Category: General

This is the recent parody commercial of Apple’s new iPhone that was recently on The Conan O’Brien Show.

Link: Conan iPhone parody (Youtube)

What you see above is the newly unveiled London 2012 logo. To me it looks like a branding exercise with a hip brand marketing PR guru wannabe getting his hands on it and throwing so many “managerial” new speak into it and come up with a big fat almighty mess.

Apparently costing over £400,000, the logo is meant to represent inclusion, and some other nonsense… to me it means nothing. If it were meant to represent inclusion, then why not hold a competition within London’s schools? I’m pretty sure that children could come up with a better design than this monstrosity.

I honestly can’t see how Lord Seb Coe saw 4 jagged edged digits and got…

“It will define the venues we build and the Games we hold and act as a reminder of our promise to use the Olympic spirit to inspire everyone and reach out to young people around the world.”

“It is an invitation to take part and be involved.”

“We will host a Games where everyone is invited to join in because they are inspired by the Games to either take part in the many sports, cultural, educational and community events leading up to 2012 or they will be inspired to achieve personal goals.”

…from it… I mean, even Blair started hyping up the logo as some sort of change, saying:

“When people see the new brand, we want them to be inspired to make a positive change in their life”

Heck, he almost putting it on to a plateau on the same level as some sort of Deity.

Somehow I just don’t see this logo sitting alongside Buddha, Jesus. Even they’d be confused as to what this logo is meant to represent, if anything … apparantly it’s just not a logo — it’s a …

“..truly innovative brand logo that graphically captures the essence of the London 2012 Olympic Games – namely to inspire young people around the world through sport and the Olympic values.”

Err, it’s a LOGO… and just not a very good one either.

Links:
Design by committee – London 2012 Olympic Logo

I don’t know about you, but I’m beginning to think that 24 hour news is now the bane of modern society, spreading cynicism, fear and a short memory.

The power that rolling news coverage over stories, even if they are small stories, is begining to get out of control.

If we take a broad overview of news coverage, we’ll see a common thread;

• A need to keep breaking news
• A need to follow news stories as they develop
• A need to keep viewers watching

With that in mind, 24 hour news is in a constant war with itself (and other providers) to provide even more in-depth analysis, and even in some cases, trying to solve a crime live on air; whether that’s hiring ex-police detectives to walk a street with a reporter, or if its telling the public that a person is a suspected criminal by meerly mentioning his name on TV, all for the sake of “breaking news”, and keeping people watching.

Fear, of course, is a well established way of keeping people watching, and when the news editors combine the notion of fear with rolling news coverage, and add “breaking news” every 15 minutes; they can keep a whole nation watching.

The thing that irrates me is that the coverage can be so one-sided, or it’ll character assassinate someone because they call them a suspect, and helps turns the whole “innocent until proven guilty” on its head.

Another issue that frustrates me is that news reporters seem to have a very short memory span; and constantly break “new” stories, when that isn’t the case at all, or constantly ram down a news story down our throats, even if the story is old, and has no real value – like covering “Second Life”, or some other god-forsaken waste-of-space Z-list Celebrity.

Whereas in the past reporters meerly reported the news, now the reporters must make, break and report the news all at the same time. What’s ironic, is that reporters, editors all know of these issues but don’t do much about it, and whenever someone criticises the situation, they report it as a story, saying, “Mr X has accused the media”, as if the word media was somehow a catch-all clause, rather than a specific issue.

I remember Charlie Brooker of BBC’s Screenwipe saying something like “it just feels like a big conspiracy. That somehow, they’re are trying to keep us scared, and inside just in case we miss yet another breaking news item.”.

Whilst I don’t think we’re in danger of entering a whole brave new world where the UK populous is constantly watching a corporate version of Big Brother; I do however fear that the nature of the 24 hour beast will inevitably leave us cynical and less hungry for real news stories.

I recently saw an advert promoting Gateshead College, its in most of the Metros stations around Newcastle/Gateshead and you may have seen it.

The advert is of a guy dressed in football gear kicking what appears to be a car tyre, and the advert is promoting the new Academy for Sport at Gateshead International Stadium.

Except, nobody (it seems), apart from me has noticed the irony (or subtext) of the picture.

