Ba-na-na

Proof that I’m part monkey wherever I go. Winds up a few people are right!

Picture and page is courtesy of Ed Kohler, Executive Producer of Technology Evangelist, and the Director of Strategic Marketing at wheretolive.com. I haven’t been in contact with him for awhile. He’s actually been a friend for years, and is a phenomenal online marketer! 

Maybe this could be a new tagline: “Taking consumers from their computer, and to your door - one monkey at a time“. I’m likin’ it!

Cheers to you Ed!… and any monkeys out there who know me.

You want a banana name. You need a banana name. You don’t want to be without, do you?

Eeep eeep

Superbowl Commercials - 2.0

According to CNN, this year’s 30-second Superbowl spot can run a good $2.6 million. I know, big whoop, but who’s playing, and who is trying to get the most out of their 2.0 buck?

Yahoo and Doritos have finished tallying their user-generated commercial results. I’m hoping for the Duct Tape commercial, simply because Joe Herbert was cool enough to pimp his commercial out on this blog (plus it’s a funny spot). They let online users rate and decide which ad is shown.

GM and CBS are doing something similar with their Chevy Superbowl College Ad Challenge, and made sure to include an interactive blog with it.

Garmin (portable GPS provider) - I’m not sure what to think of their extra music video. I might be old, but I never listened to Grim Reaper! Nonetheless, they pushed their Superbowl commercial on their blog really well with video shots, contests, ”Garmin Man” wallpapers, and even a freaking funny “deep thoughts” video with Maposauras.

I’ve always been a fan of Queensryche, and even catch their show when they come to town (yeah, I know, it’s not 1988 anymore, but they’re a hell of a lot better than Grim Reaper!). So, it was cool that the NFL’s user-generated commercial winner pitched his concept sporting an old, Queensryche T-shirt. Here’s his winning pitch.

GoDaddy seems to brag about their turned-down ads. This year is no different, GoDaddy’s original Candice Michelle didn’t make the first take (too seductive for corporate suits), and they made sure to market their blog about what “made it”, and what did not.

If you don’t like any of those commercials, Anheuser Busch has around 9 standard spots… again.

February 01 Update: Thanks to Chris from MWW, you can view Anheuser Busch commercial snippets on YouTube. One of the snippets is a compilation of all of them. It now looks like the majority of the advertisers have done at least some sort of 2.0 marketing.

Google Expands their Local Results

For almost two years, Google has been placing up to three text-based “local” results between the top paid and natural results for geo-based searches. They have now officially expanded and improved it by including maps, more directions, and more user-reviews.

A couple years ago, the results usually weren’t too relevant, and they’re still not perfect, but are more useful than they have ever been.

The third result (above) is from my own chiropractor. He doesn’t have a Web site, but my neck is happy and relaxed, and does not care.

I’ve mentioned Pizza Luce a ton of other times, and they again come up on top. Why is that? Well, Pizza Luce is very well-known for its buzz, unique flavor combinations, people watching, an annual summer block party, and tall-boy PBRs. Most of their user-reviews are positive, they get lots of press and link love, and they have different locations within the city.

That’s my guess, anyway.

For those in the industry, the “yourcity Pizza” has become the (more or less) standard search query to measure local search results. The Luce result has been at the top ever since I started checking close to two years ago.

Matt McGee from SBS has some great insight on this from Seattle and Washington State. 

GoogleTube, and Viral Video Marketing’s Best

Google recently announced that YouTube video results will now appear in the Google Video search index. From an industry perspective, it’s interesting since Google’s acquisition of YouTube gives them another top 5 global brand ranking, according to Reuters.

From a user perspective, it made me curious and decided to do some Google Video searches on local Minnesota companies, media, and music. Are the new video search results relevant? And are entities taking advantage of this by branding? Are users branding for them?

