Ask.com bidding on Big Mouth Media

Does this make us famous? Are we the first digital¹ agency to have a search engine bid on our brand name?

I'd like to think so - but, in reality, this is far more likely to be Google's rather annoying expanded broadmatch.

The brand's wrong anyway. It shouldn't be Big Mouth Media. It should be bigmouthmedia. We have brand police who spank you if you get that wrong.

¹The brand police prefer 'digital' to 'search'. Well. It makes sense as we do so much affiliate and display marketing these days too!

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O2 commissions made-for-mobile drama series

O₂ is a big mobile carrier in the UK. They have the iPhone contract. They're part of Telefónica.

O₂ has just signed one of their first (probably of many) made-for-mobile content deals. I blog about this with this with Tuesday's post questioning whether content or communication is king on mobile.

Certainly it seems that O₂ are lining up their ducks. iPhone users might ask; "Now what?" after they've played with the device and it might just be that a mobile drama series will suit that big screen very well.

Big names are involved in the drama (which will be called Cell) - Endemol UK and Mobstar Media. Endemol are the people behind the infamous Big Brother TV show. I've never watched Big Brother but I may watch Cell just so I can be part of the premiere.

Do you know the big problem with being clever and calling the series Cell? That's right - it'll be a bitch to rank for. If you search for [O₂ Cell] or [Endemol Cell] you'll get a bunch of results about mobile/cell phones.

I'm on O₂ so my mobile will be able to get this. I'm interested in how they're going to announce this to me. An SMS seems most likely. If you're not on O₂ - fear not - the series will be shared with other providers and aired online after O₂'s customers have had the first chance to view it.

Is this a first? Not really. It just seems like another significant step forward and another increase in the heat around mobile content and mobile marketing.

It's worth noting that Endemol is doing pretty well with its mobile content. They've already had a fly-on-the-wall mobile series which followed the pop band the Sugababes.

One thing I've noticed is that many SEO blogs aren't covering the growth of mobile content very well. This is will be partially due to the differences between European, American and Canadian mobile usage. European mobiles (oh, I mean; cell phones) tend to be closer in technology to the latest Asian mobiles (or are a Nokia or Sony Ericsson in the first place). A high percentage of European users are pretty close to being mobile power users too.

My prediction for bloggers most likely to cover this story are: Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim as the site does well to cover a broad range of digital topics and Barry Schwartz who may well have an iphone tag on his personal blog.

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Social Media success at Cadbury?

If this is a success - it's one of the biggest successes I've seen in the social media landscape.

Cadbury is due to bring back their famous 1980s chocolate bar - the Wispa.

Brand Republic has coverage and is citing social network pressure (sub needed).

The lobbying on Facebook and MySpace resulted in a 14,000 people "Bring Back Wispa" group. You can find Wispa archive adverts such as this one for Wispa Gold (which lasted longer than Wispa itself) on YouTube.



I think this is an interesting move from Cadbury. Sure, the collective voice of Wispa fans on the net is strong but is it enough to support a whole product line? There are more than 14,000 news agents in the UK and so the Bring Back Wispa group could equate to less than one chocolate bar being sold from every other shop in the UK. That wouldn't be a success. On the other than, as a public sample survey the 14,000 figure is huge.

This move follows Proctor and Gamble pulling their internet ad campaigns and blaming poor metrics for online. P&G don't sell products to you and me. P&G sell products to the likes of ASDA and Tesco. When P&G advertise on the TV they're doing that to encourage us to go to the shops and ask for P&G products. Cadbury is in the same boat; they don't sell their chocolate bars directly to us, they advertise so that we demand their chocolate from retailers and it is the retailers who then buy from Cadbury.

P&G picked up a lot of criticism for their move to stall their online efforts. I suspect they were not prepared for how vocal the net community is. They also seemed to be slightly shaky in their understanding of where TV is going (IPTV or V+, anyone?).

P&G may being Luddite about online and Cadbury may being progressive - but we're yet to see who's right.

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Thoughts on Facebook and its advertisers

The Facebook fallout picked up speed and import over the weekend. I'm glad I got to it on Friday.

The UK's Central Office of Information has also decided to pull its ads from Facebook and social networking sites [sub required, Will Cooper story].

They don't say this is just because of the British National Party issue on Facebook but that's the implication. That's an interesting one because the COI is a government body and the BNP is, in theory, a legitimate political party.