The picture is of a guy kicking a tyre; hence a “tyre kicker” (which in sales terms is a person wasting time)… I know Colleges are seen as a “waste of time”, but that advert really just takes the biscuit.

It seems the advertisers didn’t see the subtext/irony of the advert.

Oh well.

Outsourcing. You either hate it, or love it. But what are the business cases for outsourcing?

1. You don’t have the time to do it yourself.
   Maybe you have so much to do that you can’t concentrate on the project you want to do. Or maybe there’s a product you want to develop and you want to get it to market before your competition does.
2. You want to concentrate on more important things.
   IE: Generating leads, getting customers, doing marketing, making sales, rather than building things that take time. Also, the savings in manpower can be utilised elsewhere.
3. No internal skills/will to do the project.
   Many projects never ever get off the ground because either there isn’t the skill or will to do it. The skills are employable, but the will probably isn’t, outsourcing means that you can use your internal skills and still get the project done.
4. Manageable projects
   You want to work in small chunks on manageable projects and not spend all your budget on one project.
5. You want a relationship that matters
   You are looking for a face-to-face relationship, and not a faceless company.

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If you’re a small business owner that uses “web marketing” to help increase credibility, visibility and trust – you’ll know that one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your website is through making your website viral through using a variety of tactics, which include (but aren’t limited to) blogs, articles, whitepapers, RSS syndication, social networking sites, social bookmarking and of course online video/audio.

Usually, the above tactics are employed on your website. IE: The blog is on your website, the white papers are on your website, and the video is only available on your website, and you use SEO and social networking tactics to bring the traffic to you.

But you may find that your site just isn’t bringing in the traffic that you thought you would be getting

This is where Squidoo comes in.

Squidoo, created by Seth Godin, is a very popular and high ranking social networking website that allows you to create a page (or “lens”) to focus on a topic that matters to you.

A “lens” is a basically an easy-to-build single web page with a collection of “modules” that include pointing to blogs, websites, links, RSS feeds, Flickr Photos, Google maps, ebay auctions, Amazon books, iTunes songs, and much more besides.

The reason why Squidoo is popular is because of its high ranking nature, and people know that Squidoo can be used to drive traffic coming to their respective web pages. This is because Squidoo is different from form sites that offered Internet marketers solutions for promoting their web pages.

Of course it doesn’t end there – you can also make money from a “lens”. Targeted adverts are supplied for your lens and you can get paid for your article. If you’re feeling generous you can donate any proceedings from your lens to charitable causes too!

Writing articles on your website through a blog can add value to your credibility and help draw traffic to your business, and with tools such as RSS feeds, and social networking sites such as Squidoo mean that your business, credibility and trust can go viral.

Links:

• Squiddo

Many people ask me why they should “bother getting a website”. It seems to me there is a lot of confusion as to why a website is needed.

A website is a powerful marketing and business tool, one that should have a purpose, and that is to add value to your business.

Typically, your business should have a website because:

1. You want to sell something.
2. You want to promote something.
3. You want to provide information, increase your credibility, trust or social worth through articles, debate, and commentary.
4. You want to generate prospects, leads, or enquiries that will lead to sales, or referrals.
5. You want to increase efficiency, productivity, or profitability.

I believe in ‘purposeful websites’. That is, your website should have a ‘purpose’, a meaning, a reason for being; whether it’s promoting your business, a product, a service, a person, or a book – the ideas are the same, you want to encourage customers to trust you, to contribute to your business/website, and ultimately; to buy from you.

Personal blogging is incredibly popular, however it still has the myth of being incredibly narcissistic, or a just a collection of “rants”, but if its done right – a blog can significantly improve your business image. Since 1999, the number of blogs on the Internet has exploded from a few thousand to to millions. And now business is getting in on the act as a way of increasing their credibility.

Why?

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A few hours ago, Rockstar Games presented a short high definition trailer of the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 4. The trailer lasts just under 30 seconds and has exquisste attention to detail.

But will the game actually look like that? Or is it a video cut-scene that they are showing? If its the game, then GTA4 might just be the best looking version of the hit game thus far.

Check it out yourself:

Grand Theft Auto 4 Trailer

Trustedreviews has recently posted an article on how one of the worst kept secrets of recent technological times Microsoft has finally come forth and admitted the existence of the Xbox 360 Elite.

More at TrustedReviews