Advertising vs Affiliation

As an online marketing specialist, working mainly in the field of affiliates, websites reaction to trying out an affiliation deal is constantly a shock to me.

Lets analyse a bit here; so we know that the world is in an economic crisis, advertisers cant risk or dont have the money to invest into advertising campaigns because they cant ensure that there is a beneficial ROI. However when approached by affiliate marketers most large websites turn these deals down – not because of issues with their product but because they want advertings campaigns.

Really! Now lets look at the benefits of affilaite programs. You arent necessarily tied to try something for a month; you can negotiate your revenue share and most companies are willing to be quite competitive with this and if you work with companies who have strong affilaite programs then you will probably find that their campaigns are much more optimised than any type of advertising campaign.

Does it kill adwords… maybe a little however in most cases the loss is made up through that campaign.

I think the most important thing is to trust the company you are working with, check out their products yourself, offering good products to your customers will only add value to your site, ask questions, negotiation you revenue share if you know you have a good amount of traffic and most of all trust the people behind the campaigns, they know what works and really nothing ventured nothing gained.

Flagging in Gmail

Remember those colourful little flags that we could use in outlook, well gmail have them too. You can add different coloured stars and exclamations, done ticks, etc; you just have to apply them.

Gmail Flags

Go to your email account, click on settings in the top right corner and select the ‘labs’ tab and enable the ‘Superstars’ feature. Once you enable it, dont forget to save it (at the very bottom of the list). Then go to the general tab and simply drop and drag the icons you want to use into the ‘in use’ row.

You can also set your signature to go directly under your response as well as add extra colours for your labels from here; they are all in the ‘labs’ section.

Human Response to Marketing (April 08)

Explain how capacity can limit the attention a person can give to one or more stimuli?

In a world where we are constantly receiving messages, experiencing new brands, new images, new slogans, its obvious that each individual is going to react/remember what they associated themselves to.

This is where I think consumer characteristics come into play; simply because if I am currently interested in furniture then I will pay more attention to these kinds of messages.. actively. However passively I may recall a vivid ad that Ive seen in the past, I guess this is how the stimulus come into the picture. So even though I may have not been interested in furniture in the past, my current situation will have me considering things Ive seen in the past and actively recalling these and following these up.

Describe a brand that incorporates a Jungian archetype. (March 08)

‘An archetype product identity speaks directly to the deep psychic imprint within the consumer sparking a sense of recognition and of meaning’ (Mark & Pearson 2001, p14) From a Jungian perspective a brand must motivate the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious and trigger feelings that are close to the audiences primal motivations.

A brand that incorporates a Jungian archetype is Versace. It incorporates elements of traditional Italian style and class. The brand triggers off feelings of richness and personally tailored design. Another Italian brand which does the same would be Ferrari. Within the name itself consumers can identify with a brand that has been popular for along time as well as with elements of Italian style in terms of design as well as power, wealth and success.

Through these brands one can feel and fantasize. With both brands the social connotation plays a huge part in the consumer’s personal conception. They evoke the imagination through perception of what the product represents on an aesthetical and psychological level. Being in possession of a branded product like Versace or Ferrari serves a function

and satisfying a need.

Comments about: Massive Effects Therory (March 08)

This post addresses the following consideration:

Considering the discrediting of massive effects theory, how would you

explain the apparent success of propaganda in the wars?

If one looks at the time when propaganda was most evident in society in

terms of a historical timeframe then it becomes easier to understand how

the massive effect theory through propaganda in the wars can be justified.

During the 1920’s/30’s the power of propaganda was at its best.

Propaganda was effective as a form of persuasion because it was a

‘deliberate and systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate

cognitions and direct behaviour’ (Jowett and O’Donnell). The reason the

massive effect theory could be justified within this realm was due to

society at the time and traditional communication models.

Society as well as cultural behaviours and norms highly influence the

way one would receive messages. This said societal influence cannot be

ignored as being a contributing factor that justifies this apparent success.

Propagandists during the time of war dealt with ‘the mass audience’

(McQuail 2000 Ch3, p57), being a large audience of not interactive

individuals who were managed and manipulated. Also the type of media

channels at the time of war propaganda could be delivered in a linear

sequence and not shaped to receive feedback. The medium helped the power

of the message; ‘medium is the message’ (McLuhan 1964) and if not this

case entirely the message was highly subjective to the medium and the

audience of the time.

A quick heuristic evaluation (October 07)

Top 3 usability problems that exist on this site in my opinion

The title of the site as a library instantly

tells a user what the site is about – I was more concerned with the lack

of valuable content that could have been placed in this area along site

the current content to make the site more accessible to its users.

Basically the info found in the Books and Reading section could easily

be put onto the home page…

Here are my three points. I wrote this before I read the current entries

to keep my ideas unbiased.