The BNP will argue that it's not racist. In my opinion and in my definition of racism I find the BNP's policies to be racist. (Once again; my opinion.) For my American readers (I know I've some :P I've seen rustybrick and Lisa Barone on MyBlogLog) the BNP would ship foreigners out of the United Kingdom, the darker your skin the more quickly you would find yourself on the boat.

It shows just how unviable the BNP is as an election option if government bodies like the COI do not want to be associated with them.

It shows how bad for the economy it would be if the BNP makes inroads in the election if important companies like Vodafone do not want to be associated with them.

Anyway, back to Facebook. The onus is now on them (and other social sites) to try and apply some sort of filtering. This will be tricky. Filtering based on keyword content is possible ... but filtering based on principles? I wouldn't be that pleased to see adverts for any of my creations appearing beside Creationist propaganda or militant Scottish Independent content. I have no objections to adverts appearing in conjunction with religious or political content, though.

I think the advertisers are in a better position. Look at all this publicity!

If we were advising The AA, First Direct, etc, then I would encourage them back on to Facebook.

I would encourage them to run a banner campaign specific to Facebook, one that mentioned Facebook in the display and perhaps alongside like "Find out why Vodafone advertises on Facebook".

The banner points to a page which quickly surmises Vodafone's equal opportunities, ethical stance, beliefs and other positive light and brand building content. (Using Vodafone as the example here).

This page would then say, briefly, that they support social sites and value consumers who have something to say and something to share online. That's the chance to get to the reader and make them think "Hey, that's me! They think I'm smart. They like me." That's a good message to get into the head of a would-be customer.

As I'm search bias, I would also try and make this page even more linkbait than it already is (right now it would be publicity linkbait). I would go to include something like an electronic petition which readers can sign or email the link to a friend to ... well, whatever works best, a) anti-racism, b) pro-consumer, etc. Alternatively, the page could give a way badges (static widgets) that simply conveyed a positive message (All humans are equal, etc) and the badge/widget would link back to this page.

A key here would be to see how much of this "special campaign" that the brands could get free or discounted from Facebook. That would certainly add to the ROI. That's why including a pro-Facebook message would certainly help.

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bigmouthmedia is big mouth media

I was emailed today by a journalist who managed to call the digital agency I work for "bigmouthmedia" and "big mouth media" in the same email. Not in the same paragraph though. I've also seen "bigmouth media" used.

This is one of the "quirks" associated with having a slightly quirky brand name. There are additional variants that people search on and which you therefore need to ensure you need to be optimised for. That said, there is no way that a significant high street name would allow the wrong use (with spaces, in our case) of their brand name on their site. I made the controversial decision to test this on our Flickr account though.

Brands can be tricky like this. This is one of the reasons that I'm very pleased Chris Sherman and Danny have set up the Brand Aid column on SearchEngineLand.

I'm very interest to see what will be written about. Too often forum and blog based SEO chat simply could not apply to big brands and their websites.

Here are some (fairly) common pit traps:

• A corporate font - this used to haunt me back in the 90s when this was common. Brands would spend tens of thousands (or more) in designing a font for themselves. The only way to get this font, in a cross-browser safe way, onto the site was to use images. As a result key messages could not be seen by the search engines. This is one of the reasons why Google themselves use the example of just having a graphic logo rather than the name of your company on the site.
• Weird spellings - for example 'x' rather than 'ct' in a word (connexions rather than connections) or 'ez' rather than 'easy' (ez-Andrew rather than easy-Andrew).
• Concept names - for example, 'desktop storage' rather than 'portable hard drive' or 'floating hotel' rather than 'cruise ship'.
• Commonly misspelled names - for example, from the UK market, I could pick 'Thomson' which often picks up the extra P or 'Ernest Jones' where 'Ernest' is spelt in dozens of different ways!
• Brands versus Everyday - for example, companies calling themselves 'Monday' or 'Circle' and then struggling to rank for their own name.

Anyone else got some good brand battle examples?

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My Magazine Meme

Wow. I’ve been tagged. Tagged by Bill Slawski too. Bill gets the dubious honour of being the first person to tag me via my professional blog.

So, which magazines do I read? Like many in the Search World I read almost everything online. This week, however, two stalwarts of the gaming industry have come to a close. Dragon and Dungeon magazines are both being discontinued. If you’re geek enough (which we should all be) you may well know both of these publications. Dragon comes to an end at issue #359.

Despite Dragon’s death I’m claiming that as my first mag.

• Dragon

(I have the press release from Paizo and Wizards of the Coast about the closure if anyone wants it)

The next two magazines are easy. I travel a lot. London 9am meetings are the norm - and I live in Edinburgh.

