Who knew?
AT&T billboard on I-35 (Stemmons Freeway across from the INFOMART) in Dallas, Texas.
Hugh McLeod has a great update post about the progress of his blog marketing campaign for Stormhoek:
Blogging doubled Stormhoek sales in less than twelve months.
So, great ROI, right? But more key is the insight that Hugh offers about how it worked:
I have been saying this for years, and still not everybody believes me: “Blogs are a good way of making things happen indirectly.”
No, bloggers and their friends didn’t start suddenly descending on supermarkets, buying the wine in large numbers. That’s not how it works.
What happened is that by interfacing with the blogosphere, it fundementally changed how Stormhoek looked at treating their primary customers (the supermarket chains) and the end-users (the supermarkets’ customers).
i.e. It caused an internal disruption, both within the company and the actual trade. Wine drinkers’ basic purchasing habits didn’t change because of the meme, but the meme allowed Stormhoek to align itself more closely with said habits.
Technorati Tags: gapingvoid, hugh+macleod, stormhoek
One of Rex Hammock’s posts today echoes my point yesterday about the LayerOne story:
For me, there’s a peace-of-mind in knowing I have one place where I can tell my story the way I see it — even if it’s not that significant a story. Before blogging, we all had to depend on other people’s platforms to “interpret” our story. If you we’re doing something significant in your community or business, it was the “media” who told our story. If it was something significant to fewer folks, it was the “grapevine” who told our story.
Blogging lets you tell your story, unfettered, uninterrupted, uninterpreted. Of course, it can also be remixed, repointed, reinterpreted, etc., but that’s the joyous to & fro of dialogue. With a blog, you get to play a more major role if you can plus up the conversation.
Technorati Tags: blogs, layerone, rex+hammock
We were at the Syndicate conference last week talking about the Slidell Hurricane Damage blog. While things have slowed down with that project, it still serves as a unique example of how blogs can be great at both gathering and disseminating information. Here is an email we got just yesterday. It’s from a producer at Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, hoping to use the blog as a way to gather inspiring stories about the rebuilding of Slidell.
Hey Brian - been looking at your blog, and my name is Vinny Rutherford & I’m
a producer on the show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition on ABC. We’re
currently researching stories regarding the victims of this past hurricane
season and the rebuilding efforts in Texas, Mississippi, New Orleans &
Florida. We’re going to be shooting these 1 hour episodes in Feb., and I’m
part of the team assigned to the New Orleans area.
Our execs feel strongly about using our shows popularity by doing some
projects that will have an impact on the community as a whole like
rebuilding playgrounds, get supplies to schools, rebuilding food ministries,
etc.
In addition to that we’re also looking for personal stories and how maybe we
can help individual families in some way. From throwing a wedding that got
cancelled to helping a displaced family who has a member that needs a bone
marrow transplant, right now the range is that wide. By doing all of this
it’s our hope that what is happening down here gets back into the national
news cycle in a positive light and ultimately, get more help from the rest
of the country.
I recently had a meeting at Mt.Olive AME Food Ministry with the Mayor,
Police Chief and other town officials of Slidell. We’re currently
considering doing a project or projects in Slidell and are wondering what
needs the community has and I’d like to hear it from the people themselves
as well.
If you could ask your readers, what they’d like us to do (aside from
building them a house, we’re not doing that on the specials)- do you need
anything that the storm destroyed, etc…are there any personal stories of
heroism, or going above and beyond the call of duty - things of this nature.
Write or give me a call at my New Orleans cell. The more stories I have in
Slidell the better the chance they’ll choose this town to shoot in.
Technorati Tags: extreme+makeover, slidell+hurricane
The Architel corporate web/blog site has been launched. The open source WordPress architecture allows the company to launch the site and make continious changes to it over time. So you can never say a site is ‘done.’ Kudos go to Dan Cederholm from SimpleBits for the xhtml/css design (as well as the new Architel logo). Weblogs Work integrated the xhtml/css into WordPress (actually three WordPress installs).
Architel is a boutique IT support company located in Dallas, Texas that supports small businesses (20-100) employees. Their unique IT service delivery model (one flat-monthly-fee for all-you-can-eat support) aligns the interests of the small business owner and Architel. The company was a pioneer in this space and is now a pioneer in the ‘blog as corporate website’ meme. Here are screenshots or just visit the site yourself here @ architel.com.
The site was entered in the website design contest at SXSW conference and we are crossing our fingers that the judges will enjoy the tight integration between the blog CMS and Dan’s xhtml and css. What do you think about our work?
