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Semanti is a new search tool that improves your searches by harnessing the power of your FaceBook social network. It doesn’t matter what your favorite search engine is, Semanti uses your network to enhance searches with Google, Bing, Yahoo, whatever.
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Digg, as you may know, is a service that allows people to discover and share content, mostly news and stories about technology. There’s a new service – undrln - that bills itself as digg for marketers. Give it a test drive.
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Ever have an idea for a new desktop widget or thought about some data you’d like to see overlaid on a Google Map? Even if you don’t have application development skills, there are some services that allow you to build applications without code. Sitepoint tells you how.
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Hello again.
Have you ever been involved in a marketing program that beat all the marketing metrics you set but failed on sales metrics? We'll talk about aligning metrics this time in Think. Let's get going.
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Creatively yours,
Harry Hoover
harry@my-creativeteam.com
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| Aligning Metrics |
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By Harry Hoover
Years ago, I worked with a Fortune 500 company on an integrated marketing communications program. It was integrated everywhere except with sales. And therein lies the rub. Our marketing metrics were highly successful, but our sales metrics weren’t. Let me explain.
We were telling consumers to call the company for a free in-home survey because we discovered that if the company’s representative got into the home for the free audit, they sold - on average - five additional products or services. The program was wildly successful. The media relations part of the program targeted at local newspapers was an incredible success. The morning the story appeared in The Charlotte Observer, we almost broke the company’s telephone system we had so many calls requesting the free survey.
The company’s field representatives balked at doing the surveys because they were being incentivized for selling one certain product. The agency and the company marketing folks did not know this before the program was launched. We had even done a presentation to company managers - sales included - but no one thought to mention this small detail.
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| Has The News Media Disappeared? |
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By Harry Hoover
The free press of my early career was a thing of beauty. It was truly a watchdog over big everything, including government. It provided non-biased coverage of issues and kept its editorials on the op-ed pages.
Today, it panders to the lowest common denominator and doesn’t provide us with the balanced information we need to make informed decisions. It merely regurgitates the government position. And the media wonders why it is withering and dying.
Let’s take this example, and it is not an isolated one. USA Today covered the death of Michael Jackson like it was D-Day. But didn’t even mention what may be one of the biggest goverment tax increases ever through the cap and trade bill.
According to the Business & Media Institute, “Jackson, who passed away June 25, dominated USA Today. Nine articles were devoted to Jackson on June 26 and 29. The June 26 front page blared: “MICHAEL King of Pop dies” over a photo of Jackson that took up much of the remainder of the page. The top of USA Today advertised: “Faces of Jackson: Keepsake posters, 8-9D.” Jackson also was the headline on June 29: “Inside Michael’s Last Show.”
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