warns not to store any sensitive information. The plus-point: you can access 1GB of your data from anywhere on the web, no matter what internet cafe your sitting

Enjoy how western celebrities do get lost in translation

2005-02-09T23:44:00.000+01:00

Amazing. I have seen the movie "lost in translation" and wondered about the main character played by Bill Murray going through such a drag just to make a commercial for Whiskey. I just found Japander.com which shows a lot of commercials with western celebrities, and while I watch those, I cannot resist thinking of these people sitting in a dark hotel bar just like Bill Murray did in the movie...

Adrants: PR Blogger Launches Blog Monitoring Service

2005-02-09T23:10:00.000+01:00

Blogs will become increasingly important for companies in ways that still have to be prioritised. Some might try to influence the blog community by trying to feed some advertising information into this viral-style communication channel. Other might just want to be able to monitor what's going on in order to be able to respond to current consumer debates, which are quite often publizised by blogs

LINCOLNFRY.COM

2005-02-07T23:10:00.000+01:00

So the lincolnfry really is a fake blog. Funny. I wasn't paying much attention to this blog, just wondered about it's high ranking at blogdex and only had quick look into the blog a couple of days ago. Well, yesterday, during the Super Bowl, when they also showed an ad about this, they called the whole scam off and put in a link on the website to a rather clearly McDonalds branded Flash-Site.Now

Alloy to Promote Sulake's Habbo Hotel

2005-02-07T21:33:00.000+01:00

Just to add this little piece of info to one of my recent posts: Alloy to Promote Sulake's Habbo Hotel writes Adweek. This article says they're in the US since October, but only now they will do a large push, trying to reach 90% of the teens, as Alloy claims.

Ultimately, it's going to be about creating experiences for people...

2005-02-06T22:58:00.000+01:00

...says John Hayes of American Express about the future of marketing. I highly recommend this Interview with him. Even though it's a few months old, John Hayes says a few things that I agree on, and of which I hope that he continues to be right about. What really got me to write this was a post, that I found: Gareth Kay wonders about a $200m product placement deal of VW. NY Times has a story

Advertisers gear up for Super Bowl frenzy

2005-02-05T23:27:00.000+01:00

The MediaGuardian also gossips a little about the upcoming Super Bowl Ad Frenzy. I was surprised to find out that Budweiser does 20 spots just to choose which one to air. And I am even more surprised to read that they buy 5 minutes of airtime. At roughly $2.4m per :30s spot, that's, errr, $20.8m. On the other hand, there is no other chance during the course of the year to reach up to 90m viewers

Super Bowl XXXIX Advertising Bonanza

2005-02-05T17:56:00.000+01:00

Through a tip from cup of java I found the Super Bowl section on AdLand ad-rag.com. It has scripts and information for quite a few of the spots coming up tomorrow. Good work by the adgrunts at adland! I won't be able to watch the game anyway, so it is interesting for me to see what's coming up. Anyone else who prefers to be surprised tomorrow: don't visit that site :)

Russell Beattie Notebook - Singles and Posts

2005-02-05T00:38:00.000+01:00

Russell Beattie wonders, if people will pay 1/3 of a cent to read his post. I am not sure I would. One of his commentators rightly said that there is still a lot of "cheaper" content out there. And I just wouldn't want to go through a payment procedure, however simple it was, in order to be able to casually surf around blogs. I much prefer ads, which my mind blocks outs automatically (at least