Want to get people to remember your name? Well, start out with a cool name, say like Pajamas Media. Now change it to something boring like Open Source Media. Be sure to pick something that is either a direct or indirect infringement on someone elses trademark. Wait for the warning letter, make a little bit of a fuss, blog about it, get a few other people to blog about it (don’t worry they will have fun at your expense). Now hire a branding company and get them to suggest that you change it back to the original ‘cool’ name. At the end of the day everyone will know your new name… [via]
Just a couple of years ago everyone was looking for the next ‘new’ thing in design. I can recall sitting with the Architel guys. They wanted a new website with all of the coolness of Flash and the complexity of Amazon. This year they decided to go ‘retro’ and focus on simplicity. Check out their new site and blog interface at architel.com. Fast Company latest article titled, The Beauty of Simplicity details this new trend. Jason over at 37signals details the article , he suggests,
"staying simple on purpose"
He also expands on the idea by indicating,
The big guys are discovering what the small guys have always known. The small companies leading the way and have been for years. The big guys are following the small guys. The Less movement is bottom up, not top down. There’s a big story here. I wonder which journalist will grab it.
Drew Neisser, CEO of Renegade Marketing, predicts that,
In 2006, expect blogs to be standard items in the marketer’s playbook. Corporate blogs will continue to proliferate. Some will earn kudos for their honesty and informative nature, while others will be recognized as blatant, homogenized propaganda and ignored. Content blogs (such as www.AfterHoursCity.com) will deliver “street cred” for marketers smart enough to create their own slice of aggregated info and brave enough to let the consumer-generated content run unfiltered.
Brian coined the phrase and now marketers like Drew are using it. "Blog Monitoring" services are going to be huge according to Drew,
Blog “Monitor” will be the newest, hot job in corporate communications, as marketers try to stay up on both the positive and negative buzz in the marketplace (Dell found out the hard way the importance of this role, as Jeff Jarvis’s “Buzz Machine” shamed them into replacing his malfunctioning computer). Consumer blogs will continue to multiply as mobile devices like Sony’s AIBO support blogging on the fly. Blog networks like WebLogsInc will make it easier for marketers to advertise on these sites, especially the ones that attract consistent audiences with quality writing.
Finally, Drew suggests that partnership between big players and smaller, niche players (like WeblogsWork) will become the norm, not the exception,
In the last few months alone, smaller agencies have delivered slap shots to the biggies, stealing away such prestigious accounts as Heineken, Volkswagen, Sprite and British Airways. Agencies like Mother, Strawberry Frog, Renegade Marketing and Crispin Porter and Bogusky (the Wayne Gretsky of the idea pack) are among a handful of firms that are building reputations for delivering channel neutral multi-disciplined campaigns, and driving what will be an enormous shift in how clients approach their agencies in 2006. Big clients are already starting to see the benefits again of having multiple partners, and asking each for “media neutral” ideas; it might not be long before clients designate one firm as the “idea agency”, tasked with coming up with the media & channel neutral idea, while other firms are tasked with execution according to their specialty.
John Moore asks, "Who are the ad creeps behind this ad creep? Parking Stripe Advertising are the creeps." Wonder how much Home Depot is making?
Additional thoughts on Alex’s post yesterday about billboard advertising for blogs. Of course, putting up a billboard is going to drive some traffic to your blog. Certainly boost awareness. Just like the earlier post about TV advertising having an impact — it ‘works’, but not nearly as well as it used to, and not even close to the kind of cost and attention returns gained by more targeted online means. It’s not a question of if DallasBlogs should run a board to announce their new alternative media project to the general audience it’s designed for. (Scott’s already said that that is how he is getting the majority of his new visitors.) Also, this is an outlier example because the very nature of blogging & DIY media projects is in the bootstrapping, grassroots outreach approach. Media buys are simply contra to this type of project, not that there can’t be some integration, though that’s a whole other post.
Rather, I’m trying to hone in the most effective means of introducing new blogging projects and organically attracting the right types of readers. When the Slidell Hurricane Damage blog was in full operation during the month after the storm, it generated pretty good data about how people discover content and where readers come from. While all sorts of media outlets covered the blog (I think there were three days of CNN blog segments that mentioned the URL and talked about what we were doing), I never saw traffic and activity increase as a result. Much more powerful, actually, was when someone would post a link in a hurricane forum, reblog it on their own site, or choose to syndicate our information as part of a running round up of storm reports. I just think offline requires too much of an action step for them to remember your URL and visit when they are finally back at the machine. You’re after the one-click pitch, I think.
So, if I had to make a working list of the best blog promotion modes right now, I’d list:
The system tends to feed itself. Other bloggers link to you, raising your profile, generating more search results for you, pulling you into more conversation, suggesting new posts, which create more links, etc. It’s a constant process, one which repays close attention, sharing, and savvy. It’s a great way to help a small brand generate a more powerful reach than it ever could via a clumsy, inefficient outlet like an outdoor board.
Last year advertisers were scared to advertise on blogs according to BL Ochman because, "Fear, ignorance and the knowledge that a lot of pioneers got shot." Well that is all over.
Scores of advertisers like Audi and Budget Car Rental are using blog advertising with great success. Read BL’s post here.
Folks like BL Ochman and Hugh Macleod bet their careers on blogging. BL and Hugh used to chat on the phone and ask one another,
"Should we get jobs? Are we nuts? Will anyone ever hire us as bloggers?"
Today it is lucrative and all-consuming for more and more marketing folks. Hugh’s so busy he doesn’t have time to answer his own email anymore…
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