Today’s New York Times has an interesting feature about FedEx’s first foray into web-video advertising. Starting today you’ll find a series of clips extolling the virtues of FedEx in the form of three(ish) minute skits at youtube.com/getinfotained. FedEx has brought in veteran comedy writer, Bob Odenkirk, to direct each skit – which play as parodies of the classic infomercial formula.
The move to the web follows FedEx’s surprise decision to forgo ad space in the last Super Bowl after 20 years as a notable advertiser. At the time, the company felt like the expense ($3 million for a 30-second spot this year) was unjustifiable in light of the economic downturn. As FedEx’s director of advertising makes clear to the NY Times, the reach and relative affordability of the web has become impossible to ignore:
Steve Pacheco, director of advertising at FedEx, said the new infomercial campaign reflected FedEx’s acknowledgment of the growing sentiment that “lunchtime is the new prime time,” meaning that the multitudes who watch videos online while chomping sandwiches in cubicles rival those wielding remote controls at night.
“We’re still very involved in television, especially with all our sports and sponsorship support,” Mr. Pacheco said. “But digital advertising and communication is taking a bigger role in the overall plan, because we try to scale our media plan to be where our customers are.”
No one will cry and no one will mourn the death of IE6 (other than the developers perhaps). Talks of reducing browser support and yanking the cord out of the wall have been happening since the launch of IE7. Now, with IE8 released and several other browsers to choose from…the time has come.
As part of Lance Armstrong’s comeback and Livestrong campaign, Nike has created a way for you to get personally involved in the Tour. The robot, known as Chalkbot, prints user submitted messages on the streets of the Tour de France.
If your message is accepted you will receive a picture of the printed message as well as the location so you can figure out when the riders will be passing it. You can submit your message online or via text message to get in on the action!
The crunchiest cereal in the history of cereal, has a new angle they’re using to market their whole grain goodness. I just came across this site, obviously targeted at men, more specifically, middle-aged regular working Joes.
It’s actually pretty cool, and they’ve done a pretty good job making some web videos that are fun, and make you want to eat Grape Nuts (the make me want to them at least). Will this angle work? I haven’t had Grape Nuts in forever, but I’m definitely jonesin’ for a bowl now.
Since the beginning of time, Google has grown accustomed to handily disposing of its search engine rivals and competitors, but are those days finally coming to an end? Has Google finally met its match?
Next up in the contenders’ corner – Microsoft’s Bing. Check out a few reviews of Bing and a short video that illustrates how it feels it may knock off the Champ.
I’ve read this before from other big names in the social networking game. Gina Bianchini, CEO of Ning, probably knows more about niche social networking than anyone. Here’s what she said in a recent CNN interview:
Niche social networking sites are absolutely something people want to do. People clearly want to do this. . .[and] as people get more comfortable with social networking via Facebook, Twitter, they will look around and say, ‘I want a social network for this particular group.’
“The show would feature players using Twitter to follow their favorite celebrities while competing in an interactive challenge. Producer Noah Oppenheim said the show would be the first to bring immediacy of the site to TV.”
I would say more, but I just vomited on my keyboard.
There are several things that I’m seriously interested in. Two of the biggies are writing (obviously) and politics. Even if you’re not all that into either one of those things, this interview with political PR guru, Frank Luntz, is worth checking out for any business owner or marketing/brand manager who wants to know what really makes people tick (Hint: it’s all about the language). While technically he’s actually discussing “phrasing” vs. “writing,” the practical applications are the same.
Google has recently announced that they are trying to improve their search results for health-related searches, and collect data that will help them improve health-related tools such as Google Flu. In order to accomplish this, they are conducting an experiment, in which a small random selection of Google users will receive questions from Google when they conduct a health-related search. For instance, if you search for the word “headache” you might get a question that looks like this:
For privacy, Google claims that your answers to these questions are not tied to your Google account, even if you are logged in. However their servers will automatically record information including a cookie, ip address, browser type and language, and the date and time of your answer.
So it makes me wonder, why experiment only with health-related searches? In the future will they consider adding additional questions for other types of searches too, if they feel this will help improve their search results (and ad serving technology)?
I’ve recently discovered the meta search engine Keyboardr. Keyboardr pulls together the results from Google, Wikipedia and YouTube, but that’s not all. It has an added cool factor. And it’s not just the fact that they spelled “keyboarder” without the “e.” I’ve found it’s a great tool for 2 things:
People who are extremely lazy. And by extremely lazy, I’m talking too lazy to move one hand from the keyboard to the mouse. Or maybe you have a bad case of laptop touchpad hatred like me. For these folks, Keyboardr lets you search the web in a “mouseless” fashion, allowing you to use the arrow keys and enter button to scroll through search results and select the page you wish to explore.
Competitive research. I love how the results update instantly, as you are typing in a keyword phrase. This allows you to quickly get a glimpse of all of the sites that rank for any given phrase in Google, Wikipedia and Youtube.