Minneapolis is pretty well-known for its ad agencies, so I wanted to start there. After a little frustration, I did find a collection of work from the Fallon Agency by doing a Fallon Minneapolis video search. Google Video’s algorithm did a pretty decent job by displaying some of their different productions and TV spots.

For viral video marketing, a company called Sleepy Eye Flix came up on searches for different ad agencies. If you click on anything in this post, make sure to view this invitation that was sent to an agency. It’s hilarious, and ingenious.

 

The invite is for a January 31 Fearless Filmmakers screening about viral videos. I’m not as privy as many of the attendees, so I’m probably going to go because I want to see their creativity and how their minds tick. Plus, it’s only 9 bucks.

Some companies do submit their own work to Google Video and YouTube, and many videos are submitted by users. Here are some other interesting ones I found:

Media
WCCO - Includes some fun, retro 80’s news segments

City Pages - Looks like they’ve proactively gone after this market a little bit

KTTC - My hometown (Rochester) news source is pretty well represented

Music
Minnesota Orchestra - I was a bit dissapointed as the results weren’t very relevant, but there is a great Beethoven Piano Concerto series listed from the Minnesota Sinfonia. It appears to be submitted by the (then 18 year-old) pianist himself.

Cardinal Sin - I was surprised to see relevant results for this. This Minneapolis band is no longer, but my buddy’s lil’ bro fronted it. I rarely saw them, because apparently I’m old and go to bed early.

Dillinger Four - Well-known Minneapolis punk band. If you are easily offended, by anything at all, do not click to see these video shots. If you do click and are unfamiliar with D4, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Paddy won’t apologize 

New Google Penalty

No, not really. There has been a lot of lingo lately about different Google “bans” and “penalties”. Sometimes it’s about duplicate content or the sandbox myth, and sometimes on the infamous -30 or 950 penalties.

Sometimes it may just be the site itself.

Tongue-in-cheek? Sure. I would normally like to make some comments, but all I can say is… Amen, DG.

Somewhat related… The blog-tag thing is a big, giant link farm.

Moo

January 26 Update: Not only did I fail to credit the source, but I didn’t have enough creativity to come up with a unique title. I’m guessing he won’t mind though. Hat tip to the SEOBook post.

Superbowl Commercials, Garmin, GPS, Fallon, and Mobile Search

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that Twin Cities-based Fallon Agency is going to the Superbowl with Garmin to create an ad spot. Spendy? Sure, but maybe it will work just fine.

Fallon states that the challenge for Garmin is to be recognized as the (personal navigation and mobile GPS) indsutry leaders over their competitors, such as TomTom. I just might be part of their target market. I’ve heard of Garmin before and generally understand what they provide, but will remember TomTom first because their ads are always on TV.

Looking further, you can buy Garmin software for Blackberries and compatible cell phones, combining GPS with mobile search features. Now I want one! I’m a guy and (by default) like playing with maps and gadgets, even when I refuse to admit that I’m lost.

I did find the Garmin blog while reading Jeremy Zawodny’s take and appreciation of it, and am crossing my fingers to win a cool freebee from the Superbowl (I’m assuming) TV shoot because of it.

Either they gave it away by forgetting to take out the alt text, or they’re really sneaky. 

Update: A few people beat me to it. No ba-na-na.

Jan. 24 2007 Update: Article regarding Garmin’s Superbowl ad in the Kansas City Star.

Speaking of Superbowl commercials, which one of these five user-generated spots will make the cut?

Yahoo Local and their Free Month of Flat-Rate Advertising

I got an email this evening regarding a free month of featured advertising from Yahoo Local.

Originally, I thought it was either for their geo-targeted Pay-Per-Click ads or their enhanced local listings, but it winds up being for their flat-rate structure.

Confused? Feel free to check out their options.

For those in the industry, the Pay-Per-Click model is probably much more beneficial, but it makes sense that Yahoo would advertise this. The “rate card” model is very similar to what local businesses see when they place a printed Yellow Pages ad. It’s what they’re used to, and local business owners (large and small) trust Yahoo, and want to do what’s easy.