Visuals:

•Visuals – unusual alignment for navigation bar. It’s confusing and not

predictable. The visual/aesthetic of this website does not have a

typical/predictable layout, which can confuse a user. It seems like the

designer has tried to create a clean original site, but has not

considered navigation.

•Colours used within the Teens and Children section make the page hard

to read.

•The site is lacking graphically – it has no content related images and

the resolution of the few images on the Teens and Children’s page is poor.

Navigation:

•Apart from the above mentioned right hand side navigation bar…

•‘Find a Book’, ‘Renew a Book’ and ‘Catalog’ are not identified as

external links and when the user is directed to the other site

traceability becomes very difficult. The HOME is not the home of Warwick

Public Library, so a user can easily get lost. There is also a feeling

of discomfort for the user seeing that there is no indication that they

are leaving the site and the visuals do not match and it may come as a

shock – even a reason for a user to leave the site entirely and

discontinue their search.

•Teens and Kids section has accounted for the different audiences, but

the navigation style is entirely different within these pages, because

the navigation bar has not been kept the same, some links have been left

out making traceability back to the homepage is impossible.

•The site provides two/four ways to enter the catalog; this being from

the links at the top of the page and within the navigation bar. It does

not have the same accessibility for the other categories listed at the

top of the page.

Language:

•Language used for Labels is not clear:

Top labels are ambiguous, and seem irrelevant in this location. It seems

strange that priority has been given to ‘catalog’ in the most expected

place to have a link to ‘home’.

Side labels are too long; shorter more familiar terms could easily

replace the current ones making users navigate the site quicker and easily.

•Terms are not consistent, when referring to the same sections of the

site: Kids/Children

My searching techniques

I tend to customise my browsers according to my needs and one of the most useful tools in my firefox browser is my shortcut search engine bar.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:4/cat:all?sort=name

On this shortcut list I have Google primarily but then others such as: ebay, alexa, dictionary.com,wikipedia, bbc, google alerts, tags, referred pages, stumble upon. So I tend to search within the actual environment I expect to find the information.

However google seems to pretty much be the core of it all. Go to Google you find it all and the chrome browser is making this even more so the case.

As a final note however – please check out http://www.cuil.com the info page is interesting too Is Google the greatest or is it just marketed as being so ?

Vivid Branding

Brands or products that use vividness to attract attention: (European environment)

Firstly Cadbury; their ads have always been highly sensory and image provoking, but in the one of the gorilla

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnzFRV1LwIo. Through familiar music and the use of a gorilla the evoke interest maybe not so much about the chocolate, but it does get you thinking about the brand.

Another brand which I think does the same is Sony, in their Bravia campaign. These ads are of high interest , are simply fascinating, they evoke curiosity thought and the use of bright colours definitely come into play.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bb8P7dfjVw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW–lAtwyEo&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GURvHJNmGrc&feature=related

Other branding – making bold statements: Just came across this - thought Id share  
 
http://www.hemmy.net/2006/10/15/creative-advertisements-around-the-world/

Audience and Media

What do you think are some of the factors that complicate the study of audience involvement with the media?

Research results of audience involvement with the media are subject to individuals. This automatically brings along factors which complicate the study. Seeing that each individual has different ‘inherent needs, values, and interests’(p.345) as well as different levels of involvement, different culture, and different proximity to the message, studying involvement with media can be complicated. With all these external factors contributing to the result of such a study it’s fair to say that as stated by Salmon (1986) Involvement can be perceived as a ‘vague metaconcept’, because these external factors confuse the construct of the research at hand. Each type of involvement has a different pattern of relationships with other variables (p.256) therefore making it harder to produce a general outcome when each variable must be assessed individually.

In such a case where perception influences individual levels of involvement so highly, a study of this gives results which are relevant but maybe not as accurate as aspired for.

New Media and Receiving Media Messages

New media has changed the way we receive media messages particularly with the inclusion of telephone (yes) but more so the influence of the internet.

Quantifying word rate is impossible due

to attentiveness and I take this simply from my own actions and my own

reception of media messages. I don’t have a television I stream

everything onto my pc. If I’m watching television I will be browsing

websites, checking my mail, on msn etc. On this level quantification

becomes even more complex because whilst I’m on a website I’m being

pushed to received other messages, while I’m on Msn I’m seeing media

messages as well. That said consumers’ attentiveness will be based on

the messages that are most valid to them and I think as a medium the

internet allows to some extent the user to be more in selective of what

messages they receive (opting in to receiving a newsletter for example)

I believe that in such dense info culture we are subjected

to pay less attention as we do with say spam, however how would you

justify viral marketing? People just seem to be going back for more. It

such an addictive technique that most certainly maintains interest don’t

you think? Maybe we block out the non important info but opt in to

receive the info that is important to us.

Something that I recommend – might answer some of those questions about viral marketing – definitely gives food for thought :

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/22/the-secret-strategies-behind-many-viral-videos/