As advertising permeates into more parts of our lives, people learn how to block out advertising, develop blind spots, which prompts advertisers to find yet more ways of cutting through the clutter, leading to a self-propagating cycle of more advertising and less ad-free non-commercial space.
Italian agency MTN Company recently used zebra crossing advertising to promote an architecture and design event called “Settimane dell’Architettura e del Design” (via I Believe in Advertising).
See the pictures on Flickr (they are not shared under a Creative Commons license, so do think twice before you put them up at your blogs) —
– or watched the making of the zebra crossing ads on YouTube –
The ads are done really tastefully and add to, rather than take away from, the public space they use as a platform. The Sentieri Urbani project, for instance, uses a similar street art approach to to beautify public space. My experience, however, is that it doesn’t take long for an innovative new medium like this to devolve into lowest common denominator space. It’s one thing to have black and white flowers and hearts on the zebra crossing, it’s another to have loud multi-colored “Buy Now!” price and promotion ads.
I was quoted today in a Hyderabad Times story on lifestyle entrepreneurship — entrepreneurship in the pursuit of leading a lifestyle that is a perfect balance of health, wealth and relationships –
While Gaurav Mishra, a marketer and a prominent blogger partly agrees, “I think entrepreneurship itself is nebulous in India, given our ‘good boys get a good job’ mindset, ‘lifestyle entrepreneurship’ will be even more rare. At the same time, profit is only part of the reason people become entrepreneurs. This is just taking it a bit further and deciding to be the master of one’s own destiny and one’s own time.”
I still have to figure out why I’m an expert on entrepreneurship, but all buzz is welcome. A link to my blog would have been even more welcome.
On second thoughts, I’ll probably look back at this story a few years later as a sign that helped me answer the question I have been asking myself endlessly — ‘What Should I Do With My Life?’.
If you are wondering, her latest updates have been about dashing to buy black tights and shoes before hopping on a plane to Vegas, presumably to be part of a Rickey Martin video.
Make no mistake, office influentials are self-educating themselves in ways that can be beneficial not only to themselves but to their organizations. Being an active participant in social media means you learn how to custom design web pages and profiles, manage your personal brand, network and communicate with people from all business and backgrounds.
That sounds a lot like yours truly, but I don’t think my Technorati rank will be a factor in deciding my annual bonus anytime soon.
Four Indians — C K Prahalad (#1), Ram Charan (#22), Vijay Govindarajan (#23) and Rakesh Khurana (#45) — make it to the Thinkers 50 2007 list (via Times Online via Scott Adams who is at #21). Seth ‘God’ Godin also makes an appearance at #43.
I’m only 28, so I have a few years to make it to a list like that.
Google AdWords now allows CPC (cost per click) bids for Google content network ad campaigns (Inside AdWords) –
With the launch of cost-per-click (CPC) bidding, advertisers can now choose the bidding option that best matches their needs. If the purpose of your placement-targeted campaign is to increase sales, leads, sign-ups, or other conversion-oriented metrics, you can select CPC bidding and pay when users click on your ads. If you want to maximize impressions and increase brand awareness among your target audience, you can select cost-per-impression (CPM) bidding.
I have always looked at CPM bidding as a relic from traditional media which has wriggled its way into digital media. I think yesterday’s announcement marks the beginning of the end of CPM ads.
Twitter’s destiny is, imho, to be acquired by a phone company and sold as a feature that gives users a reason to use one brand of phone over another.
Imagine if Nokia offered a cell phone with Twitter built-in, a checkbox for SMS users (default on?) — “Do you want to send SMS messages to your buddy list?”
Don’t you think the kids would go for that?
I agree with Dave that contextual tag footers on Twitter will be lame. All mobile companies I meet tell me that tag footers work, but I’m far from convinced.
What do you think? About tag footers on SMSes? About tag footers on Twitter?
MediaSnackers want to create and consume content wherever they want, whenever they want, in whatever form they want.
Mobile phones are a second self for us MediaSnackers because they liberate us from the computer and allow such content creation and consumption to happen.
In my future posts, I’ll explore more aspects of how the mobile phone acts as a liberator for MediaSnackers.
Green marketing just got a new hero — 39 year old former SAP president Shai Agassi.
Shai Agassi’s new company, called Better Place, aims to widen the use of environment-friendly battery-powered all-electric cars by deploying an infrastructure of battery-charging and battery-replacement stations across the world. The new system will sell electric fuel on a subscription basis - modeled on the mobile phone industry - and will subsidize vehicle costs through leases and credits.
The practical part of me tells me that it is a lost cause, but since I’m such a sucker for lost causes, I’m cheering for him anyway.
