Top 10: December 10th 2007

1.Boomerangs: Provokat.
Great title. Not too sensationalist but great at maintaining the hype. Smart.

2.A new website for hot chicks.
New LOULOU new site by Cloudraker

3.What Do You REALLY Want?
You aren't getting anywhere because you dont know where you want to go

4.DASHBOARD
http://dashboardspy.com/

5.Facebook is the ultimate solution.
Always very impressed by how people post extremely personal things in their facebook status line. I have heard of a girl who broke up with her bf via the status line. Although I have never witnessed such an extreme event, I have seen countless public flirting, grieving, fights and mucho anger expressed.
Addendum: It's still uber hard to explain the virtues of Twitter to most webnewbies, but somehow, they figure out the status line the next day after signing up.

6.PDF
WHY DO PEOPLE STILL USE PDF FILES SPLICED IN BETWEEN WEB PAGES. JEEZ....

7.I hate my xmas gifts
http://badgiftemporium.com/

8.NALGENE BOTTLES ARE EVIL! SERIOUSLY!
Apparently Nalgene bottles are bad for you. Mountain equipment Coop pulled them off their shelves today accross the country.
Google news

9.Machine Girl Movie Trailer: “The Cult Film of Next Year”

I saw the trailer and I think you should see it to judge for yourself. Machine GIRL!

10."Flashturbatoire"
Great post by Michel Leblanc. hehe I like.
I quote " Du Flash C’EST PAS DU WEB CALVERT! Vous primez des “sites” qui sont en fait des CD ROM accédés par internet. Ces “sites” là ne sont pas vraiment accessible, pas vraiment indexables (engins de recherches), ils souffrent d’une utilisabilité des plus douteuse et leurs “pages” ne sont pas des pages et ne sont pas linkables."
Beautiful. Please read the whole post.

TOP 10 (ANNOYING) ONLINE MARKETING BUZZWORDS:

TOP 10 (ANNOYING) ONLINE MARKETING BUZZWORDS:

1. ROI
Maybe 1 out of 10 marketing decision makers have a vague concept of calculating ROI the correct way. No need to wave this killer buzzword when all your want to say is « profitability ». Extra points for being an acronym buzzword.

2. WEB 2.0
The King Kong of powerpoint buzzland. I die a little everytime someone uses it to refer to « the web of today and tomorrow». I must admit the french upped the ante by dropping the « point o » and calling it « le web deux ». Advil please.


3. INTERACTIVE MARKETING
Marketing has always been interactive, if there was no human interaction, it would be called accounting. Drop the redundant adjective + noun combo.

4. COMSCORE
Beyond it’s dismal meaninglessness, I still hear the sound of it’s name cause there still is nothing « better ». Pass the Kool Aid please.

5. KPI
Key Performance Indicators : ie things that matter for your business. In


6. Dashboard
It takes 30 mins to set one unless you’re suffering from AADD (analytics ADD). Know your « KPIs » and learn to use your analytics tool.


7. OPTIMIZING CLICK THROUGH RATE
If your KPI involves some clicks, people need to click. Just change the ads that suck, ok fine we’ ll call that optimizing. Natural selection sound sdramatic but would also be accepted.

8. VIRAL
John tells Mike who tells 5 other people who tell 10 other people each. Kinda like in Outbreak with Dustin Hoffman and that little monkey. Must we be so dramatic that we want to replicate some doomsday vocabulary ?

9. STRATEGY
Common sense people. We have yet to place someone on the moon in this business (ok we did this). What we do everyday is 90% common sense with 10% analysis. Strategy could be as simple as not just looking at your feet when you run.

10. ROAD MAP
Used too often to be taken seriously anymore, everytime I hear this one, I keep thinking of following a map and ending up at Bates Motel.

Extra buzzword points will be awarded to combinations ie Web 2.0 Strategy roadmap.

TOP 10: December 8 2007

1.Spare $1Million?
Wealthy New York Family Begs for 1 Million Dollars: must maintain lifestyle and times are hard. Incredible story and incredible nerve. Pauvres bourgeois!

