Here's something you don't see too often. Amazon has a link called Movers & Shakers, basically the top 3 items of each sales category. Under Toys and Games, the number one item today is the Deluxe Wood Chess Set (Sales Rank in Toys & Games: 201, formerly ranked at 13,379). Nothing wrong with chess, or that people probably buy more chess sets during the holidays because they're stuck indoors.. But for such a jump, I wonder if this is a technical glitch via Google search keyword or ad content network, or if really the company is truly moving a lot of chess sets this year.
Things like this make me wonder about the legitimacy of ranking, considering that for this particular product there are zero product reviews.
Movers & Shakers Link for Toys and Games (updated hourly)
Read more?
What You Need to Know about Amazon’s Sales Rank System
Brand Management
It's all about marketing, you see. What is the key difference between what Kobe Bryant did post-scandal and what Tiger Woods did? Managing the brand. What he should be doing instead of listening to his wife's demand of "...I'll let you play pro golf again when I can trust you.." is to put together a game plan for resurrecting his personal and professional brand. Look at how long it took for Martha Stewart to go from jailbird to partnering up with Macy's. It's not impossible nor improbable for Tiger Woods to be favored by the public again.
Read more?
Understanding and Managing the Brand Space
Brand Noise: The Evolution of the Martha Brand
The Infinite Asset: Managing Brands to Build New Value
From the Public Relations Problems and Cases blog:
- Football, Dogs & Money - The Michael Vick Story By: Brian Heenan
- The Big O: How Oprah Winfrey Built Her Brand
- My NHL: Re-Branding the National Hockey League
Other famous people with "transgressions" on their record:
Bill Clinton's post-presidential career (via Wikipedia)
Mohammad Ali bio
Read more?
Understanding and Managing the Brand Space
Brand Noise: The Evolution of the Martha Brand
The Infinite Asset: Managing Brands to Build New Value
From the Public Relations Problems and Cases blog:
- Football, Dogs & Money - The Michael Vick Story By: Brian Heenan
- The Big O: How Oprah Winfrey Built Her Brand
- My NHL: Re-Branding the National Hockey League
Other famous people with "transgressions" on their record:
Bill Clinton's post-presidential career (via Wikipedia)
Mohammad Ali bio
Airline fees are like bank fees
Article: Southwest adds charge to board sooner
Wow, this is a great [insert sarcasm] revenue generator. I scoff at this because the last flight I took on Delta Airlines charged $25/seat to upgrade to an exit row. As such, there were several empty exit-row seats on the flight. Good luck to anyone needing to evacuate through those rows. It doesn't matter how soon you board the plane or get settled into your seat; and likewise, it doesn't matter if you sit in First Class or Economy because if you have an aisle seat, you still have to get up and out of it to let in the middle and window seaters. What value is $10/flight to a passenger who gets to sit down first when the airplane can't even take off until everyone is seated?
It's bad enough that 150+ passengers have to share two bathrooms at the back of the plane. What's next?
Wow, this is a great [insert sarcasm] revenue generator. I scoff at this because the last flight I took on Delta Airlines charged $25/seat to upgrade to an exit row. As such, there were several empty exit-row seats on the flight. Good luck to anyone needing to evacuate through those rows. It doesn't matter how soon you board the plane or get settled into your seat; and likewise, it doesn't matter if you sit in First Class or Economy because if you have an aisle seat, you still have to get up and out of it to let in the middle and window seaters. What value is $10/flight to a passenger who gets to sit down first when the airplane can't even take off until everyone is seated?
It's bad enough that 150+ passengers have to share two bathrooms at the back of the plane. What's next?
Disney market strategy
When is the last movie or tv series that Disney was able to create on their own that was a blockbuster success? Exclude anything made by Pixar because that doesn't really count as being Disney-created.
Marvel Comics is a great franchise for Disney to pick up as a licensed brand. $4 billion is chump change over the lifetime ownership of all the Marvel properties and titles that could become movies. Kudos to Stan Lee for selling his soul to Disney. Miyazaki did the same by selling the rights to his library to Disney. Let's face it, aside from the failing amusement parks, Disney has what Time Warner, Fox Media, and Sony Entertainment have.. a distribution network and a very captive audience who wants to buy anything with their stamp on it.
Read more?
p.s. Stan Lee does not own Marvel; but his name is synonymous with the Marvel brand. If you read comic books penned by him in the early 80s.
Marvel Comics is a great franchise for Disney to pick up as a licensed brand. $4 billion is chump change over the lifetime ownership of all the Marvel properties and titles that could become movies. Kudos to Stan Lee for selling his soul to Disney. Miyazaki did the same by selling the rights to his library to Disney. Let's face it, aside from the failing amusement parks, Disney has what Time Warner, Fox Media, and Sony Entertainment have.. a distribution network and a very captive audience who wants to buy anything with their stamp on it.
