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Google trounces Yahoo!… Again

Search engine Yahoo! has copped a fair smacking over the years from major competitor Google, and more recently Microsoft’s Bing.

Yahoo!’s search has been steadily on the decline for years, and it seems that currently their only successful products are Yahoo! Answers and photo sharing site Flickr. Speaking of Flickr, 2 years after Flickr was acquired by Yahoo! they changed the logo adding a “from Yahoo!” subscript on it’s right hand side; causing a backlash from users.

But if there ever was a bad time for negative publicity, this is it.

Off the back of this week’s announcement that Google is rewarding all of their employees with a bonus and 10% pay rise, today news breaks that Yahoo! is rumoured to lay of over 20% of their employees.

Yahoo! just can’t seem to catch a break. Check out the must read “What Happened to Yahoo” by Y Combinator‘s Paul Graham.

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When Advertising Fails – Part 4

I find that as a Marketing student I seem to pay more attention to organisations’ ads and marketing strategies than the lay person would. That’s why I find it especially amazing when even I have poor brand recall from an advertisement I just watched/saw/heard/etc.. What I’m finding more prevalent than ever are ads which do not coincide with the brand identity. That is, you could play an ad and put any old brand logo at the end without changing the ad or its resulting effectiveness.

However, this one confused me:

Another instalment to the When Advertising Fails series is a full page display found in yesterday’s Herald Sun (Wednesday, August 4, 2010).

The ad features a green ruler of some kind twisted into the shape of a question mark, along with the text What is success?. What confused me is that nowhere on the advertisement is any brand mentioned. Couple that with the fact that a full page ad in the Herald Sun could be costing them up to $40,466.58 this ad is on hell of a waste of money!
To answer the question: definitely not your ad!
I realise that I’m going out here on a whim and criticising an ad which may/may not be effective. The one thing I would say is positive is that it caught my attention with it’s simplicity and lack of direct brand promotion. What I’d love to see is a follow up campaign to this ad, building on the surreptitious nature of this one. Maybe they could create some ground swell and have a big reveal at the campaign’s conclusion? Although I don’t think this is very likely.

So for now, I’m going to assume it’s not part of an overall strategy and award it:

Advertisement Effectiveness: 2/10 (for lack of brand identifiability)

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Update (05/08/10): If anyone knows who the agency or brand behind this campaign is, please let me know in the comments section below!

Update (02/09/10): I’ve been following this campaign over the past few weeks and so it turns out, the client is CareerOne. There have been follow up advertisments in newspapers and television commercials. I even saw a banner ad for the campaign on YouTube!
It also turns out that CareerOne is owned by News Limited (known as News Digital Media in the digital space), which explains the ability to publish full page newspaper ads without fear of the budget. I still feel this campaign hasn’t been effective though. This judgement is based on the campaign’s poor execution.

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YouTube and copyright, what you didn’t know!

YouTube cares, not just about protecting your copyrighted material; but also about spreading joy through what they’ve coined “progressive rights management“.

Digital rights is more than just protecting copyrighted material; it’s all about the ecosystem of digital sharing.

In a world where piracy is abundant, this is a step forward in opening up content creation and sharing; whilst giving the content creators’ choices about how their content is used.

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Intriguing SEO from “the Fin”

Try typing “fin” into Google. See what happens?

The top link (non-sponsored, I might add!) leads to the Australian Financial Review website. Some great work on the SEO front by the guys down at the Australian Financial Review: or more colloquially known as “the Fin”.

It’s an interesting keyword to aim for though; as I’m not sure how much traffic you’d be hoping to draw from Google searches of the word “fin”. Still a valiant effort, however, polling top result even above the Wikipedia article explaining the conventional fin.

Also notable: The Australian Financial Review did not poll on the first page of either Bing or Yahoo! searches for the keyword “fin”. Very intriguing!

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Halfway through 2010

A podcast I listen to recently alerted me that this coming Friday 25th June will be the 1 year anniversary since Michael Jackson’s passing. That’s right, 1 year; how unexpectedly quick! And considering we’re now almost halfway through 2010 this year is flying by before us!