I’m guessing this brings a greater revenue stream to Yahoo for local businesses who aren’t as privy to the Internet.

This isn’t a bad thing. If this adopts, it can make Yahoo Local’s results more relevant.

City Pages Article on the Star Tribune Sale

A couple weeks ago, I gave mention to the McClatchy Company selling the Star Tribune for 40-some cents on the dollar, or well more than $500 million below the $1.2 billion they paid for it in 1998. The post contains the Strib article, a press release and a nice write-up by Greg Sterling regarding the sale and the current status of the newspaper industry.

Here’s a City Pages article regarding the sale, giving a viewpoint that you probably haven’t seen before, and you don’t have to give personal information away to read it for “free”. It’s a compelling article, with a few side articles including views from the actual people who make the Strib tick (stuff you won’t find in the WSJ).

Maybe McClatchy made enough revenue in the Strib’s 8-year ownership and sold while they could, maybe they bought something they just couldn’t afford. I’m not in the industry and don’t have a big opinion “why”. I’m just waiting for a major daily to bring out the perfect match between trusted print readership, and the deep online content and user-friendly ads to go along with it.

Got Some Love from the “City Pages”

 

I can’t claim originality on this. A few days ago, Aaron Weiche from the Find Buffalo (MN) blog (which is a fantastic source for Buffalo businesses and residences) posted that City Pages gave him the Minnesota Blog of the Day.

So, why not submit this blog to their list? I guess they liked it, at least enough to feature it as a new Minnesota Blog of the Day. The funny part is it’s listed right between mentions of the world’s stupidest tattoos and an article about a Slovakian driver who crashed his car while masturbating with a vacuum pump.

They list some pretty cool blogs in there. Some are business blogs, some are personal, some are community blogs like Aaron’s, and there’s even one about Minneapolis vs. St. Paul.

Somehow Seth Godin’s blog is in there. He has nothing to do with Minnesota, but it’s a good blog nonetheless. Either a City Pages staff member really liked it, or some SEO link monger spammed it in for him, which would be a bit strange considering his past stance on SEO.

With the Internet age in 2.0, many newspapers fall behind in grabbing loyal online audiences. What City Pages is promoting with community blogs is beyond what most are doing. Alternative weekly papers like this normally have a more loyal following, and this enhances it.

For those unfamiliar with the City Pages, they are the Twin Cities main alternative newspaper, similar to the NYC Village Voice and the LA Weekly (both sister papers).

Christy from FindLaw busted me today about the localmn links. I preach about paying no attention to the silly, green Google PageRank score, but apparently bragged about getting a couple PR6 links to the localmn blog.

January 25 Update: Congratulations to Lee, Thomas, and Karen of TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog for being today’s City Pages Blog of the Day.

High Rankings Seminar is Coming to Minneapolis

Jill Whalen and her High Rankings Seminar is coming to Minneapolis on March 15th and 16th. I highly recommend it for businesses who really want to learn more about search marketing.

She is bringing a fastastic crew with her, and feel free to check out the seminar information in more detail. They know their stuff, period.

I started dabbling in search marketing sometime in 2001. I thought I knew it all until coming across the High Rankings forum sometime in 2003, suddenly realizing that I didn’t know jack.

I then became involved in the forum, quickly learned that search marketing was about conversions and acquiring customers, and not just where your favorite phrase appears in Google. Before I knew it, Jill invited me as a guest to the December 2003 Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago. Way… cool. I can certainly thank her and her crew for successes that I’ve had.

This will actually be Jill’s second visit to Minneapolis as she presented to FindLaw in the Spring of 2005. Now she’s bringing a crew. I’m especially excited to meet copywriting expert Karon Thackston. I’ve known her for over three years, but have yet to meet her in person.

This crew simply takes the BS out of search marketing. They know search. They know user behavior. They know how real people use the Internet, and they know how to market toward them.