• British Airways' High Life magazine
• EasyJet’s InFlight magazine

I do read industry magazines. In the UK there isn’t a magazine like Search Marketing Standard. I’ve read SMS a few times – thanks to free copies sent from America. My readership of SMS is pretty much coupled with what we, as an agency, might do in the States.

• New Media Age

New Media Age is, as the name suggests, about ‘new media’. It’s about brands and online marketing. I read it for a number of reasons. One of which is Will Cooper – who, in my opinion, is the “Danny Sullivan” of reporters who write about search to the “mainstream marketing” community. Does that make sense? The link above for NMA links to Will Cooper reporting from SES New York. I think that proves my point. Name any other magazine reports who flew from London to New York for SES?

• Marketing Week

Another “mainstream marketing” magazine that tends to write about Search and Affiliates. In fact, you can download their Search Marketing Supplement [pdf], laugh at how the adverts have been mangled and flee in horror when you see which blogger pops up from time to time in it.

(I feel like noting that I’m a fan of Brand Republic online and subscribe to their RSS.)

Oh yeah. I supposed to tag five more people... but meme's have very short lives. Anyone who's studied evolutionary computing (I love it! Google should try and grab a trademark on the term or something) will know that it is sometimes healthy for a spreading gene to meet a dead end. [fin]

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Note to online brands: Don't let head-hunters jeopardise your SEM campaign

There is a lack of strong SEM professionals in the UK. There is a shortage of good PPC people and an even worse shortage of good SEO people. Gosh. If you're looking for someone savvy on both fronts then you are in for a search (oh, there's a touch of irony in there).

Imagine the scenario. You're a brand who lives or dies online. It might be that PPC is especially important to you. It may be that you've grown to the point where you do run the occasional TV campaign or direct marketing push but it is still largely Google who delivers you traffic.

You need to recruit. You may be after a Head of Search or some senior PPC or SEO role. You bring in the head-hunters. What will the head-hunters do?

The chances are high that the head-hunters will start to ring around the large and well known SEM agencies. These are the same agencies who might manage your rivals PPC or SEO campaigns. If head-hunters have the exclusive rights to your vacancy then they won't be shy in dropping your name in an attempt to lure in senior agency staff.

The attempt is likely to have unwelcome side-effects for you, though. Your head-hunters have just told the people tasked with matching and beating your online strategy that you are missing a key member of staff, are about to loose a key member of staff or are about to bring in a significant new member of staff.

Simple things like bidding technologies get reviewed when a new Head of Search arrives. If I discover that Brand X is looking for a new Head of Search then I'll put Brand X's search campaign on watch (if it's not on watch already). Let's see if they change from Atlas to Doubleclick, for example. That'll mean their AdWord campaign is likely to have to regain its history. Let's expect the new guy to try and make a strong start so let's watch out for new microsites, a new organic strategy or a review of affiliate networks.

Of course, all this applies to any other industry. If Brand X hires a new advertising agency then you know a new style of advert is likely. Old imagery, catchphrases or jingles may go. However, I argue the effect is even more extreme in the world of search. Why? There are fewer players and so head-hunters are much more likely to let the cat out of the bag and approach someone tasked to go against you. Tracking, bidding, linking, building, affiliations and copywriting are all externally measurable.

There are people out there watching you.

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Bom Chicka Wah Wah

There's a Lynx ad running on UK TV with the catch phrase "Bom Chicka Wah Wah". A guy introduces his sexy girlfriend to his parents. His father visits the loo and accidentally squirts himself with some of his son's Lynx. As a result the girlfriend rips the father's clothes off. This is a reason to buy Lynx.

The catch phrase "Bom Chicka Wah Wah" is uttered by the foxy girlfriend. I've preferred other Lynx ads but the special thing about this ad is that it creates a keyphrase. Bom Chicka Wah Wah would score about 50% in the phone test. If you have to spell a domain name or keyphrase out down the phone then the domain/phrase fails the phone test. Bom Chicka Wah Wah is pleasant on the ear but it doesn't translate so easily into a search term as, for example, "quote me happy" did.

Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) do the TV advert and, I think, the Flash website staring Kelly Brook, so I'm going to assume that they do the search too. BBH get some things right - they spell out "Bom Chicka Wah Wah" at the end of the TV advert so we can see how to spell it.

There's also a paid search campaign which not only picks up [Bom Chicka Wah Wah] but [Bom Chicka] too. Don't search and click (that's mean) you can find the flash site at Lynx Players.


Of course, it would be better if the site had organic rankings for the phrase too. That would have been easy enough to do. Lynx Players, being in Flash, will always struggle organically.

