Coke Zero in trouble?

There is a report in MarketingWeek that a Chicago businessman is filing a lawsuit against Coca-Cola for using the brand name "Zero."

Mirza Baig, owner of Blue Springs Water Co., says that he came out with a no-calorie (water has calories?) water brand called Naturally Zero back in 1998. He says that Coke new about this but decided to use Zero anyway.

Coca-Cola spokesperson Ray Crockett said this in a statement:

"In response to repeated threats, we filed a suit against Mr Baig and his company in Atlanta several weeks ago for a declaratory judgement and injunctive relief, in order to resolve the issue."

Sign up for Getty Images customer research team

Getty Images is currently looking for customers to join their research team.

It's easy to sign up and they are offering a gift certificate in return for your help. So go for it:

blogs.gettyimages.com/news/2008/07/29/want-to-change-the-world/

Help them help you better.

Nike pulls Hyperdunk ads

Nike on Friday said they would pull their three Hyperdunk ads due to criticisms that they were homophobic.

This is just stupid, people need to grow up. The one ad had the crotch of a dunking player in the face of a defender as he got dunked on and the ad says "That Ain't Right."

That's just basketball slang for a guy getting owned on the court. How much time and money have been wasted over all this? In all honesty, if I saw something that I remotely thought was offensive to a group of people, I'd be the first to say....well, "that ain't right." But it's not. People are over-reacting.

Nike says the ads were "based purely upon a common insight from within the game of basketball -- the athletic feat of dunking on the opposition, and is not intended to be offensive."

Eight email tips to keep them reading

Gail Goodman of Entrepreneur.com gives us eight email marketing techniques to keep your customers reading.

Let's hijack them and post them right here:

1. Share your expertise. You are an expert in your field, and a newsletter gives you the chance to show it by giving your readers valuable nuggets of information that they can take action on. When you consider what topics to cover, think of the questions that you are frequently asked. What are the areas your clients and potential clients are most interested in? In what areas do they need and value your expert advice? Giving them a little bit of free advice every month will build their trust in you and make you the obvious choice when they're in need of what you offer.

2. Hold a Q&A session. In keeping with the idea of answering questions, feature a Q&A section in your newsletter. Invite your readers to submit their questions, and in each issue choose one or two to answer. I know of at least one successful newsletter that is based solely on this format.

3. Tell a story of success. Do you know any inspiring customer or client stories? They can be testimonials that are focused on how your business helped a company or person or simply a profile of a customer and his or her business. Either way, true-to-life stories make your newsletter multi-dimensional, making it more interesting and relatable, and serving to increase your credibility.

4. Conduct an interview. While you're the expert of your newsletter, it can also be good to bring in some other expert voices from time to time. Highlight other professionals who offer products or services that are complementary to yours, and cover topics that your readers care about. This type of content helps show that you're connected and understand the "big picture."

5. Feature fun facts. Inject a little fun into your newsletter. You might include some little-known, yet interesting facts that are relevant to your type of business or offer a riddle or trivia question that you invite readers to solve or answer. Include the answer and the winner in the next issue of your newsletter.

6. Take an in-depth look at a product or service. Take a deeper look at a product or service you offer. Show how it could be useful to the reader by outlining the benefits and give any other information that could convince them of its value. Remember to stand in their shoes. And ask yourself the question, "What would they want to know?"

7. Springboard off of current events (news items, holidays, etc.). Events that are common to all of your readers' lives provide a great starting place for your content. This could be a topic that the media is actively covering, like a downturn in the economy, or it could be a holiday, such as Thanksgiving. Look for creative ways to tie these events in with a topic in your field.

8. Ask your readers. Last, but not least: If you want help knowing what content to include, ask the people reading it. An online survey is the perfect way to get feedback in a format that is easy to process and act on. Give options of types of content (articles, success stories, etc.) and topics that you are planning to cover. See how respondents rate this information and use their feedback to shape future plans. Also, give them the opportunity to present their ideas. They may suggest a great topic that you hadn't considered.

Newspapers in 2008

According to a study by Pew Research Center Publications, local newspapers contain 64% less international news, and 57% less national news. Better get on that internet to stay up on things.

The upside is that local newspapers have increased their local coverage and are better information tools regarding the community.

The study says:

"It has fewer pages than three years ago, the paper stock is thinner, and the stories are shorter. There is less foreign and national news, less space devoted to science, the arts, features and a range of specialized subjects. Business coverage is either packaged in an increasingly thin stand-alone section or collapsed into another part of the paper. The crossword puzzle has shrunk, the TV listings and stock tables may have disappeared, but coverage of some local issues has strengthened and investigative reporting remains highly valued.


"The newsroom staff producing the paper is also smaller, younger, more tech-savvy, and more oriented to serving the demands of both print and the web. The staff also is under greater pressure, has less institutional memory, less knowledge of the community, of how to gather news and the history of individual beats. There are fewer editors to catch mistakes."