Read more?
p.s. Stan Lee does not own Marvel; but his name is synonymous with the Marvel brand. If you read comic books penned by him in the early 80s.
Web Tools for Marketers
Every year, new web tools come onto the market. These are supposed to help make our lives as marketers easier with better time management, multi-layered views of web properties, or a better consolidated and aggregate dashboard. Many of them are free or have a "lite" version of the webware available. Here are a few good ones that come to mind:
YouSendIt - Ever get thwarted by IT's security or file size settings in Microsoft Outlook? YouSendIt provides temporary file transfers between users. It's not just a work-around for Outlook. Most email providers limit the send/receive file size to 10 mb. Their lite version is not too shabby for the occassional user. You can send files up to 100 mb with a 1 gb/month bandwidth restriction. Your recipients have up to 7 days to download the file before the system automatically deletes it. YouSendIt provides a handy link for users to download.
Icerocket - Using an RSS reader to track updates for twitter feeds or blogs is fine if you want to keep track of what people are saying about you. But what about all the other sites that are saying something about your company, its products, or brands? Icerocket is an aggregate search engine that looks for your keywords across a variety of online media: Blogs, the WWW, Twitter, MySpace, News, Images, etc., and does this all at once.
Mailinator - This is a service that lets you create a temporary email account. It's good for signing up for consumer newsletters that don't secure their account creation pages. Why is this relevant for marketers? If you're testing web contact forms, you might not want to have your work email address captured into your company's CRM; but you still want verification (e.g., like the autoresponder) that your web forms actually work.
ShareThis - Definitely not a new tool on the scene, but this is an easy sharing link for all types of web content. Check out their blog and why it makes sense for online marketers to use this tool. Did I mention? It's really easy to use, for users, content providers, and web publishers.
LovelyCharts.com - An online diagramming application. Ever wonder how flow diagrams (e.g., wireframes, flow charts, organizational charts, network diagrams, process flows) are created for PPT presentations? This tool can help map our your data bits into something graphical and more meaningful than drawing out the boxes by hand in PPT.
YouSendIt - Ever get thwarted by IT's security or file size settings in Microsoft Outlook? YouSendIt provides temporary file transfers between users. It's not just a work-around for Outlook. Most email providers limit the send/receive file size to 10 mb. Their lite version is not too shabby for the occassional user. You can send files up to 100 mb with a 1 gb/month bandwidth restriction. Your recipients have up to 7 days to download the file before the system automatically deletes it. YouSendIt provides a handy link for users to download.
Icerocket - Using an RSS reader to track updates for twitter feeds or blogs is fine if you want to keep track of what people are saying about you. But what about all the other sites that are saying something about your company, its products, or brands? Icerocket is an aggregate search engine that looks for your keywords across a variety of online media: Blogs, the WWW, Twitter, MySpace, News, Images, etc., and does this all at once.
Mailinator - This is a service that lets you create a temporary email account. It's good for signing up for consumer newsletters that don't secure their account creation pages. Why is this relevant for marketers? If you're testing web contact forms, you might not want to have your work email address captured into your company's CRM; but you still want verification (e.g., like the autoresponder) that your web forms actually work.
ShareThis - Definitely not a new tool on the scene, but this is an easy sharing link for all types of web content. Check out their blog and why it makes sense for online marketers to use this tool. Did I mention? It's really easy to use, for users, content providers, and web publishers.
LovelyCharts.com - An online diagramming application. Ever wonder how flow diagrams (e.g., wireframes, flow charts, organizational charts, network diagrams, process flows) are created for PPT presentations? This tool can help map our your data bits into something graphical and more meaningful than drawing out the boxes by hand in PPT.
OMS Portland
Am at this event today and overall the content presented has been pretty decent given the spread of the attendees and the industries represented today. I managed to sit through three sessions and two keynotes so far:
Resource links from the event:
http://blog.onlinemarketingconnect.com/
http://blog.onlinemarketingconnect.com/resources/
http://institute.onlinemarketingconnect.com/
- Morning Keynote "Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying"
The Medium Is the Message: Advanced Strategies for Email, SMS & Voice Marketing Success - Demand Generation Essentials
- Lunch Keynote "How to better understand your customers' online behavior and profit from it”
- Designing Your Email Program From Online Outreach to the Welcome Message
Resource links from the event:
http://blog.onlinemarketingconnect.com/
http://blog.onlinemarketingconnect.com/resources/
http://institute.onlinemarketingconnect.com/
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