Shake Gently - advertising technology blog

Teachers selling advertising on tests - gone too far?

There is nothing new about schools selling advertising, but is it now crossing the line?

What about advertising on tests?

Teacher Sells Advertising On Tests (via Mediapost)

At $10 dollars for a quiz, $20 for a test, and $30 for a final exam, Farber’s ads don’t pay for much- just the cost of printing the tests.

While I understand that schools are short on funding, I’m wondering if there aren’t other ways to approach revenue generation.

I heard from a college student at the University of Missouri that college professors are advertising on course materials as well.

I’m wondering what the advertisers think about the opportunity to reach students and what kind of response they have gotten.

Is this considered a tax contribution to the school? Are teachers going out and getting advertisers themselves?

Projects like Goldstar Registry and DonorsChoose.org are taking off, but they are supplemental and not a core source of driving revenue for schools.

It will be interesting to see how this pans out. Our education system needs some attention.

Technorati Tags: advertising, test, school, teacher, education

Posted in advertising | No Comments »

It’s magazine renewal time

Last year I had a post about how painful it was to renew my Fast Company and Inc Magazines, so I thought I would provide an update.

I’ve been getting direct mail and emails about renewing for a while, but just hadn’t had a chance to do it. So, today was the day.

In addition to Fast Company and Inc, I had to renew a paid subscription to imbibe and Entrepreneur and several free technology magazines (Wireless Week, eWeek, etc).

Renewing free technology magazines is always a bit painful because you have to fill out so many questions (like your role and responsibilities, what budgets you have for buying new products, etc).

I’m fine with spending a few minutes to fill out some forms to get free content. Most of the renewal requests clearly outline the renewal URLs (and paper versions) and make it pretty painless. It would be easier if they let you review your existing profile and just make any changes vs. filling out a new subscription form every time, but it’s free, so you just kind of deal with it.

First up for paid subscription renewals was imbibe. Imbibe is a magazine about liquid culture. As they say on their site “From wine, spirits and beer to coffee, tea and everything in between, Imbibe celebrates the world in a glass.”

The renewal process for imbibe was easy: went to the site, entered in my subscription ID, reviewed my account info and paid - all in a couple of minutes. If you didn’t have the direct mail piece, renewing was clearing outlined on the website.

Next up was Fast Company.

The direct mail renewal piece from Fast Company did not have a web URL in it and it wasn’t straightforward on the web site. But, the URL for Fast Company is easy enough to figure out and I made my way to the site.

The first step was to track down the renewal page. Although not as straight forward as it could be, I got to the renewal form from the Manage Subscriptions link and looked up my account from my email address. From there, my account was found and I renewed for 1 more year (2 year still isn’t an option).

So, Fast Company has made a slight improvement to their renewal process, but not much. They still need to work through their renewal channel conflict, which could be easily accomplished by providing a separate URL for renewals in the direct mail piece vs. online.

Next up: Entrepreneur

The process to renew Entrepreneur was basically the same as Fast Company. Go to the main website, click on the Manage Subscriptions link and go from there. It was slightly different, because the manage subscriptions link to me to a subscribe page, and from there I had to click on the renew link. But, when I clicked on the renew link, I got a “This site is under construction” message with an email address and phone number to contact them.

All links besides subscribing (including subscriber services, gift subscriptions, paying for subscriptions, etc) all went to the same “under construction” page. Fail. This was very annoying and I had to call customer service. I was on hold for only about 5 minutes before I was able to process my renewal and then another 3 to process my order, which wasn’t horrible. Since you can subscribe online, I’m not sure what the problems were with renewing.

Next up was Inc. magazine. Although my subscription wasn’t going to expire until April, I went ahead and renewed it now while I was renewing everything else.

There was a renewal link on the home page; so far so good. But, when I clicked on it, it took me to a form to fill out all of my address information (no account look up). There was a link to the online customer service center, so I went that route and looked up my account by email address. From there I could see when my subscription expired, renew and manage other general customer service related issues.

The system found my account by email address and I clicked on renew and the renewal followed the same process as Fast Company (only having to enter a credit card number).

What I still don’t understand is why the larger magazines make the renewal process so hard.

Imbibe, which has the smallest subscriber base, had the best process for renewal and made it easy to renew through the direct mail piece, on the web or by phone.

Inc and Fast Company share the same renewal website (buysub.com), so they should be able to standardize the process across magazines with an account look up for all renewals. They also need to provide a confirmation page and email receipt and business expense purposes.

