‘Cross The Breeze

… it’s a feature.

I’m sorry I forgot where I first saw this, but had to share it with you for anyway. So here’s some Friday fun, thanks to the one bringing it to my attention (whoever you are).

You didn’t expect me not to talk about this one right? Enjoy the ad and given the start of a new weekend, I would say enjoy a Stella as well. Or another one of the gazillion different Belgian beers ;)

Sadly enough, the world just lost one of the greatest (if not THE greatest) beer expert this week. Read more about Michael Jackson (not that one) at the Beer Hunter or on Wikipedia.

[Ad via I believe in ADV]

• BBC NEWS | Technology | Bloggers battered by viral storm
  Google’s Blogger site is being used by malicious hackers who are posting fake entries to some blogs.
  (tags: blog google viral virus Blogger attacks)
• adCenter Blog: It’s official - Microsoft Content Ads Beta has shipped!
  Today, we’re delighted to announce that Content Ads is now available to all US advertisers.
  (tags: contentads content advertising contextual adcenter microsoft msn)

There we go again, I just noticed this on my Facebook homepage. A new group “Stop calling me a consumer…” was set up. Every now and then I see a post or a comment that relates to this topic. Don’t say consumers, but say users. Don’t say users, but customers, … say people, human etc.

Now I agree that you don’t want to want to say ‘hey mr. consumer’ into someone’s face, but apart from that this terminology really is alright you know. First of all, these words don’t all mean the same thing. This is a first important point to make as it shows that it makes no sense to say ‘not a consumer, but a user’. An example might be:

I’m a consumer in the computer electronics space and since I own both a PC and Mac, that makes me a customer of Apple and Toshiba (as well as Microsoft) for instance. I’m a user of Vista, GreatNews, …

Second, since they have other meanings these ‘tags’ are very helpful for marketers to define and segment their audience and hence do better at talking to this audience. So why wouldn’t we use this terminology, it’s helpful. I am a person, a human and depending on my relationship with a brand I’m also a customer … etc.

[Update:  while reading some more at the group on Facebook, I noticed a link to David Armano's Logic+Emotion with a graph that explains exactly my point - I should have known :)]

Technorati Tags: consumer, customer, user, terminology, facebook, human, person

Sometimes even a good advertisement can turn out pretty bad. Here’s what happens when an the combination of the ad and the placement are quite unlucky. Sometimes that results in something rather funny…

… and in many times the result is just very unfortunate/bad:

This is just a quick selection of some of these blunders, there are a lot more to be found at Oddee who did a series on Unfortunately Placed Ads: initial top 15 and the top 15 reloaded.

[Via the Marketing blog]

Technorati Tags: advertising, fun, odd, placement

• Steve Clayton: Geek In Disguise : Software + Services explained
  (tags: bluemonster hughmacleod software sas services cartoon)
• Nokia N95: Bigger, badder, and made for the U.S.A. | Tech news blog - CNET News.com
  Nokia introduced two new models of the coveted Nokia N95 smart phone: an 8GB version and a North America edition.
  (tags: nokia n95 us new release cnet)
• Monster’s Security Breech Larger than Thought
  The 1.3 million individuals whose data, including financial information, was stolen from Monster’s database may be larger than initially reported.
  (tags: monster security hack database theft identity)

The advertising format I like probably most of all is the ‘top topical’. The reason for that is the need of instant creativity and speed of execution for it to make sense… and this is exactly what Duval Guillaume did with this little viral for Nikon. If you’re not from Belgium (and most of you aren’t) then I’ll have to explain this a little though.

In short: we’ve had elections a few months ago and since then all parties are trying to figure out the right coalition to run this little mad country. Given the 2 regions etc etc this is not working really well (to say the least). On Monday a photographer shooting images the key negotiators in this discussion as they entered the domain, took a picture of former prime minister Jean-Luc Deheane with a note on his lap… and it was big news as you could read the secret note quite good. Just take a look here (just for the images) and you’ll get the idea.

So what happened next, after this was all over the news? Someone noticed the picture was shot with a Nikon … and this is what you get.

Kudos to Nikon and Duval Guillaume Antwerp… and to the photographer as well I guess :)

Technorati Tags: nikon, duval guillaume, secret, top topical, advertising, viral

• hackers @ microsoft
  Welcome to a new blog from Microsoft. The focus of this blog is likely to be a little different from most other blogs you’ll see on blogs.msdn.com. Microsoft employs some of the best hackers in the world and actively recruits them and develops them. Th
  (tags: blog microsoft security hacking hackers)
• Microsoft Prophoto
  (tags: blogs digital graphics microsoft photo photography windows software foto professional)
• Communication Nation: Generalist and specialist approaches
  This is an update to a previous diagram, based on numerous comments and feedback.
  (tags: generalist specialist diagram)

• Bloglines Launches Beta Re-design and Start Page
  Tonight Bloglines is launching a new design at beta.bloglines.com, which includes a new personalizable Start Page, more views, and drag and drop Ajax functionality.
  (tags: aggregator feed bloglines ajax beta start design rss)

I wrote about this new marketing hotlist before, but now after the alpha, beta and gamma versions the final list is here. This list was created to highlight popular blogs from client-side marketing professionals and I’m happy to be on the list.

Peter Kim, the analyst at Forrester Research in Boston that created the list, calculated som form of rank based on a combined set of metrics:

• Authority: 20% Technorati Authority + 20% Google PageRank
• Attention: 10% Alexa traffic
• Influence: 50% Feed subscribers

Since feed subscribers is the most difficult to track, Peter uses Feedburner stats when available and Bloglines for others. In the case of Bloglines he makes the assumption that these only account for 20% of the actual amount of subscribers. This assumption is based on cases where both numbers were available so that makes sense to me.

Here’s the list, which will be updated every month from now on, now we just need a blog badge for this ;)

1. ExperienceCurve :: 74
2. Strategic Public Relations :: 70
3. Listen Up! :: 59
4. BeRelevant! :: 53
5. Conversation Agent :: 51
6. Todd And - The Power To Connect :: 48
7. Flooring The Consumer :: 42
8. Decker Marketing :: 41
9. The Lonely Marketer :: 41
10. Marketing Nirvana :: 40
11. Consumer Generated Media :: 38
12. Churbuck.com :: 38
13. The Digital Mindset Blog :: 36
14. Bernaisesource :: 35
15. Biznology :: 34
16. Cross The Breeze :: 33
17. AttentionMax :: 33
18. Masiguy :: 32
19. Community Group Therapy :: 31
20. Buzz Marketing For Technology :: 31

Technorati Tags: hotlist, marketing, m20, authority, influence, attention, peterkim, forrester