Posts by Bruce
How your FAQ page can further your conversation.
What is your FAQ page saying about you?
When I see FAQ pages, I read them - or at least scan them. Not only can they be the easiest way to find information, they can also be an interesting look into what web site owners believe about their site and what they offer, and what they think their visitors care about. The standard approach is the easy one - factual answers written in a plain vanilla style. But that wastes an opportunity to engage with readers as human beings rather than as robots.
The standard Q&A format is perfect for having a [More...]
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Oops? Tide Coldwater lifts new campaign line directly from early 90s MGD campaign
Best case scenario is that every person who worked on the new Tide Coldwater campaign is too young to remember the early ’90s. Worst case is that someone did remember and decided ripping off another agency’s creative product was OK.
Granted, no one can remember every ad campaign ever created and some repetition or close variations of campaign themes is inevitable. But when the campaign line in question, Get Out Of The Old. Get Into The Cold (for Miller Genuine Draft) had national TV exposure for at least two years (that I recall) - at a time when national TV still [More...]
Malt-O-Meal sets a high bar for social media and social responsibility
It’s pretty clear that social media is becoming an accepted method for raising money and support for cause-related organizations. Sara Lee is doing it today with their National Sandwich Day promotion that uses Facebook and Twitter to raise money for Share Our Strength.
Target did it for their Do Something 101 promotion that used Facebook to support an effort by dosomething.org to collect donations of school supplies.
Then yesterday [More...]
Going negative can be positive but results may vary
Back in the early 70s I was fascinated by the book Subliminal Seduction which made a big splash by purporting to expose the nefarious techniques that the advertising industry was using to get us to buy, buy, buy. Everything from airbrushing (how quaint) silhouettes of naked women onto ice cubes (maybe that’s where my teenage fascination came from) to imprinting the word “S-E-X-” in Ritz Crackers. Of course these claims have been roundly denied and James Vicary’s infamous “Drink Coca-Cola” movie theater study has been soundly debunked.
Now comes a study from [More...]
The Changing Language of Breast Cancer
Over the past four or five years some new players have been showing up in the breast cancer awareness universe. Where Susan G. Komen for the Cure had been the single, strongest voice for so long, now Save the Ta-Tas and Feel Your Boobies stickers and t-shirts are showing up more and more frequently. These newer organizations are using the ubiquitous pink ribbon but they are pairing it with calls to action that are distinctly different from the more traditional breast cancer awareness messages that we are used [More...]
Email Marketing Home Run
Today I received an email from photographer Steve Marsel. I don’t know him, never heard of him. In fact when I saw the email I couldn’t tell he was a photographer. Didn’t matter. The subject line, “David Ortiz Breaks Out!” hooked me. I’m a Red Sox fan (a Yankees fan may have reacted differently) and I’d seen Big Papi hit his walk off homer against the White Sox last night, so I had to open the email to see what was up.
Lo and behold, not only was there a photo of Ortiz (that Mr. Marsel had taken for Atari/Backyard Sports), [More...]