The analytics geek in me also hopes that the URL ?ref=index.php is there to allow deep linking into the Flash movie and not for the tracking. If you've visiting the site from this blog then you're not coming from index.php at all and that's exactly why tracking by URL is so prone to corruption.

Next time, hopefully, Lynx will have an organically search safe page in place to catch any of the traffic that [bom chicka wah wah] might create for them - and save themselves the PPC costs.

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Client wins to be proud of

I'm just back from London and wading through my Google Reader feeds. I've noticed a pair of client wins to be proud of.

Zed Digital won Yahoo's search marketing campaign (taking it from Carat). The Yahoo deal is probably worth around €20,000,000 or €15,000,000. We didn't pitch (I think Isobar and eSearchVision did) so this isn't (too much) sour grapes but it would be good to see a full search agency get the search work from a search engine in the future.

I think Yahoo would be a great company to work with. A Y! on the roster would be shiny-shiny indeed! One of my first lecturers at University, a hippy gone academic, once wished the class a "profoundly funky weekend". For some inexplicable reason I know associate that lecturer and the phrase "profoundly funky" with Yahoo! My first ever credit card was a purple and yellow Yahoo branded card (via the Halifax).

In other news, also of kudos clients, I noticed that MPG picked up the £20,000,000 BBC online account. I'm not sure if that includes search. I'm not sure if the BBC does search (but I do recall a BBC Shop affiliate scheme). MPG beat Mediaedge:cia and ZenithOptimedia (who own Zed Digital) as well as PHD and Carat - so I can imagine it was a tough fight! Oliver Milman, over at mad.co.uk, tends to be good and include all the agency details in his write ups.

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Dead Birds - When Life Scuppers Your Marketing Campaign

It was about two weeks ago that I first saw a dead chicken on the way to work. I was pretty sure it was a dead chicken... but, come on, a dead bird? Yuck. The advert had been on the side of a bus which had whooshed past at speed and I was left with some doubt in my mind. Who would be advertising dead chickens on the side of a bus?

A few days later I saw another. A different poster - a brown chicken rather than a yellow one - but clearly a dead chicken. Swiftcovered, heh? At the back of my mind I could vaguely recall a TV advert when a guy trying to arrange his insurance gets very frustrated at a bunch of chickens clucking at him in a call centre spoof. It is the same people.

Current affairs have not been kind to Swiftcover. The deadly Asian strain of bird flu - H5N1 - has broken out at a turkey farm in England this weekend. The news is full of images of dead birds being dumped into large trucks.

The public is worried. The BBC has interviews with Joe Public who all say they'll be steering clear of poultry. Of course, these people are over reacting, but Joe Public has a propensity to do that.

It's just bad timing. Very bad timing. Under no circumstances do you want your brand associated with bird flu. Unless, well, you sell flu vaccinations or health insurance. Unfortunately for Swiftcover they only sell car, travel, dog or cat insurance. I suspect only farmers get chicken insurance.

I should remind you that this is a personal blog and opinions here (I have lots of them) do not reflect the opinions of the company I work for.

My first reaction to the dead chicken advert was a bad one. Sure - it got my attention - but I didn't think "Ah-ah! Swiftcover!" My first thoughts were "Yuck. Was that a dead bird? What on earth?" A negative response. I don't mind being challenged when it comes to important issues like domestic violence, famines abroad, climate change or drugs but my hackles rise when someone tries shock tactics to sell me car insurance.

Given the bird flu outbreak the dead birds seem even less pleasant.

As it turns out this isn't the first time Swiftcover's chickens have been used. The Register has an article dating back to 2005 which explains that despite 800 complaints Swiftcover was allowed to depict call centre workers as chickens (call centre workers in the UK complained). Now Swiftcover are killing those call centre workers off. Another negative association.

I remember the dead birds not the insurance deals. Now the 24 hour news channels are full of H5N1 stories I strongly suspect most of the UK will be noticing the dead birds before they notice the insurance offers too.

I do remember the phrase "clucking call centre" though. Simple word games always stick in my head. If I didn't camera-phone a picture of the Swiftcover advert I would have gone to Google to check for that.


Swiftcover's SEO hasn't done too badly here. They've got the site in at #3 for the search. Swiftcover are doing the right thing by having a page up with their quriky advertising. In fact, I took the chance to review the TV advert I remembered. They should have the videos up at YouTube though. I would have had a web page for every advert.