By the way, there are people far less fortunate than us. There are over a dozen causes in Montreal that need your REAL support:
http://www.danslarue.com/
http://www.oldbrewerymission.ca/
http://www.fondationdesmaladiesmentales.org/
http://www.redcross.ca/article.asp?id=000005&tid=003


2.Pecha kucha
Unfortunately I was not able to attend the last event in Montreal last Wednesday but I have to say the format of these presentations is brilliant.
To quote Wikipedia:

Pecha Kucha or Pecha Kucha Night is a presentation format in which (mostly creative) work can be easily and informally shown. It was originally devised by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Klein-Dytham Architecture (KDa) in Tokyo in 2003 as a place for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. The format has spread virally to many cities across the world. The name derives from a Japanese term for the sound of conversation ("chit-chat"). The idea behind Pecha Kucha is to keep presentations concise, the interest level up and to have many presenters sharing their ideas within the course of one night. Therefore the 20x20 Pecha Kucha format was created: each presenter is allowed a slideshow of 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each. This results in a total presentation time of 6 minutes 40 seconds on a stage before the next presenter is up.

I have to say that I tried the format once and overshot by 30 mins. Ouch. Practice practice practice. But yeah, everyone was asking questions so it wasn't really fair.


3.Xmas shopping
If Clotaire Rapaille says that going shopping is our cultural equivalent of connecting back with our world, I have to say that the mall madness I witnessed today is the cultural equivalent of a rugby game. Such a sea of people "connecting" with xmas gift guilt I have the pleasure of witnessing only once a year. Thank god. I don't think I have the stomach nor the patience behind the wheel to go for another round. People : go shop online, better yet, don't spend all that money and spend some real time with someone you havent spoken to in a while.

4.15% commision on paid search ads
Good post on Yannick Manuri's Blog. The age old topic that some people are out there to screw you. What do you really expect? This is an industry of people selling stuff to people selling stuff to people. Markups, albeit obscene are part of the DNA of the fauna. 25% comm on ad buys is obscene. There is no way to rationalize anymore on paid search.


5.The Hon. Denis Coderre, P.C., M.P. on FB (Facebook)
I must say that marketers dont have the stronghold on Facebook marketing anyore. Enter the political players! None other than Liberal Superstar Denis Coderre in the FB universe!

6.Jackson 5 makes another blip on the Search radar
See Google trends activity
The actual search phrase "Jackson 5" is 75th out of the top 100 search queries for December 8th 2007. Just thought you'd like to know.

7.MBA's
Is it really worth it? I ran accros this article on a MBA competition.
Is it just another way of writing on a piece of paper: I AM BETTER THAN YOU ACCORDING TO THIS SCHOOL? Then again, I might be wrong. I have met people with amazing minds with the notorious MBA suffixes (poor form if you ask me). But I would argue that they were just as brilliant before entering the sausage grinder. Cause and effect still tbd.

8.Great quote by founder of Patagonia

I'VE BEEN A BUSINESSMAN for almost 50 years. It's as difficult for me to say those words as it is for someone to admit to being an alcoholic or a lawyer.

I've never respected the profession. It's business that has to take the majority of the blame for being the enemy of nature, for destroying native cultures, for taking from the poor and giving to the rich, and for poisoning the earth with the effluent from its factories. Yet business can produce food, cure disease, control population, employ people, and generally enrich our lives. And it can do these good things and make a profit without losing its soul.

read the rest here

9.Leekspin.com
Why?Because it's there.
Read all about it on Wikipedia.

10.Darwin award of the day:
Yahoo-Adobe partnership to put contextual ads in PDF documents.
Yawn, come on guys. Seriously....

TOP 10 LIST: 2007 Boomerang Awards

10-The company that makes those outdoor heating lamps must really be laughing since smoking indoors is outlawed.
9-Facebook is the new business card
8-Justice DJ music.
7-Le Proprio in house web design. Respect !
6-The Canoe bar is dry after 1 hour. BOOOOOOOOH.
5-Being an event sponsors : a great way to win a boomerang?
4-Denis Talbot : why and how much are they paying you?
3-Les "ballounes" Yahoo !
2-Fjord’s DC fashion style. Year after year, stylin'
1-Provokat. Nuff said.

Top 10: December 7th 2007

1- Sony advertising on Mac Rumours site.
I’m not really convinced by the strategy of placing Sony laptop ads on a die hard Mac lover site. Do you really think theres any hope of converting macusers with the most uber-basic display ads ?
http://www.macrumors.com/


2- Live ads.
There are people accross my screen. I love the execution on this campaign. I have no idea how to read Norwegian but I’m still laughing out loud.
http://www.adverblog.com/archives/003323.htm


3- Opinion Lab
Does anyone use Opinion Lab tools ? I’m especially interested in the AD FEEDBACK feature. I’ve seen some very promising features and apparently the back end reporting is out of this world.
http://www.opinionlab.com/


4- A moment of philosophy.
Long tail distribution in human beings: general versus specific needs mold different templates of personalities. Isn’t the Long Tail just a example of a healthy bio diverse model. The more diverse an ecosystem is, the better and more adapted it is ?


