Geary Interactive is proud to announce that our very own Andreas Roell was honored this week as one of San Diego’s Most Admired CEOs. His dedication to the Geary team, transparent managing practices and commitment to producing exceptional work for clients are just a few of the reasons of why he was betowed this honor.
This is Roell’s second year recieving this award. From all of us at Geary, congratulations Andreas on your win. It is truly deserved!
Nielsen’s latest newsletter covered how people reacted to October’s financial flubs on Wall Street. The statistics pulled in the reports were a little different than I would have expected, so I thought I would share some of them:
1. Online Travel is still going strong. Nielsen reports that travel transactions make up 38% (the majority) in October.
*The impending holidays definitely helped with this number, but I would have thought rising prices and shrinking expendable incomes might have put a damper on holiday travel…guess not!
2. Web traffic to financial sites increased (not surprising) but time spent per unique visitor decreased.
*An expanation for this could be that users did not want to get their information from one destination, so they hopped around and didn’t stay in one place for too long–still a little unexpected.
3. Nearly 80 percent of online users made an online purchase within the last 6 months.
*6 months is a long time, but the recession has been on the horizon for a while. I would be interested to see how this compares to offline sales. Is it possible that shopping in the face of an economic downturn or were they just diverting their shopping habits online?
Black Friday 2009 will be an important indicator for how consumers are truly reacting to the current economic climate? Any predictions? What are we in for this holiday season?
“Fail Whale” honorees: All the Twitter users that got duped into Twitterrank. 
What they did wrong:
On Wednesday a large % of Twitter users gave up their username and password to find out their Twitterrank. It later came out that Twitterrank was likely a phishing scam. It then came out that the site’s creator just used the username and password once to calculate the rank. He did mention however that the next person might not be so nice and they could be in trouble.
What they should have known:
It is never good to give your password out to anyone you do not know and trust. This man could have caused some major issues for people with the information they freely gave him. You should think about these passwords just like the ones you use for email and banking accounts. When others have the ability to act as a representation of you or your company the chances of an online reputation issue skyrocket.
What they could have done better:
Next time you are interested in how your profile “ranks” in comparison to another make sure that you use a site such as Twitter Grader which just requires a username. Better yet, maybe don’t care so much about what a tool ranks you as and think about what you actually get out of the profile you are ranking.
Before the election, Michelle Obama went on “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno. Amid the Sarah Palin “clothes-gate” scandal, Leno asked about the origins of Michelle’s yellow ensemble. “Actually, this is a J. Crew ensemble,” she replied. “You can get some good stuff online.”
J. Crew could not have asked for better promotion, and now they’re cashing in. Just look at the Google results for “michelle obama”:
Simple, effective, topical, and piggybacking on America’s hottest brand (the Obamas), it’s the Holy Grail of paid search ads.
In this tough economic time, even online retail (previously an area of meteoric growth) is taking a major hit. But connecting your brand with America’s hottest couple — the Obamas — is sure to pay off. Numerous studies have reinforced the importance of branding during recessions. As soon as young women have some extra money to spend, they are likely to head to J. Crew, rather than its competitors. After all, the future First Lady shops there.
I will be the first to admit that I am a smidge obsessed with Pandora. It knows me almost too well. There have only been a few times when I had to offer it a ‘thumbs down.’ Outside of tapping into my music-loving soul, I appreciate Pandora Radio for its strides in advertising targeting.
Pandora targets, interacts and persuades me to click links, download videos and generally pay attention to its advertisers–which is not exactly an easy feat. This morning I was confronted with a brilliant advertising ploy by Microsoft. (I know I was shocked myself). Here’s how it went:
When I logged into my account, the first ’song’ to come up wasn’t a song at all. It was a picture of the iconic PC from the famed Mac v. PC ads that we have all come to know and love. The copy was “watch my ad.” I oftentimes find these TV ads to be hilarious, so I bit–and clicked on the ad. To my surprise, the link was to a Microsoft-sponsored landing page. It was extremely well-designed site that featured 10 second blurbs on PC fans from every walk of life you can imagine.
I spent a good minute or two watching random people tell me who they are and why they use PC computers. This is two minutes more than I have spent on Microsoft’s site ever. When I went back to my Pandora station, I realized the PC guy was in fact not the actor from the commercial (just someone who looks remarkably like him).
Tou Che Microsoft, Tou Che. I applaud your guerilla marketing tactic and excellent casting job.
It is amazing how little it takes for us to instantly be intrigued about something.
On Tuesday during his acceptance speech Barack Obama mentioned that he promised his daughters a puppy if he won. Less than a week later when you search “Puppy” on Google the first related result is “Obama Puppy.”
On Friday president-elect Obama gave his first press conference after winning the election. One of the questions he was asked was “What type of dog are you getting?” Barack responded that the dog must be hypoallergenic due to eldest daughter Malia having an allergy and that they would like to get the dog from a shelter.
Google trends shows a DRAMATIC spike in searches for “hypoallergenic dogs”
People seem to have an instant fascination with what kind of puppy the Obama family will get and when they will get it. With all the things that happened last week these are very interesting terms to see spikes. But in all fairness, who doesn’t love a puppy?
