Design competition for Switzerland’s currency!

Marissa — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:05:39 +0000

The theme was called “Switzerland open to the world.”

In the beginning of 2005, as a part of the development for a new design for the look of their currency, a competition was launched.

Twelve artists were invited to take part in the challenge for designing all six denominations on the theme mentioned above.

The first place winner was Krebs Manuel from Zurich and his designs pictured here.

You may view the other designs here.

Twitter Trends

Simon — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:06:11 +0000

There’s a new online tool that combines Twitter with Google Maps to give a visual layout of what people are talking about all over the world. Called Trendsmap, this tool provides real-time mapping of Twitter topics–so you can find out what people are Tweeting about right now, in any location.

What to know what people are talking about in Boston? In Mumbai? Just type your city into the search bar and start clicking. It’s a great way to stay on top of trends and hot topics. And it’s also just plain cool.

Mobile Marketing – still being tested

Christina — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:23:47 +0000

With mobile browser use on the increase, it is certain that new marketing will begin to be developed on the mobile front. It is amazing that we haven’t seen many remarkable mobile marketing tactics other than the mobile app development, which honestly only has real sustainability if it is something useful – not just a “neat feature”.

Useful mobile application examples include E*Trade’s mobile app that allows customers to securely trade stocks from their Blackberry, Smartphone or iphone. In certain cases of mobile app development, these are added value services that customers purchase – such as Verizon’s VZ Navigator that helps customers locate businesses using their mobile phones and retrieve directions to the location of choice (similar to the Google maps app).

But wait . . . I am not saying that everyone should run out to develop a mobile app. You also need to consider the usage rates.

For example, a recent study Compete Smartphone Intelligence survey shows that for social applications, 73% of Blackberry owners have downloaded 5 or fewer applications; in contrast, 72% of iPhone owners have downloaded 10 or more applications. And the usage rates are likely much lower. So, make sure that you are developing your mobile apps for the right browser user, as well as providing a reason for them to use the application.

Don’t rush into mobile marketing unless it fits your strategy. If you are considering the development of a mobile app or mobile marketing plan, here are some basic guidelines to consider:

1. Research and review your target audience’s mobile use and access to see which browsers are used the most, if any.

2. Provide a mobile-friendly website, or at least a page on your site, to give the audience the option of learning more about your company or to direct a call to action. Please make sure that if you direct the audience to a form, that the form works!

3. Make sure that the mobile marketing you are considering is relevant to your brand.

4. Most of all, make sure that the user is actively involved in the decision to accept and interact with you and your marketing on their mobile phones – don’t become an annoyance to them or cost them money without their consent or request.

Also keep in mind that you don’t have to develop some complicated mobile app with all sorts of bells and whistles. You can implement something simple, such as a targeted mobile search engine marketing campaign – but make sure that you not only have at least some mobile friendly pages to direct the users to, but that these pages contain relevant content to what your mobile search ads are marketing.

Let’s review a couple mobile marketing application examples, that although are still being tested, have been useful for reaching customers and helping to turn mobile advertising into sales or developing relationships.

Mobile Marketing Application #1: Cellfire Mobile Coupons
In case you aren’t the target audience, you may not have heard of this, but if you register for a Cellfire account, free to the user of course, that allows you to access coupons from your mobile phone. And, c search for retailers near you. JCPenny is one of the larger retailers just recently trying scannable mobile coupons and is ll over the media news pubs, but may more have been using this marketing platform – Sears, Hollywood Video, 1-800-FLOWERS to name a few.

The results of these efforts are not known, but it will be something to watch with coupon redemption climbing to 23% redemption so far for the first 6 months of 2009 as reported by the New York Times.

Mobile Marketing Application #2: CellSpin Mobile blogging
Basically, this allows us to constantly blog about everything that we are doing – wherever and whenever we want. CellSpin lets you easily post video, voice, photo or texts to all of the top social networks – Facebook, MysSpace, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr Picasa. WordPress, Blogger, and on and on. It is a great app for those that are constantly logging into their various Facebook and Twitter accounts, since this allows you to post to multiple sites with a simple and quick app.

From a marketing standpoint, this is great for marketers that want to have this access to their site – integrating this application to the company website and being able to post important information any time. Plus, you can set up a Clog (a Community Blog) that allows any member to post videos, or other information that is applicable to your blog request or topic – and of course can do so from their mobile phone.

We have a long way to go in learning and testing mobile marketing, but hopefully the coming year will bring about some exciting new tactics that are both useful and follow appropriate marketing practices.

The trouble with pay-per-click tools & guidelines

Christina — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:28:47 +0000

With Google leading the way in the search engine marketing world, we can be assured that there will be more and more “tools” and efficiencies built into every pay-per-click program. But will this lead us to a less favorable environment?

When Google banned ebay on Google’s AdWords, many advertisers paid attention to the new guidelines for providing relevant information to the users. Not to mention that following the new editorial guidelines also helps achieve higher positioning based on incorporating the targeted keyword term into text ads. Which, let’s face it, for a user it makes sense – they will find more relevant ads based on their search. And as a user, I am all for more relevant information to my searches.

And with all the guidelines and tools that Google provides to AdWords customers, there are less and less targeted messages starting to be deployed. For instance, you can use keyword replacement for all of our keywords, basically saving you time by writing a couple text ads, and allowing Google to replace a specific term in the ad with each keyword that you are targeting – how ingenious, right? Oh – but every other advertiser can do the same thing, can’t they? And if everyone does it, and is basically writing the same message, how are the advertisers differentiating? Why would I choose you over your competitor touting the same thing? And, how does the instance of the keyword term in your ad make me want to click on your ad?

Although the theory of adding more relevant information and options to the user seems to make sense, particularly for natural search engine ranking, but applying this to the search engine marketing function may prove to be detrimental for the industry as a whole.

The Stackpile » Miscellaneous

Design competition for Switzerland’s currency!

Twitter Trends

Mobile Marketing – still being tested

The trouble with pay-per-click tools & guidelines

2 days, 12 hours and counting…