Trendsmap - The best thing since Twitter

Trendsmap is by far the most innovative and useful ad on to the Twitter offering that I have seen in the last few months. It allows users to view which topics are trending in certain areas on Google maps. For example, you can have a look at London you can instantly see which topics are trending real time. They are displayed similarly to a tag cloud and if you click through, you can also see which images and videos are trending.

They have developed a tutorial which gives you an overview of the key offering but I'm sure this project will evolve.



The reason that I think it is great is that it is real time, it has very easy usability and it’s simple.

It will be interesting to see what commercial uses this information could have but for now, it’s just really interesting and fun to play with.

Enjoy

Really great business quotes

Robert Collier: The great successful men of the world have used their imagination... they think ahead and create their mental picture in all it details, filling in here, adding a little there, altering this a bit and that a bit, but steadily building - steadily building.

Nelson Mandela: The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

Comer Cotrell:The greatest inspiration is often born of desperation.

Henry Ford:The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.

Thomas Paine: The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

Lord Macaulay: The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it.

Sam Walton: The key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the associates have to say. It's terribly important for everyone to get involved. Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys.

Winston Churchill: Never, never, never, never give up.

Victor Hugo: No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.

Harry Emerson Fosdick: No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No stream or gas drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.

William Shakespeare: No legacy is so rich as honesty.

Andrew Carnegie: No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit.

Chris Evert: If you're a champion, you have to have it in your heart.

Friedrich Schlegel: In actual life every great enterprise begins with and takes its first forward step in faith.

Ray Kroc: In business for yourself, not by yourself.

Chester L. Karrass: In business, you don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.

Thomas Carlyle: In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment.

Unknown Author: It doesn't matter if you win or lose, it's how you play the game.

Elbert Hubbard: It is a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test.

Napoleon: He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat.

Edward F. Halifax: He who leaves nothing to chance will do few things poorly, but he will do few things.

B. C. Forbes: Honesty pays dividends both in dollars and in peace of mind.

Malcolm Forbes: How to succeed? Try hard enough.

George S. Patton: I don't fear failure. I only fear the slowing up of the engine inside of me which is saying, "Keep going, someone must be on top, why not you?"

Thomas Jefferson: I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

Rudyard Kipling: I kept six honest serving men. They taught me all I knew. Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.

amuel Smiles: Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever.

Niccolo Machiavelli: Make no small plans for they have no power to stir the soul.

Lee Iacocca: Management is nothing more than motivating other people.

Edwin H. Stuart: Men who do things without being told draw the most wages.

Napoleon Hill: Reduce your plan to writing. The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire.

Roger Von Oech: Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn't work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach.

Zig Ziglar: Remember, what you get by reaching your destination isn't nearly as important as what you become by reaching your goals - what you will become is the winner you were born to be!

William Penn: Right is right, even if everyone is against it; and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.

Mario Fernandez: Rise above the storm and you will find the sunshine.

Horace: Rule your mind or it will rule you.

Horace: Seize the day, put no trust in tomorrow.

Henry Ford: If you believe you can or you cant, you are right

Great overview of why eMarketing is the future

Twin towers 9/11 WWF ad

DDB South America seem to have got themselves in a little trouble over this ad. It was done proactivly in an effort to win the WWF business and has created a bit of a stink.

The ad has been banned in some countries and the WWF have stated that they didnt brief the agency on the piece of work. The creatives behind the work are apparently not working at DDB any more.

It's amazing how the promise of advertising awards drives creatives. This is probably a place they will regret going

PPC Tips to optimise your spend

How can I improve my campaign performance?
Print

Based on our experience with managing numerous AdWords ads, we've found a number of techniques that help improve an account's performance. These techniques include:

* Fine-tune your keywords.
o Experiment with keyword matching options. Some keywords work better as exact matches, others with phrase match. Sometimes adding a negative match gets great results. Of course, there are always some words that just don't work, so delete those.
o Add plurals, synonyms, and related phrases to your keyword lists.

* Revise your ad text. Include a call-to-action - language designed to entice the customer to take an immediate action.

* Organize your ad groups by theme based on your products, services, or other categories.
o Shape your ads around your keywords.
o Try running 2 to 4 ads per ad group. We'll automatically monitor the clickthrough rate (CTR) of each ad and show the better performing ads more often than ads with lower CTRs.

* Pick the right landing page. Make sure the destination, or landing, page for your ad is a page where users can find the product or service promised in your ad.
o Keep your original objectives (sales, leads, downloads) in mind.
o Refer to specific keywords, offers, and calls to action on your landing pages.
o Make your landing page navigation as simple as possible.
o Help people get what they want in three clicks or fewer.
o Don't create obstacles that discourage easy transactions.

* Enable content bids. When you enable content bids, you can set one price when your ads run on Google and its search partner sites, and a different price when your ads run on Google Network content sites and products. Learn more in our content bids FAQ.

* Track your results. Your AdWords account will provide you with clickthrough rates and costs, but it is often useful to understand how many clicks actually convert into your customers. For this type of analysis, you can use our free conversion tracking tool. To start tracking today, simply select the 'Conversion Tracking' link at the top of the 'Campaign Summary' page in your account.

We also offer a more detailed Optimization Tips page. We suggest that you use this page for guidance when creating and refining your campaigns. However, these tips are not exhaustive, and we encourage you to experiment with your own ad text and targeting techniques to find what works best for you. You can also watch these tips in video format (English only).

This is a simple cut and paste from the Google webpage.
If you want to view the original doc click here https://adwords.google.co.uk/support/aw/bin/answer.py?answer=6141&ctx=tltp

Hitler Aids awareness tv ad

This is a pretty hardcore take on Aids awareness. I think it's certainly hard hitting and will get a lot of attention but I think it's a little tactless towards the millions of people living with HIV around the world.

None the less, it's a solid message and will certainly make the point.

Spotify offers advertisers video streaming

Marketing 101

Dealing with lots of ideas

There are plenty of ideas out there. Some are good and some are not as good. The real skill is to be able to pick the good ideas. If you can then find a way to measure the ideas that you have picked, you are in the ideal position.

Here is a list of steps to get where you need to be. It’s an obvious list but sometimes the things standing in front of you are the most difficult to distill.

Here goes….

Step 1. Line up all your ideas.
Step 2. Put them in order, starting with the best idea and moving to the worst idea.
Step 3. Assign costs to each idea
Step 4. Reorder them in a new list starting with the idea which you expect to be the most effective relative to it’s cost and ending with the idea which you expect to be least effective relative to it’s cost.
Step 5.Establish a way to measure the effectiveness of each activity relative to the others.
Step 6.Structure a plan to implement all the ideas you believe are worth investing in and can afford.
Step 7: Implement ideas
Step 8. Establish test period and gather feedback.
Step 9. Analyse feedback and choose which ideas are performing best in terms of ROI.

Plan
The structure above is not easy but marketing plans are important, if you were building a house, you would never start by putting a few bricks down, you would get a solid plan together first and it’s the same for marketing, the better you plan, the greater your chance of success.

Assess the ROI
Unless market share is your primary goal, it’s difficult to think of an instance where you would spend marketing dollars which would give you a return which is smaller in the long term than it costs. Always ask yourself how much “product” you would need to move in order to make this activity profitable. If it’s a direct mailer and you need a 7% return then probably don’t waste your time.