7/26/2007
Copywriting Blog - Who needs words?
We all know that hiring is never an easy process. Significant time is spent on writing great copy for ads that usually end up attracting many unqualified candidates. These smart companies featured below have found neat ways to pre-qualify their candidates through the use of puzzles and problems. The answers to the first two are posted, but the last three are unsolved. Hopefully some of our readers will solve the rest! If no one solves them in a few days, we will post the correct solutions. Also, let us know what you think about this as a technique for recruiting. 1.
* Answer 2.
*Answer: "Now Hiring" in ASCII Now it's your turn.Solve the last three and post as comments.3.
4. Ad for a job found in Manhattan Craigslist (click for large image)
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Labels: ad copy, copywriting, recruiting |
7/24/2007
Copywriting Blog - Anti-Bush Advertising
With President Bush's popularity at an all-time low, we thought it would be interesting to come up with some examples of just how mainstream Bush-Hating has become. We are not trying in any way to be political, but to observe a growing trend and tie it into advertising. The following are examples of anti-Bush advertising that falls into three groups: First, from actual companies who in some way send an anti-Bush message while also selling their product. Second, from activists who have bought or created their own anti-Bush advertising. Third, from those who deface signs to make them anti-Bush. Let us know what you think of these efforts: Free speech? On-target? Gone too far? Anti-Bush Company Advertising This is a billboard for a New Zealand pizza chain called Hell Pizza.
Simplyaudiobooks.ca came up with this effective ad/insult.
Billboard from Naked Bars. I imagine that their target demographic skews very much towards the anti-Bush side.
Austrailian real estate site Domain.com.au joins the anti-Bush advertising club with this ad
Advertising Bought by Activists When President Bush campaigned in Greeley, Colorado for the mother of the anti-gay marriage amendment, here's the billboard that greeted him:
A piece of culture jamming discovered posted on a billboard in Clifton Hill (Melbourne, Australia).
Created by artist Chris Savido, this was featured on an electronic billboard near the entrance to New York City's Holland Tunnel. If you cant tell, Bush's eyes and hair are monkey faces.
A Los Angeles artist with a history of mocking the Bush administration and conservatives including Rush Limbaugh is now going after the Fox News Channel with a new billboard and related website called ShoxNews.com.
Anti-Bush Billboard Defacement Culligan ad defacement in the Netherlands.
Very well-thought-out anti-Bush defacement of a Lord of War movie poster. Bush's face is a mosaic of something not-so-pleasant.
While the following two aren't anti-Bush, they are interesting political advertisment defacements.
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7/23/2007
Small budget, big plans
| Many small businesses, especially those with entrepreneurial dreams and leaders, are looking to do the most with the least. We do not always have big budgets and big payrolls, but we do have big dreams. I just read a great post (thank you, Chris Tynski) on Marketing Sherpa.com with the title: How to Get Tons of Publicity on a Tiny Budget. The article is set up like a case study and basically includes these specific steps that the small business in question took: 1. Revamped its homepage 2. Started an email newsletter 3. Asked for book reviews from other bloggers (gave the book away in return for a review) 4. Used Google's free alert service to monitor mentions and reviews Read the full article here. (Hurry, because I do not know how long Marketing Sherpa keeps this stuff up.) Labels: P.R., publicity, small business marketing |
7/22/2007
Interesting..and scary
| The world of Web 2.0 is exciting, open and ever-changing. It can also be dangerous. Consider this: a new term, coined by SEOMoz.org writer/user randfish. In it, he coins the phrase Social Media Poisoning. In this new world, anyone can say anything about anyone else and often with little verification or fact-checking. So...if you do not like someone personally or they looked at you the wrong way or if they are your biggest competitor, you have the entire World Wide Web as your forum for venting. Free speech is great but as we learned from Spiderman, with great power comes great responsibility. It is pretty darn easy to be negative, to exaggerate or even to lie with the veil of anonymity and the strength of the written word supporting you. We need to take so much of what we read with that proverbial grain of salt, huh? Read the full post here. As randfish writes, this is possibly the most insidious negative tactic out there. Labels: social media, social media poisoning, Web 2.0, web content |
7/17/2007
Copywriting Blog - Presidential Candidates - A Web 2.0 Analysis
| While it is still early in the race, each of the presidential candidates has made a concerted effort to gain visibility online, some more succcessfully than others. The goal of this blog entry was really to get all of the information together in one place where we could compare each candidate and how well each has utilized Web 2.0 technologies. Take a look at this spreadsheet for a full report on what is really goin on in the Web 2.0 presidential race. External Link to the Spreadsheet. *Thanks to Marketing Pilgrim for the reputation data in the spreadsheet. Interesting findings included: *All of the Democratic candidates have podcasts found through ITunes. Only two Republican candidates have podcasts. *Very few candidates are taking advantage of social media buttons on their sites or blogs *Several candidates lack a personal blog, and more than a few do not have RSS feeds. * Flickr is almost universally used by Democrats, while only half of the Republican candidates use it. * Traffic to the sites of most candidates is surprisingly low, many websites don't even crack the Alexa top 100,000 In addition to this information I wanted to also include some very interesting graphs that I came accross. These originally came from http://www.techpresident.com a very interesting site that you should check out if you have the time. Facebook supporters:Democrats  Republicans |
7/15/2007
Wanted: Relevant content updated regularly!