10/20/30 rule for PPT presentations

This is a really insightful article on Entrepreneur.com about pitching your business through a PowerPoint presentation.

Guy Kawasaki is a venture capitalist who has to sit through long boring pitches from business owners who want funding. But his 10/20/30 rule should be followed by most everyone.

He says that a PPT presentation should have 10 slides. The pitch shouldn't be over 20 minutes. And, there should never me a font smaller than 30 pt.

Why 10?

"Ten is the optimal number of slides in a PowerPoint presentation because a normal human being cannot comprehend more than 10 concepts in a meeting. If it takes more than 10 slides to explain your business, you probably don't have a business."

Well put.

JAK LAB #3

All you creative types listen up. This is from the Getty Images creative blogs. JAK LAB is creating an online webzine of creative work, which Getty explains this way:

"Every quarter JAKLAB magazine offers a 360° vision about a theme or an aspirationnal trend. JAKLAB invites contributors and gives them room and time to explore and talk. Strategic planners, researchers, writers, artists, photographers, architects are creating an effervescent on line webzine. Monitored friendly by Just A Kiss founders, a design, creative and strategic agency in Paris, JAKLAB is an open publication and platform.

"After Desirable Sunstainability, Absolute Necessity , give a breath to your eyes and brain and involve your senses in Urbanity. If you want to contribute to the next issue, please feel free to “superpoke” this unique quartet on their Facebook group. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=11026998211 "

Funniest commercial ever?

This does have some foul language, so don't bust this out at work. But, this is hilarious. It's a commercial for Soesman Language Institute...do you want to learn English?

What is and what isn't marketing

Good article from Entrepreneur.com on what marketing is and what it isn't. I know a lot of people that should read this.

The article states:

Marketing is not advertising. Don't think that because you're advertising, you're marketing. There are more than 200 forms of marketing. Advertising is one of them. If you're advertising, you're advertising. You're doing only one half of 1 percent of what you can do.

Marketing is not direct mail. Some companies think they can get all the
business they need with direct mail. Mail-order firms may be right about that. But most businesses need a plethora of other marketing weapons for their direct mail to succeed.

Marketing is not telemarketing. For business-to-business marketing, few
weapons succeed as well as telemarketing. Telemarketing response can be improved by augmenting it with advertising. But don't kid yourself. Marketing is not telemarketing alone.

Marketing is not brochures. Many companies rush to produce a brochure, then pat themselves on the back for the quality of the brochure. Is that brochure marketing? It's an important part when mixed with 10 or 15 other very important parts, but by itself? Forget it.

Marketing is not the phonebook. Many companies run a phonebook ad and figure that takes care of their marketing. In 5 percent of the cases, that's the truth. In the other 95 percent, it's a disaster of marketing ignorance.

Marketing is not show business. There's no business like show business, and that includes marketing. Think of marketing as sell business, as create-a-desire business, as motivation business. But don't think of yourself as being in the entertainment business, because marketing is not supposed to entertain.

Marketing is not a stage for humor. If you use humor in your marketing,
people will recall your funny joke, but not your compelling offer. If you use
humor, it will be funny the first and maybe the second time. After that, it will be grating and will get in the way of what makes marketing work--repetition.

Marketing is not an invitation to be clever. If you fall into the cleverness trap, it's because you don't realize that people remember the cleverest part of the marketing even though it's your offer they should remember. Cleverness is a marketing vampire, sucking attention away from your offer.

Marketing is not complicated. It becomes complicated for people who fail to grasp the simplicity of marketing, but marketing is user-friendly to guerrillas. They begin with a seven-sentence guerrilla marketing plan, then commit to that plan. Not too complicated.

Marketing is not a miracle worker. More money has been wasted by expecting miracles than by any other misconception of marketing. Marketing is the best investment you can make if you do it right, and doing it right requires patience and planning.

Marketing is not a website. And if you don't know marketing in the first place, you're going to lose a lot of money online. The web helps with the job, but it's not the whole job.

More fun with logos

I admit it, I hit a spot on YouTube with a lot of good logo jokes. Because it's July, I thought it would be a great time for a holiday-time logo spoof. Hey, there's holidays in July, just not...you know, Christmas. This is pretty funny:

Make the logo bigger

Ok, I'm all about the logo stuff today. You'll be ok. This video starts a little slow, but if you are in the creative field, you have to watch this. A band named Burnback wrote "Make the Logo Bigger" a while ago for some portfolio night thing. The song is hilarious and this video is pretty good too:

You can't handle a bigger logo!

Google strikes deal with The Family Guy

Our good friends at DBTechno.com (they have absolutely no clue who we are) are reporting that Google has struck a deal with "The Family Guy" creator Seth MccFarlane.

MacFarlane will be producing 50 two-minute episodes for Google entitled, "Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy."

