I realise that posting this is blatant advertising for St John’s, but what an excellent promo. 5 free beers over 5 days and then a $50 bar tab to say thanks for drinking the free beer.
Every day next week St Johns loyalty members will get a free beer from a different part of the world between 5pm & 6.30pm. If you complete the passport of all five beers you win a $50 bar-tab. Easy as that!
Mon 17th - Monteiths NZ
Tues 18th - Tiger Singapore
Wed 19th - Erdinger Germany
Thurs 20th - Budvar Czech Rep.
Frid 21st - Heineken Holland
So now you know where I’ll be after work next week. You just need to sign up to their loyalty scheme.
I love japanese stuff. Design, food, technology, scenery, snow, people and engrish. Now you can recharge these batteries using your own urine! I especially love that they are named NoPoPo. Well yes, using urine is better than using PoPo. Work with what you got I say.
Great point on Duct Tape Marketing about not spending time doing things that others could do when you (I) should be marketing:
if you can get the neighbor kid to mow your grass for anything less than $100/hr, therefore giving you 3 hours to write a killer sales letter - it’s probably a steal
It seems to me that Netscape founder Marc Andreessen just wanted something to say, while everyone else was already talking. Basically, Marc points out that “Web 2.0″ is just a term for the way the web was always supposed to be, so we should just call it The Web. His point is entirely valid, but it really has taken a major evolutionary process to get here, so there is nothing wrong with giving it a name and being somewhat excited that we’re finally getting somewhere. Nutscrape had various version numbers while it still did essentially the same thing but incrementally (and debatably) better each time, didn’t it?
Can you guess which one is the marketing photo? It is tricky, but if you look carefully you’ll notice the one on the left has stronger shadows indicating it was probably taken in a studio environment with big expensive lights. To me, this makes the product look much more appetising. How about you?
Check out these other examples of ideal vs actual. I wonder what other factors might come into it? Something to chew on anyway.
I’ve been harping on about this for a while to my friends in the local band, Supermodel (mentioned recently), about the fact that the name of their band is great, but it is not original.
I’d like to see a reality tv show where they challenge all these other Supermodel bands for their name. The winner of the series gets to keep the name and the others have to change theirs. All the different genres up against each other with their various levels of experience thrown in. All bands having to compete in various stardom challenges, not just talent in playing music. Dance. Stand-up comedy. Industry knowledge. Working a crowd. Messing up a hotel room. Being on a talk show. Doing a radio interview. Making cool t-shirts. Recovering from a calamity during a live performance. Spending time together on the road. Making a music video. Writing a song. Wearing sunglasses. Saving some children. Attending a black tie event. Throwing a party.
Do you know who I could speak to about this concept? Who “does” reality tv in NZ? Or anywhere else for that matter, the other bands are all over the world. Steal the idea if you like, just send me the dvd.
On Thursday evening I went along to the Hitwise Online Performance Awards. I leave off the word “ceremony” quite intentionally, there was none.
I observed a number of things at the Hitwise Awards:
- As there are about a million categories, the Awards list must be read in a monotone in order to keep up the pace or nobody will stick around to the end. This problem could have been somewhat alleviated by allowing the audience to continue drinking through the presentation. Perhaps also having a whole slide per award, even if shown only for 2-3 seconds would help somewhat in promoting the brands on which the Awards (and thus, Hitwise) is standing. This would also help to maintain the sense of excitement by not allowing people to scan the 20 Awards presented at a time before they are even read out. It would also allow less time for the terrible jokes.
- The only excitement was the pretty lady doing the presentation, but then she started talking. Oh, those jokes were terrible.
- The Awards only exist to promote Hitwise through getting their badge on as many sites as possible. Although I have no problem with this in principle, it was way too obvious that they don’t take a lot of pride in those are supposedly proud of them and their badge.
- The Hell Pizza website is still top of their category: Food & Beverage, Restaurants & Catering.
- A lot of people don’t collect their framed Award certificates.
- You need to be a Hitwise customer to be recognised in more than one category. So Trademe weren’t fairly recognised for the vast amount of traffic they attract.
- The nibbles were pretty good.
- Even a poor presentation can be a good networking opportunity. At least its a common conversation point.
- Although friendly, the presenters were tired of giving the presentations and prepared to say so from the pulpit. Perhaps they should be spaced out further apart and/or the staff put up in nicer hotels.
- What a bore it is when computers are the judge. There must be some way to present an element of human expertise or achievement worth celebrating?
Then, on Friday night I went along to the Marketing Association Direct & Interactive Awards Ceremony by invitation with Calcium, who were nominated or had clients nominated in several categories.
Again, I observed a number of things at the Marketing Association Awards:
- There are a lot of very good looking people in the Marketing industry. Or at least they scrub up well.
- The presenters were great; bantering between each other and mostly holding my interest for the whole evening.
- The food was outstanding. The band was pretty good too. Oh yes, and the dancing entertainment was great.
- What a strange but interesting prize draw from NZ Post, a limo full of alcohol from 11pm to 7am, must be taken on the night. Annoyingly, I couldn’t enter as I didn’t take in a pen and neither of the crappy NZ Post ones on the table could write on the entry card. Good thinking..
- Perhaps there aren’t enough entries? The same companies kept winning everything. Good on them, and their entries looked great, but it got mildly tiresome toward the end. Well done to the winners who stood for each one. Presumably plenty of opportunity to win something with a good entry next year then?
- The Awards are judged on their presentation and the results they achieved.
- Its often risky to let a sponsor near the microphone, but NZ Post did a pretty good job.
- Maybe Hitwise should aim to win one of these Awards by improving and entering their own Awards ceremony for a Marketing Association prize. After all, many of the nominations for the MA Awards were for organisations whose primary function is to collect and utilise data effectively.