So, what have you achieved in the first half of 2010?
And, what will you do in it’s second half make 2010 your defining year?

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Update (21/06/10): Coincidentally, today is the shortest day of 2010 in Melbourne, with the Winter Solstice occurring at 9:34pm EST. Henceforth from today the days get longer, so make the most of them!

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A message for anyone who’s ever read this blog

Okay, so I’m one day late on the anniversary of my blog. Deal.

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It was merely 6 months ago that I purchased the domain http://whoisadamjaffrey.com/ and posted my 1st blog post. Way back on December 7th, 2009 I posted the goal of my blog, being:

My Goal:

To provide a current, relevant and interesting analysis of Marketing, Entrepreneurial, Technological & Current Affairs topics.

To do this I will keep posts to a minimal length, and only write about thought provoking topics. These will generally be inspired by other blogs, podcasts & my own observations.

I believe that 6 months (and 24 blog posts) later I’ve made many inroads into this. However, I still need to work on keeping my”posts to a minimal length“!

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So, on the 6 month anniversary of Who Is Adam Jaffrey?, I wanted to say a massive thank you to those who’ve ever read my blog; and an even bigger thank you to those who’ve commented and provided feedback. As a young blogger, it’s not easy to continue to pump out regular, insightful (well, I think) content when you don’t know who/if anyone is reading!

Please, leave a comment here to let me know who you are, why you read my blog and any feedback you have.

And please, subscribe via email or RSS!

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You are what you tweet

A recent study has shown that online social networking sites (Facebook, in particular) reflect users’ actual personalities, not self-idealisation. The paper (published in the journal Psychological Science) suggests that people do not use their online social networking profiles to promote an idealised virtual identity; but instead use them as a platform in which to express and communicate their real personality authentically (Back et al., 2010).

When it comes to online social networking sites, it really does hold that:

So, what does this mean for marketing and marketers?

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Companies ‘delivering’ poor quality, our expectations and standards

A few weeks ago in America, some 20,000 pieces of undelivered mail were found hoarded in a US postman’s garage. The missing mail is said to have included many important documents such as cheques, bills and official letters.

Thinking about the implications of the undelivered mail bewildered me. It’s an absolute outrage that this happened! What if something extremely important went missing? One assumes that when mail is posted that it will reach the destination in a timely manner, un-tampered with. This is the trust we place in our postal service. We expect high quality, we expect high reliability.

Why is it, then, that we accept sub-standard performance from other organisations and institutions? Many times we are unhappy with a service provided to us; the quality of a product; or the timeliness of a delivery. Why do we not hold other organisations to the same standard as we hold the postal service, in the example outlined above?

It’s unfortunate that companies, institutions and governments get away with so much, unscathed.

Do you agree?

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AMAZING content

The following video is the best TED talk I’ve ever watched. Hell, It’s possibly the best 16:47 minutes of my life I’ve ever invested in a piece of content.

It’s a keynote by Simon Sinek, author of Start With Why. You won’t be disappointed:

You can also listen to an interview with Simon on the Marketing Over Coffee podcast (iTunes link), in the episode titled Special Interview with Simon Sinek, author of “Start with Why”. I personally believe the podcast interview covers much more content and delves a little deeper than the TED talk.

So, what’s the most amazing piece of content you’ve ever read/heard/watched? Post it below!

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What is ‘real’ Innovation?

I feel I need to write a post about something which has been bothering me for a while. It is about the (mis)use of the word innovation.

Many people talk about innovation and innovative new products. What I struggle to deal with is: most of what people label as innovative is really just an improvement on an existing product. What many organisations and media commentators think is so innovative is really just ‘features and benefits’.

Simon Sinek (author of Start With Why) claims that:

“Real innovation changes the course of industries – if not society.”

Examples include: the microwave, the fax machine, locomotion, the light bulb, iTunes, the internet, flight.

Do you agree?

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Simon Sinek is the author of Start With Why. Listen to an interview with him on the Marketing Over Coffee podcast (iTunes link), in the episode titled Special Interview with Simon Sinek, author of “Start with Why”. You can also view his keynote in this TED talk.