| I recently read an interesting research brief put out by the Center for Media Research that is basically saying that while the need for and consumption levels of new, relevant and real content is expected to increase exponentially over the next few years, the sources for and production of this content is not expected to increase at a similar pace. In other words: the need for content is increasing like crazy but the production of this content is not increasing like crazy. So...the demand for copywriters, marketers and others who produce content (written, audio, video, etc.) will continue to increase signficantly into the forseeable future. Some data from the brief**: in the United States, the number of users of user-generated content will hit 101 million by 2011, up from the 2006 estimate of 69 million, while the "generators" lag at 91 million. Globally, the estimated number of user-generated content users will hit 254 million by 2011, up from 128 million in 2006. The content they are referring to includes: video, audio, photo sharing, blogs, wikis, podcasts and online bulletin boards.) **Source: eMarketer, June 2007 Labels: e-marketing, Internet Marketing, marketing research, web content |
7/09/2007
Remedial Business Writing
| Here are some reminders about how to make business writing clearer and, as a result, more effective: Write how you speak. Do your emails and letters sound like you? Effective business writing does not need to be formal to read well. In fact, most readers understand what you are saying much better when you speak as you would in a normal conversation. And, while you are at it, speak what you write. Read your communication to yourself. If what you have written is not clear to you, it sure will not be understandable to others. Out with it! Make your point early, because if you make people wade through continuous paragraphs of copy (even interesting, but unrelated messages) before getting to what you are trying to say, you are a goner. Stay away from words you do not know. Using impressive words occasionally is fine, but if you use one of those big important sounding words the wrong way, readers who know the meaning of the word will probably think you are not the brightest bulb in the box. And remember, this applies to slang as well as the big words. If you use slang words incorrectly, you could end up looking like just plain nerdy. WIIFM (What Is In It For Me)? If you really want to reach your readers, let them know how they will gain from whatever message you are sending. Ditch the corporate and technical jargon. What seem like everyday acronyms and phrases within your industry may be totally foreign to your readers. If you are not sure what your readers understand (or do not understand), spell out your message in clear terms everyone can understand. It is better to have a few readers wondering why you were so basic than to have the majority scratching their heads about what you were talking about. Short is sweet. Size does not necessarily matter. If you can say what you need to say in a paragraph or two, great. Just be sure to make each word count and every sentence meaningful. Labels: business jargon, business writing |
7/05/2007
Copywriting Blog - Internet Marketing Ideas
Here is proof that sometimes, all it takes is one great idea to set you up for life....or at least make you a ton of money very quickly. The following will probably frustrate the hell out of you like they do me, but they also serve as great motivation to always think creatively and explore unique ideas. 1. Saving a Bunny The site's proprietor ("James Mceahly") claims that he found Toby wounded outside his home and has since nursed the rabbit back to health. According to the website, he claimed that, if US$50,000 is not donated to him (the owner) through his website, he would have Toby killed and prepared as a meal. The website raised money through donations and "Save Toby" merchandise. The original deadline was June 30th 2005, but when that deadline passed, the deadline was extended to November 6th, 2006. At that time, the proprietor changed the demand to 100,000 copies of his forthcoming "Save Toby" book.The owner of bored.com has bought the website and Toby has been saved. The website has reported over $28,000 USD in donations as of 27 June 2005. **Urban legend website Snopes.com indicates that the website is a hoax. According to Snopes.com, this is a fixed graphic that is changed periodically to make it appear that people are actually donating money. This would appear to be the case, since clicking on the "donate" button reveals that the "Save Toby" account can not receive money since PayPal froze it. The link could also be updated to reflect merchandise sales but this has yet to be fully clarified.