The 50 two-minute episodes will be distributed on the internet only as well as through the Adsense network.

It seems that Google wants to build up a library of content that people will be able to take and host on their sites.

At that point, they will be able to embed advertisements in the videos, helping both the owner of the site, the creator of the content, and Google to earn revenue off of it.

Google to ruin YouTube with ads

So, I found this on MarketingVox.com and it says that Google isn't happy with its $200 million return on ad sales for YouTube.

So what are they going to do? Screw the consumer of course! Now, we'll get to watch pre- and post-roll ads when we watch our YouTube clips.

Thanks, Google!

Yahoo! opens search toolkit in quest for more ads

Today, Yahoo! plans introduce "Build Your Own Search," which will open up the company's technology to third party web developers. Why are they doing this? Why else? They are trying to catch Google.

From the article:

That means any Web site will be able to assemble a search engine using Yahoo's system for indexing information and images on the Internet. Yahoo figures plenty of Web developers will be interested because it's providing access to a set of tools that would cost more than $300 million to build from scratch.

All Yahoo will seek in return is the right to display ads alongside the results of any search engine that piggybacks on its technology. That way, Yahoo figures it will lessen Google's dominance.

Two specialty search services, Hakia and Me.dium, already have agreed to participate in the BOSS program.

"Our goal is to disrupt the search market and allow more entrants to come in," said Prabhakar Raghavan, Yahoo's chief strategist for search.

Copy writing tips

Kim T. Gordon of Entrepreneur.com has five pretty good copy writing tips. It's worth checking out. My favorite?:

Make your message "outer-directed."
Unless you're writing a letter to your mother, never write all about yourself. It's a clear sign of an inexperienced copywriter when marketing materials such as sales letters, company brochures and direct mail are written predominantly about what "we offer," instead of what "you'll get." As you write your materials, make a practice of changing most of the sentences that use the words "our" and "we," to revolve around the words "you" and "your." Outer-directed language has much greater appeal. For example, you'd change "We provide on-call 24-hour service," to "You'll get reliable, on-call service 24 hours a day." See the difference?

Marketing to men

I just came across this book, "Branded Male," which is a close look at marketing strategies oriented towards today's male market.

It looks interesting to say the least and I think I'm going to go pick it up, if it sucks I'll tell you. Here is what some folks are saying:

“Using a combination of facts, statistics and humorous anecdotes, Tungate discusses the most popular and effective ways of branding products and services to this consumer audience.”
GDR Creative Intelligence, Spring 2008

“Insightful, Branded Male offers an interesting theory of how the modern male has been formed.”
Velocity, April 2008

Get with it, start advertising online

According to Mediaweek, WSJ.com, the website for the Wall St. Journal, has increased site traffic by 94% since this time last year. 94%! Total page views are up 45% to 150 million views.

Think this internet thing is here to stay? You hear these numbers, yet people are still hesitant to advertise online.

What will it take? Do people realize how easy it is to track the effectiveness of an internet campaign? And if you do a wee bit of research, there are tons of good deals to be had.

We aren't suggesting that you completely ditch the print model, but it's irresponsible to not even look into the internet side.

Converse Out of your League Girl

Converse has these new videos by the Out of your League girl, who gives guys tips on how to get girls that are, well, out of their league.

Check her out here.

Roger Federer Nike ad with Murray

This is really only funny if you are familiar with Murray from "Flight of the Conchords." This is the new Nike ad with Roger Federer, who needs a comedian or a miniature donkey of some sort to spice up his personality-less marketing. I wish they gave Murray more speaking parts:

New website to buy and sell ads for you online

This site looks like it could be great. Have a website and you can't figure out how to get advertisements? You aren't alone. Check out this BuySellAds.com. They are still in beta mode, but if they can deliver, this would be an incredible tool.

Flash is now search-engine friendly?

According to Adobe, it is now. They have developed a product that interprets Flash content for web crawlers.

This is a big deal.

"This will open up millions of Flash files to search," said VP of marketing Michele Turner of Adobe (via TechCrunch).

10 Commandments of web design

Bruce Nussbaum of BusinessWeek issues his 10 Commandments for web design, and we happen to agree wholeheartedly:

1. Thou shalt not abuse Flash. Don't overwhelm the viewer.
2. Thou shalt not hide content. With advertising.
3. Thou shalt not clutter.
4. Thou shalt not overuse glassy reflections. Apple.
5. Thou shalt not name your Web 2.0 company with an unnecessary surplus or dearth of vowels. Meebo?
6. Thou shalt worship at the altar of typography. Check out Daring Fireball.
7. Thou shalt create immersive experiences. Perhaps the most important.
8. Thou shalt be social. Hmmm. Maybe this is the most important.
9. Thou shalt embrace proven technologies.
10. Thou shalt make content king. Content trumps pretty.