Advertising

02
Mar
2013

Coders Are the New Rock Stars

This video from Code.org has gotten quite a bit of attention over the last week, mainly due to the tech heavyweights including Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates who feature talking about how getting into coding from a young age had helped them become successful.

While there’s no doubt the world will need more and more coders in the future, I don’t think kids will need any help getting excited about coding considering the amount of time most will spend on the web or their smartphones etc. (plugging the cool offices and free food that these tech companies tend to have won’t do any harm though).

The real problem will be how fast educational institutions adapt and allocate sufficient resources to coding in schools. That is why outlets like Code.org and Ireland’s own Coder Dojo are so important in giving the next generation a chance to learn coding on their own terms.

As for the rest of us, I learned basic web design skills online in my spare time. It’s like everything else these days, all the information is out there on the web, just a Google search away, available to anyone who wants to use some initiative and learn some new skills.

 

Posted by Rob in Advertising, Coding, Design
14
Feb
2013

SEO vs. CMO: The Growing Importance of Content Marketing Optimisation

Ah, Search Engine Optimisation. Once, the be-all and end-all of success on the web, making sure your site had an audience and your business a customer base. But with page-rank gaming a constant problem and more companies now producing regular online content such as blog posts, search engines are now seemingly taking the richness and quantity of content into the equation more and more when determining page rank. They want ‘Content Angels’ not ‘SEO Devils’.

With content marketing becoming an increasingly popular way of engaging with customers and getting your brand out there, it is becoming more and more important to make sure that this content is effectively optimised for search. Just in Time Financial PR agency demonstrate how simple it can be to achieve a surprisingly high page rank just by having optimised blog posts. In 10 days, with a number of posts focusing on related key-phrases, the company was the #1 ranked site for the ‘Financial PR agency’ search term.

Now more than ever, content is king. Kaiser the Sage provides some helpful CMO tips including making sure your content is easily shareable on social media (via share buttons), encouraging user interaction (i.e. comments), making it visual using images and videos etc. (Infographics are extremely popular at the moment) and internally linking to other relevant content on your site. Ultimately, the more value your content is to your target market, the more likely you are to engage your customers regardless of page rank.

ContentCreation

Image courtesy of Simply Zesty

Posted by Rob in Advertising, Google, SEO
04
Feb
2013

Real-Time Twitter Marketing During SuperBowl Power Cut

So not only did last nights SuperBowl throw up the usual frenzy surrounding those big budget commercials (not to mention some fantastic drama on the field and a pretty brilliant half-time show), but the 3rd quarter power outtage provided brands with a further opportunity to jump into the conversation too. This was the first SuperBowl that I actually followed live on Twitter and I was seriously impressed to see how quickly some brands reacted to the blackout.

Bravo to the very savvy digital marketers at Oreo, LinkedIn, Audi and Tide, to name but a few, that put out Tweets ridiculing the debacle within minutes of it happening. It goes to show what a great marketing opportunity the SuperBowl can be to brands, even the ones that don’t splash out for a $4 million thirty second TV spot.

Posted by Rob in Advertising, Real-Time, Twitter
16
Dec
2012

What Can Madison Avenue of Old Teach Today’s Digital Marketers?

It might be an hour long, but this video from Google’s Project Re:Brief is well worth the watch. Five prominent advertising execs from the 1960’s and 1970’s are assembled to offer their take on the way marketing is done in today’s connected world.

To have great display advertising, you first have to have great advertising and with campaigns like Avis’ ‘We’re number 2, so we try harder’ and Coke’s ‘I’d like to buy the world a Coke’, these guys were making viral ads that grabbed the public’s attention long before the internet came along.


Posted by Rob in Advertising, Google, Old Media
20
Nov
2012

Advertisers Advertise Advertisements

New ads doing the rounds by a united media owners group including RTÉ, TV3, Sky and Associated Newspapers aim to convince business owners of the importance of advertising claiming that sales of companies who advertise aggressively in a recession rise over 256% over those that don’t.

Many businesses have cut down on advertising spend during the recession but advertisinggrowsbusiness.ie highlights the role that advertising can play in strengthening a brand and growing a business. With slogan’s like “My favourite beer is definitely watya callit” the campaign promotes the idea that successful companies are the ones that invest in their brands and if you want to set yourself apart from your competitors, you can’t ignore advertising.

Posted by Rob in Advertising, Ireland, Old Media