2. MillionDollarhomepage nets 1,000,000+ The Million Dollar Homepage is a website conceived by Alex Tew, a 21-year-old student from Cricklade, Wiltshire, England to help raise money for his university education. Launched on August 26, 2005, the website is said to have generated a gross income of $1,037,100 USD and has a current Google PageRank of 7. The site's Alexa ranking is 29,594, having peaked at around 127. The index page of the site consists of a 1000 x 1000 pixel grid (one million pixels), on which he sells image-based links for US $1 per pixel, in minimum ten by ten blocks. A person who buys one or more of these pixelblocks can design a tiny image which will be displayed on them, and also decide a URL which he or she wants them to link to, as well as a slogan displayed when hovering the cursor over the link. The aim of the site was to sell all of the pixels in the image, thus generating one million dollars of income for the creator, which seems to have been accomplished. On January 1, 2006, the final 1,000 pixels left were put up for auction on eBay. The auction closed on January 11 with the winning bid of $38,100.00. This brought the final tally to $1,037,100 USD in gross income. Alex Tew has a new project that could be just as successful called pixelotto.com
3. Facebook Financial Boon - Top Friends Application The most exciting part about Facebook opening itself up to developers recently is the incredible potential for instant viral spread. If your ideas are good enough, built in Facebook features such as "share with friends," "news feeds," groups, mass messaging, and more will make sure it gets out there far and wide, even with the most meager of marketing efforts. The most popular facebook application "Top Friends" launched a few weeks ago and now has over 7 million users. It recently sold for over $60,000, less than a month after its creation and launch. You can read more about this here.
4. Santamail.org Now this is a beautiful idea. Simple, original, and universal. "Byron Reese Started his company, SantaMail.org, which sells fully personalized letters from Santa Claus all across North America (they're even postmarked from North Pole, Alaska, to give them an authentic feeling). Reese sold 10,000 letters in 2001, his first year in business. Though holiday sales have increased every subsequent year, he still looked for ways to expand his offering. Now, parents can order birthday cards for their children from Santa as well. The strategy pushed 2005 sales to $1 million." -source
5. Rocky Mosel and the Star Registry How is this for a genius scam; Selling you a certificate that says you have "named a star" when in reality, no company except the International Astronomical Union can officially name a star. Robert Naeye, editor of Mercury Magazine, a publication of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, puts it in no uncertain terms: "The star names sold by the International Star Registry are not recognized by any professional astronomical organization." Here is a great article for more information about the International Star Registry: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2001/12/49345
6. The Incredible Opportunity..... That almost everyone missed. Domain Name Buying in the early 90's. Those with the forethought are now all millionaires for almost no effort. Take for example Kevin Ham, one of a handful of major-league "domainers" in the world and arguably the shrewdest and most ambitious of the lot. Since 2000 he has quietly cobbled together a portfolio of some 300,000 domains that, combined with several other ventures, generate an estimated $70 million a year in revenue.
7. 1000Tags.com
As the title suggests, there are 1000 tags for sale, and the price changes based on if it’s exclusive and how big or colorful you make the tag display you buy. A similar idea to the Milliondollarhomepage. There are two types of tags you can buy: Exclusive tags are tags that once booked, nobody else can use them. The tag must have not been booked before, of course. Also, when someone books an exclusive tag, the user booking it decides the size (weight) of the tag: the bigger the font size, the more it costs. Once 50 exclusive tags have been booked, no more will be allowed. Shared tags When someone clicks on a shared tag, a list of the sites that booked that tag will be presented in no particular order. The beauty of shared tags is that, just like regular tag clouds, the more people book them, the more weight (font size) they will have in the tag cloud. So if you happen to book a heavily booked tag, your site will appear in a longer list of sites, but your tag will also be much more visible in the tag cloud. 8. The Red Paper Clip. If you have never heard this one, it is a really interesting concept. Kyle MacDonald traded up from a red paperclip to a farmhouse in only 14 Trades. You can read the full story here: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/07/07/paperclip-house.html. Now it looks like he is really cashing in with a book. You can see his trades below.                |