It's the PPC players who are doing badly here. Swiftcover aren't represented at all and this would have been a chance to build that brand message. Look at all those pro-call centre adverts who really shouldn't be there. "Clucking" should be a negative keyword for everyone of them.

The other "key phrase" is swiftcovered. The name "Swiftcover" doesn't actually appear on the poster (and I'd always encourage people to put the domain in there). What happens if I search for [swiftcovered]?


Ouch. On this search the organic results are not kind to Swiftcover. They're not on page one. I suspect my suggestion of having one page per ad on their site would have helped them out here.

It's the PPC player (or a big affiliate using Atlas Tracking) who get the position right here. If it wasn't for the AdWord then Swiftcover wouldn't be represented at all.

I'm afraid there's not much you can do to future proof your marketing campaign from the random stuff that RealLife(™) throws at you. I suspect some people would encourage brands to stay away from negative images though. All big brands, especially those which live entirely online, need to coordinate their online and offline advertising. When you're creating a buzz phrase or a memorable quote via posters, radio or TV you should be sure you can be found online for the same quote or buzz. It's a must.

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Ouch! Publicis must be feeling the hurt

Gosh! This must hurt! ASDA, the UK supermarket owned by US giant Wal*Mart has ended their 17 year old marketing deal with French marketing group Publicis and awarded their £44m marketing account to Fallon.

There are a few stings in this tale. Firstly, this was a surprise pitch. Publicis would not have been expecting it. Secondly, this surprise pitch was called by ASDA's new marketing director Rick Bendel. Where did Rick Bendel come from? He came from... Publicis!

Agency SEM workers will know Publicis' Starcom which is a media buying agency which dabbles in PPC.

There's an introduction to this story on Brand Republic but you need a paid subscription to read the full thing.

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Which is better for SEO? Absolute Unique Visitors, New or Returning Visitors?

Ha. This blog title is a loaded question.

Which is better for SEO? Absolute Unique Visitors, New or Returning Visitors?

Simply put different web sites have different needs and different visitors do different things. A client rang with the "Which is better?" question within minutes of Google posting a useful walk-through on their Analytics Blog. I recommend this Google blog above many others. You will find countless SEO blogs but this is the only analytics blog.

The client in question is the marketing manager for a content site with a subscription model. You get a teaser of an article for free and if you want to read the whole thing then you need to subscribe to the site.

Absolute Unique Visitors are important to them because they represent people finding the site. This is their search traffic as well as links from elsewhere - blog citations, Google Desktop alerts, forum links, social search links or even direct traffic. Each absolute unique visitor is someone who could become a subscriber. If comparison date range is large enough then absolute unique visitors are highly unlikely to already be a subscriber.

That can't be said for New or Returning visits. A New Visitor could well be someone who has discovered the site before. A "New Visit" can come from an "Prior Visitor". The Google Analytics GUI talks about "Visitor Type" (as shown on the right of the screen shot below) but really we're talking about visits rather than visitors.



New and Returning visitors are still important for our content client though. Why? These are the people more likely to link to the teaser/free content on the site. That's easy to imagine how that works in the blogosphere. If you have a reader who returns to your site again and again then your chances of appearing in their blog list is much higher. Someone may be an avid reader of your site via RSS but if they're reading your work from a distance then they're less likely to reference you directly. The RSS reader is passive. Someone on your site is active. If someone is on your site then they're exposed to the "Blog This" button and your other social search lures.

Had I had a financial services client ask me the same question then we would have a slightly different scenario. If you're a bank, for example, then it simply does not matter how often someone applies for a credit card or a mortgage. They'll do it once and you will either approve or reject them. Once rejected it really does not matter how often they come back to your site (unless their financial situation changes). Web users rarely link to finance content. How many people actually blog about Barclays' great personal banking? One person. Me. I did it just now and no one is likely to do it again for a while! (Splogs being the exception). We can't really say that someone returning to a financial service provider again and again are any more likely to link to the site than someone who has just discovered it.

In fact, it could be argued that the people (the absolute unique visitors) who have just discovered a financial service site are the people most likely to link to it via a "Hey, I've just discovered..." post.

If we go back to the credit card example, the rejected returning visitor is not worth much but a brand spanking new visitor is. The absolute unique visitor is the visitor who represents the best chance of a lead and conversion.

We could end it there but I think it is worth while pointing out how brand skews all of this. In terms of search promotion and ROI that returning user may not be important to the bank. In terms of brand strength then that returning user is. A rule of thumb is that is the returning visits which offer the best reflection of brand strength. These are the people who liked what they saw the first time around to come back. That's always good for brand.

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