Excellent Marketing

So today’s prize for best marketing goes to Turner Broadcasting, for their campaign to promote “Aqua teen Hunger Force”.

Story here: TV Network Takes Responsibility For ‘Hoax Devices’

So many people are probably like, “WTF is Aqua Teen Hunger Force?” And that is the genius of this stunt, in that now people will find out about the absolutely craziest show ever made. ATHF is basically a cartoon conceived on crystal meth and sniffing glue, that centers around 3 life-size FastFood items (Shake, Frylock, and Meatwad) that rent an apartment next to their sweatpants-wearing dirtbag of a neighbor named Carl. Aliens are routinely involved. Its hysterical. Supposedly, there is a new movie of ATHF coming out next month, and believe me people now know about it. There were tons of articles in the press on this. I love the show and had no idea the movie was coming out, so the stunt got my awareness. Excellent work.

Wonder if this kind of stunt would work for promoting PCs?

Fatherhood

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Originally uploaded by mastasplinter2001.

I am determined to have Dylan wear some hilarious outfits while he’s young….and can’t do anything about it. Also, when he gets enough hair…he’ll start rockin out the mohawk.

The World According to Pebbles – part 3

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Originally uploaded by mastasplinter2001.

jeez, this new creature in our house is loud sometimes. Its really affecting my sleep habits, and i am only averaging around 22 hours of sleep a day now, which leaves me a little cranky. No big plans for the day except for maybe antagonizing the other dog that lives here, Aussie. And possibly practicing some yoga cuz I need to learn how to relax, my doctor tells me I am too high strung.

Joost

One of the few print magazines I actually subscribe to is Wired. There are always interesting things to read for a pseudo-geek like myself, but one in particular caught my attention.

The cats that created Kazaa and Skype are currently working on a new project that will destroy the other 2 in terms of importance. The newest venture is called ‘Joost’, and the article is here:

Why Joost is Good for TV

Basically it is the project to integrate TV and the web but doing so with the power of p2p networks. All while making it much more ‘findable’.

There are a lot of interesting facets to this project especially the p2p piece, but the crazy part, at least for me, is the ability to measure people’s viewing habits and create personalized marketing messages based on algorithms, demographics, and previous customer behavior. All of a sudden TV becomes as measurable as the web is today. Screw having people using set-top Nielson ratings boxes, you’ll now have data from actual customer behavior. Marketeers are going to rejoice over this as it further allows for relevancy of messaging.

What goes on the Home Page?

So anyone that has spent any time in a web business has undoubtedly been in heated debates around the simple question “What should go on the home page of our site?”

From the sales & merchandising folks you’ll get “I want a bunch of offers and sales”

From the brand marketing people you’ll get “I want links to things that talk about our brand and tell people why they should buy our product”

From the design folks you’ll get “I want to make it easy for visitors to navigate to where they want to be”

So by taking everyone’s advice you end up with 100 links. But what is the right approach? Who gets what on the homepage? And is having too many options or links on the home page a bad thing that confuses customers and ultimately negatively affects conversions? And how do you quantify what should be there based on web metrics as opposed to business unit wishlists? Simply looking at click-throughs doesn’t answer the question. So blogistan, what is your take? (especially looking at you Avinash!)

The World According to Pebbles – part 2

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Originally uploaded by mastasplinter2001.

Dude, it snowed today. That is not cool. I do not like going out in this mess. The other dog who lives here, Aussie, says I am neurotic wuss, but it is like 28 degrees and snowing!. So looks like i will be spending the day indoors. I have a lot to catch up on anyways, like licking Dylan and reading the rest of “Crime and Punishment”. Where is this global warming I am hearing so much about?

Omniture tip of the day

For those would be Omniture implementers out there…

One thing that has been plaguing me of late is the way I’ve tagged our sites with Omniture. Because Omniture report suites act in a siloed fashion, its important to think through how you need to look at the traffic data in Omniture before going about and tagging your site.

For example in the Omniture code, there is a variable called s_account which essentially acts as a traffic cop for routing traffic. For instance, I could use s_account=”uspublic” for our Public site in the US and s_account=”ukpublic” for the Public site in the UK. Traffic for those pages would go their respective reports, so I’d have a US report and and a UK report. That would work well if both sites didn’t use the same Online Support pages, which has its own s_account=”esupport”. In Omniture’s report suites, if a visitor is on the US Public site and clicks to Online Support (which has its own report suite) it will appear as if they exited the Public site since that data is being captured in another report suite. Obviously this has drastic effects on your exit data as well as pathing. In fact, it renders it meaningles as a visitor on the Public site for that country would appear as an exit, but in fact they just went to piece of your overall site that is in another report suite.

So what can be done? The main way Omniture recommends is to do multi-suite tagging which Omniture offers at an additional cost. Multi-suite tagging essentially creates both a granular report suite as well as a master report suite for all data. Another route is to make everything go to a master report suite up front and use other variables to further classify and segment data. Honestly, I would think Omniture would have a better way to make all the existing report suites talk to each other for an ‘Enterprise’ view, but that doesn’t exist today.

I thought I’d throw that tidbit out there in case anyone was wondering what to do about routing their traffic with the s_account variable. Hopefully, this helps you make an educated decision.

Lebowski

My honest belief is there are 2 types of people in the world…

People who love and can actively quote lines from the Big Lebowski and people who can’t. I firmly believe I can get along with anyone in the first camp.

I literally have seen the movie a couple thousand times, which for me personally is right up there with Dazed & Confused, of which I might have actually seen more times. Incidentally, both showcase awesome Bob Dylan songs “Man in Me” in Lebowski and “Hurricane” in Dazed.

For those that don’t know, there are Lebowski-fests across the nation to celebrate “The Dude” and all his glory. They also have a rockin site: http://www.lebowskifest.com/ 

In browsing the site, I found something I think I must purchase. An ‘Achiever’ onesie. I think Dylan needs this. Or maybe I need this for him. Either way…it kills me.

The World According to Pebbles

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Originally uploaded by mastasplinter2001.

So since I am going to be busy with Dylan and grad school for the next few months ( and Dylan for the next 18 years), I will occassionally turn over writing duties to my chihuahua, Pebbles from time to time. She leads an extremely interesting life.

Here is her entry for today…

Today, I was abruptly awaken by Dylan crying and Jim picking me up and throwing me outside. It was like 24 frggin degrees outside this morning!! I am small and have short hair, this weather is not cool with me. Then I ate breakfast. After that I slept under a blanket for 8 hours. Then Jim came home and fed me and took me out again. Much warmer in the afternoon. Then I went back under the blanket to sleep for 3 hours next to Dylan. I am looking forward to getting some rest tomorrow after the busy day today. More to come….

Back to Skool

So after my monthlong hiatus of not going to class, I had my first taste of the Data Analysis course tonite. I was sort of dreading going back, as sitting anywhere for 3 hours at a time is draining, but I am really interested in this class, particulary the regression analysis stuff. I mentioned in a post during the summer that I want to use regression and correlation style analysis in the Web Analytics world. Maybe doing probabilities for campaign success outcomes, etc.

Speaking of web analytics, the professor told me of a Web Analytics course being offered at State. Yes, I will be signing up for it when I can start taking electives next year.

Also, I think I am leaning towards trying to build a concentration around Decision Support and Analytics and make that my MBA focus. And then world domination will ensue.

I am pretty jazzed about this semester. This Data Analysis class and Marketing are on the schedule. And I have a new study buddy with Mr. Dylan.