5- The new social MIXX.
It makes all the sense of the world for a news media company to team up with social tagging startup Mixx, who’s users are snubbing the Digg Culture. I can’t say I’ve been using this new site but it’s looking good and fun to use. Update coming soon !
article


6- The land before the web
Will the next generation believe stories of the land before the web ? wikipedia, homework, cell phones, etc…It’s pretty impressive how quickly technology moved from comunicating to a daily appliance. Almost banale really, the light swicth goes on and the rest is magic. I just wanted to take a moment and thank all the little elves of the digital world for making the « light go on » everytime the switch goes on.

7- No comments? No blog for you!
If no one is talking back it’s not a conversation. So if you’re gonna blog, get ready to get some people talking back to you. Clearly it’s a sense of engagement from the user but also of respect by the blogger.
Great article in a great blog byMaggie Fox



8- McDonald report cards.
What might make sense in a marketing plan makes absolutely no sense from a community sense. I dislike this brand more and more every day. YA YOU HEARD ME RONALD, I DON’T LIKE YOU.
full article here


9- Infopresse Boomerang award list.
Very happy to see Cyberpresse picking up the interactive banner award. The banner was created by Generation Flash and is a great showcase of how updated RSS feeds can always keep banners fresh and up to date with current events. WOOHOO!
On another note, tidewave of awards for Provokat. hehe.
http://www.infopresse.com/prixboomerang/2007/


10. Comscore.
Please lets all put our thinking caps on and lets find a solution/ alternative.

TOP 10: New Blog Format

Top 10 : December 6th 2007

1. Blogging- how easy and how hard it is
Facebook, Digg, Delicious, Twitter etc…Its very easy to share cool links, odd articles and the occasional WTF website. It’s become super hard lately to sit down and actually write original content on my blog lately. So I came up with a solution to bring the efficiency of twitter with the content value of a blog: Theme oriented TOP 10 LISTS. It’s an experiment right now , but I plan on posted every day a TOP 10 LIST summing up whats on my mind around a theme.

2. Dove
Even if I loved the 1st Dove Viral ad, and the second ad was so-so, and the irony around Unilever pushing accepting your body is overwhelming, this brand just keeps swinging.
http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/17585.asp

3. Book review: naked conversations
How Blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers.
Great book for demystifying the dark art of blogging. A lot of examples, a lot of must-dos but more importantly a list of reasons people should not blog. Very interesting points about sustainable business communication practices. I still give it a 8/10 as it get repetitive and doesn’t have much depth to it after 50 pages.

4. Twitter
Yes I love it. Yes I know Facebook copy catted the status line to be like it, but I’m still a huge lover of the micro-blogging aggregator.
My Twitter here

5. Analytics
After the Workopolis Analytics Summit lasy week, I realize that we really do have a new language: marketing analytics. I’ve noticed that fluent speakers of this digi-mark-speak ( as opposed to corp-speak) havea lot in common: Love of SEO, Scepticism of Banner Advertising, Respect for the user, and doubt as to dogmatic design. All your data are belong to us.

6. FYI: ROI of SMO
Is there a ROI on Social Media? No I don’t think so, not that I can calculate right now. Is it pointless? No definitely Not. Is it critical? Not yet, but you can't (IMHO) just wait for the whole market to get there 1st. I think I had this exact conversation 10 years ago re: search engines. Incoming links are not only a great source of SEO love but actual traffic that actual people are driving to you. Is there a ROI on PR initiative?


7. SEO and site development
Yes Finally I think we did it! Walking into a meeting with the dev team, project management and SEO specialist and everyone got along great! No it’s not a miracle, it’s simply people talking the same language and respecting each others skill.


8. Foosball and type A personalities
It’s a great game. Nuff said.


9. Simplify:
Loved the S.H.E. concept by John MAEDA:

* S: Simplify
* H: Hide
* E: Embody

10. Facebook beacon
Facebook screwed up, blah blah blah. Too fast too soon too greedy. Everyone’s favourite screw up is still worth more that some small countries ( don’t quote me on that). I think they still have a great platform and great following and people are so damn addicted to Facebook, it doesn’t matter