Huis - Jake Matthews

Google Pushes further into Phones

Search Engine Land (SEL) comments on the Wall Street Journal article that Google is pushing further and further on its bid to distribute its software and services bundles through wireless carrier relationships and to producing it's own handset.

SEL reports in this article that talks are far along with T-Mobile (relative to the Side-Kick connection), but I see them as a better fit to go with Verizon Wireless.  The only reason I say this is because the Google team in NYC works closely with Verizon Wireless, from what I've heard here and there. 

With regard to a Google handset, on the one hand it makes sense because it would fly of the shelves. BUT, who besides Apple has ever made money on a handset.  And Google is a search company, not a PC or handset maker.  I think that they are going to spread themselves too thin. 

Direct "junk" Mail

Recently I've been ranting about what I don't like and what I'm sick of, so I'll continue in that vein:

I think that there should be laws banning direct mail.  It's a waste of beautiful CO2 reducing trees and an insult to human intelligence.

Can anyone give me one good reason that direct mail is a good thing for business or society in general? To have constant, irrelevant marketing messages smashed into your face, in your home, mixed in with important mail - it's unjust. To boot, the ROI on this marketing tool is horrible, as I understand it, so why are marketers even interested in it?

If you live in a city (where there are a lot of rental apartments - like my place in New York City - NYC) one of the worst parts about receiving direct or "junk" mail is that you get the wrong people's junk mail, which doubles the volume of the junk that you get - it's simply absurd.

So - does anyone know of a good place that you can go to register your name and address to stop receiving junk, direct mail?

Wallstrip Vlog Bought by CBS

Wallstrip is reported to have been purchased by CBS.  Pretty cool.  I think that they mentioned that the price was $5mm.   I read somewhere that they started this vlog in the summer of 2005;  quick value creation.

And, there is talk that the acquisition was based around gaining access and content produced with Lindsay Campbell, (a New York City based actor) as she does a show on Wallstrip. 

I'll be checking it out more often.  Best of luck to that team, if indeed this is a true report.

PR Nightmare

I was checking out Seth Godin's blog today, as I do from time to time, and he points us to an interesting ebay page with is a public relations nightmare for Creative Labs.  A guy who got a Creative Zen MP3 player and it didn't recharge.  He documents the problems with customer service and bad value.

Here's a shot of it (click on thumbnail for larger version):

Seth calls it "eBay as a platform for outrage". The funny thing is, there are so many sites where this can take place.  The web is the ultimate democratic system. 

The whole thing reminds me of my experience with an Acer Laptop and Crappy Windows system that I bought from Circuit City, trash.

Building Your Business

SEO Blackhat threw up a fun and astute post about building your business.  I really like the philosopy: 

• don't wait
• don't procrastinate
• create campaigns that build link$ and drive revenue
• prioritize and seize the day
• do it fucking now

Online vs Offline Adspend

Marketing Sherpa has posted a couple of charts addressing 2006 online vs offline marketing and ad spend.  It's a pretty interesting little take.  Not sure how accurate it is, but it's looks like they have pulled strong sources such as DMA.

Currently PPC is leading the online area, and that's not unexpected.  Hooray search marketers and Google stock!  SEO's are in there too; hooray SEO's!

Offline spend still dwarfs online spend, but I would venture to say that over the next 5 years or so, that these trends will reverse.

My thinking is that traditional offline stock of advertising and marketing mediums like newspapers and such will reduce drastically in the next 5 years. Perhaps The New York Times and Wall Street Journal will only be printing 3-4 days per week, forcing advertisers and marketers more and more to  online.  Of course, there will always be billboards, cheap T-Shirts and logo-pens. 

A huge shift to online adspend and marketing mediums seems pretty logical - let's see what happens.

What do we all think?

Branding and Website Information Architecture

There is was an extremely interesting post on Boxes and Arrows about branding on websites and how a brand may be built into the information architecture of a website in various ways.  It is so important to carry a brand message through every piece of marketing work, and the web is obviously a really big focus for that in this day and age.  (his post was from 2002 - so I'm living in the dark ages :-) )  There are so many ways to do this, but without really focusing on the core brand values and understanding that before applying the information architecture to the website, the project is doomed.  If it's not doomed, it will be happenstance that the brand message is carried through and that the site is an effective marketing tool for that particular company.  As Dan Saffer simply explains, the difference in a brand online is as simple as the nomenclature for various site links and sections.  Do you call the "shopping cart" a "shopping cart" or do you call it a "shopping bag"?  Do you call account infomation "account information" or do you dub it "my account"?