“Fail Whale” honoree: Buck Burnette
What he did wrong:
Buck Burnette is the backup center for the University of Texas Longhorns. He has a Facebook page like millions of other college students across the nation. He decided to post a racist comment towards the new president-elect Barack Obama in his Facebook status on Tuesday night. Buck Burnette is no longer the backup center for the University of Texas Longhorns.
What he should have known:
Facebook, like most social networks, is not a private location to share information. A person can add privacy to Facebook, but must think about how much they trust their “Friends” to not share information that has been posted. It is also important to remember that if a ‘Friend” holds a different view than the person, this could also cause them to share information with others.
High school kids have been expelled for inappropriate photos they have posted in platforms like this, people have lost jobs and relationships have been destroyed over shared items online.
What he could have done better:
Burnette should have thought about his social networking profile as an off-shoot of himself. If there is something on the profile that a person would not feel comfortable having their boss, a teacher, a coworker or their mother see…..then it probably should not be added. Giving yourself rules, within reason, to what should and should not be shared will help make sure it is appropriate.
On a Side note: Racism is also something that should probably never be placed on the Internet (or shared ever) with direct relation to a name….but that is just a thought 
The effects of Tuesday’s historic election are already being felt. Newspapers in particular experienced a boost in circulation as a result of Obama’s win. Circulation numbers exploded Wednesday as everyone wanted to get their own piece of history. It is reported that kiosks sold out by mid-morning as Americans flooded to newsstands to buy papers with headlines like “Obama makes history” and “It’s Obama.”
The numbers around newspapers sales on Wednesday are not at all surprising, and they reminded me of the key difference between online and print journalism. Online, links change or move and news quickly gets buried beneath blogs and new stories whereas print newspapers give readers something to hold on to…a memento that is theirs for as long as they want to keep it.
Headlines, images and sentiments do not stay on homepages forever, but actual newspapers are unchangeable. In most cases this does not matter because all readers want is to read a story once and move on. So in reality, it does not matter that when they return to a newspaper site, the stories have long since changed.
Newspapers are attributing the spike in sales to finally having something worth writing about. I would argue that on Wednesday November 5, 2008 they were able to write about something historic and memorable. It’s not that recent events have been un-newsworthy, but Obama’s election is the first story in a while that is worth saving.
Here at Geary, we like to cap off each week with an Innovation Session – an informal meeting with food, drinks and a presentation from the front lines of interactive marketing.
Last Friday, we chose to explore the various ways that Barack Obama and John McCain are marketing themselves online — with a particular focus on Web 2.0 strategies.
We tried to keep the presentation non-partisan, but it was difficult because Obama has made aggressive social media efforts his trademark. He has an active presence on MySpace, Facebook, and niche social networks such as Faithbase and BlackPlanet; active accounts on Twitter and YouTube; text message updates; an active social network at my.barackobama.com; and much more. McCain also has a social network on his main domain and presences on the big social networking sites, but his presence on Twitter and niche social networks is bare-bones compared to Obama’s, and he does not have a text messaging program.
We hypothesized that Obama’s aggressive efforts are primarily a function of the citizens he’s trying to reach — young people and first-time voters, as well as independent voters who spend time on niche online communities. We’re guessing that Obama has found that online efforts are a cost-effective way to reach new, disaffected and undecided voters — and he has the deep pockets to back up these efforts.
Here are some fun facts about each candidates’ online efforts:
- My.barackobama.com, Obama’s in-house social networking platform, is run by Chris Hughes, one of the co-founders of Facebook.
- Obama’s various websites get about 20 million visitors a month, compared to 4 million a month for McCain-affiliated sites.McCain is much more active in paid search advertising than Obama. At one point, McCain was bidding on 226 keywords, compared to only 174 by Obama.
- Obama ran 17 negative paid search ads, while McCain ran only three – the opposite of their general strategies, where McCain’s advertising ran much more negative than Obama’s.
- At present, Obama’s infomercial has 1.6 million views on YouTube. This is significant reach, but it’s dwarfed by the 33.55 million people who watched the infomercial on TV.
To learn more about this topic, you can view the full PowerPoint presentation.
I also recommend “Obama’s Wide Web” from the Washington Post and this article from MediaPost, which gives details about the candidates’ paid search strategies.
“Fail Whale” honoree: Courtenay Semel.
What she did wrong:
Ms. Semel went to court this week for an altercation in August outside of Pure nightclub. She was approached by a paparazzo and yelled obscenities at him. It came out in court this week that the statement she made contained the phrase “Google Me” in hopes to get the bouncer to figure out who she was.
What she should have known:
Courtney should have realized that since her father was once the CEO of Yahoo! she probably shouldn’t yell obscenities or tell the person to “google” her.
What they could have done better:
Next time if you get yourself in a situation where a bouncer doesn’t recognize you and they should, be polite and explain. If this doesn’t seem like a good option simply shout “yahoo me” instead.
Geary Interactive is proud to announce that our very own Andreas Roell was honored this week as one of San Diego’s Most Admired CEOs. His dedication to the Geary team, transparent managing practices and commitment to producing exceptional work for clients are just a few of the reasons of why he was betowed this honor.