Seeing this, reading how Jeremiah and Josh tracked Superbowl ads and thinking back to this tool here, I expect a huge twitter boom during the forthcoming US election. Lets just hope that twitter gets their server capacities up to speed. It will be interesting to see how this new communication mechanism will evolve!
Whenever I take a taxi, I am in no mood for a conversation. It’s either too early in the morning when I am on my to the airport, or it is late in the evening after a party… You know the deal. So I was a bit shocked, when I read about taxi drivers in London now being paid to start a conversation in which they try to explain the benefits of a certain product or service… Hope this doesn’t start in Germany. Don’t want a conversation in a cab and I certainly don’t want a sales pitch during a taxi ride…
The trick is organised by Taxi Promotions UK, who are apparently doing that kind of thing since 10 years, believe it or not!
A taxi ride gives marketers something they find increasingly elusive – a captive audience – at a time when consumers are bombarded with commercial messages and when digital technology gives them the power to skip TV ads.
The average London taxi ride lasts 16 minutes, said Asher Moses, managing director of Taxi Promotions. In a normal working day, a driver picks up 40 to 60 fares; multiply that by 10 drivers, for the 888 campaign, and the audience that can be reached in a campaign that lasts several months is sizable.
Scary? You bet. Who’s next, trying to sell us something, while we think we simply pay them for their services? Our hairdresser, our doctor, etc.?
Just yesterday (or this morning), I received a comment by somebody who added some thoughts on viral marketing by pitching his own book including a lot of links in his comment. I let that comment through, because it sounded interesting. The other day however, not long ago, I received an email by somebody pitching his book to me, including some videos I ended up never watching. Boring pitches for books…
But now I found a really cool idea of someone who thought of a very unusual way to sell his book. Here is the English translation of something I found on this German site (and couldn’t yet find in English anywhere – let me know if you do):
Because his debut novel wouldn’t sell and the publishers were reluctant to invest any money in advertising, author WS Maugham decided to take matters in to his on hands. He published classifieds in a few daily newspapers in London with the following copy: „Young millionaire, lover of sports, cultivated, with good taste of music and a patient and empathetic character wishes to marry any young and beautiful girl that resembles the heroine of W.S. Maughams new novel.
Six days later the complete print run of the first edition of the novel was sold out.
Fantastic idea! Good buzzmarketing, and this was in the 1800’s!
This is really cool. Look at this picture. Matt, a wikipedia fan, sticks these „[citation needed] stickers“ everywhere, where big audacious claims need some further reference. And he comes up with – of course – advertisements. Great idea! Where are the stickers for the product fans who want to support the big claims?
(found here.)
As every year around this time, all sorts of sites start to publish trends. Along the many lists that get published (and some of which I will subsequently link to), there is one selfproclaimed „Uber“-List, an aggregation of links of the main sites with trends. These trends do not only concern marketing and advertising, but also technology and internet trends.
It does sound a little like a link bait, but that’s fine for me as long as that lists gets updated frequently.
Wo ich sonst so bin...