In summary, I can’t say there has been any improvements in the magazine renewal process and there is still plenty of room for improvement.

Technorati Tags: Fast Company, Inc, Imbibe, magazine, renewal, ecommerce

Posted in advertising, technology | No Comments »

New Pepsi logo: love it or hate it?

There is a story today on Ad Age about Pepsi’s new logo.

For a brand as large as Pepsi, the article raises a valid point: it costs big money to roll out a brand as big as this:

For Coke or Pepsi, when you add up all the trucks, vending machines, stadium signage, point-of-sale materials and more around the world, it could easily tally several hundred million dollars, the expert said.

Brand New, which is a great source of the inside scoop for branding changes (thanks Paul), has posted several times on Pepsi as the changes have rolled out for Pepsi, Mountain Dew (now Mtn Dew):

• Pepsi, New Bottles
• The New Pepsi Challenge: Guess the Smile
• Pepsi, Revealed. Sort of.

There is one comment from Andrew on the Brand New blog that stuck with me:

Something about these logos has lost the longevity that the originals seemed to have.

If you walk through the comments, the general consensus is overwhelmingly negative.

Technorati Tags: Pepsi, soda, logo, drinks, pop

Posted in advertising, copy, creative | 1 Comment »

Second Life Classroom in the classroom at Iowa State University

As an alumni of Iowa State University and Baker University, I try to stay on top of the latest happenings at the schools.

For Iowa State, I receive their College of Business alumni magazine called “Prospectus” and published twice per year. In addition to sending out the magazine in print, they also make the publication available online.

I stumbled upon an article (PDF) about how Iowa State and other universities are using Second Life as an education tool. For those unfamiliar with Second Life, it is an internet-based 3-D virtual world that launched about 5 1/2 years ago.

You don’t have to look much farther than Business Week, Inc. and a whole slew of other magazines to read about them, so I am excited that educational institutions are taking advantage of technology to reach students.

Technorati Tags: Second Life, virtual, world, college, education

Posted in freshish thinking, social, technology | No Comments »

Sushi Train: Escalator Advertising

One of the monthly emails that I enjoy is the Ads of the World monthly winners.

If you haven’t visited Ads of the World before, I highly recommend you checking it out, especially if you are in advertising or marketing. I subscribe to the RSS feed, but there is so much content posted that it’s difficult to keep up. It helps keep your mind fresh when you see things like a creative Milky Way ad at the checkout of a grocery store.

Keep in mind that global cultures vary widely, so be sure to visit the site with an open mind and check your political correctness card at the homepage.

Internationally, pretty much anything goes.

One of the ads that I stumbled upon, which wasn’t an award winner, but I saw it on the site when I was reviewing some of the awards, was an ad that utilizes escalators.

I’ve posted about escalator ads before, as I think they aren’t overused too much yet here in the US.

The railing, which appears to have plates of sushi on it, is avoided by most people until they figure out what is going on, but it definitely gets your attention.

Without further ado, I present the Sushi Train:

Technorati Tags: escalator, advertising, sushi

Posted in advertising, creative, freshish thinking | 1 Comment »

Mobile Phone Technology and Trends Update

A few weeks ago I attended the Fall 2008 CTIA event in San Francisco.
What is the event, you ask? CTIA organizes 2 events per year (Spring and Fall), and they are the largest wireless data events in the internet, wireless and telecommunications industries. It is kind of a who’s who in the industry, with all of the mobile carriers (Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, AT&T, etc), device makers (BlackBerry, Nokia, etc), application providers and everyone involved in the mobile ecosystem.

I like to keep our agency updated with the latest on mobile marketing, text messaging, GPS, etc, and I was scheduled to present to the agency, so the timing worked out well.

Below is my presentation I gave to our agency on mobile, including recent trends, devices and an update on mobile advertising.

Want more details on any specific topic? Drop me a line.

Technorati Tags: mobile, CTIA, technology, phone, mobilemarketing, sms, textmessage, internet

Posted in CTIA, advertising, mobile, technology | No Comments »

CTIA Fall 2008

I’m at the fall 2008 CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment conference in San Francisco this week.

Like many of my colleagues, my blog has taken a backseat to many other things, such as Twitter.

That being said, I will be posting updates via my Twitter account at http://twitter.com/dustinj. Updates will also be posted (through integration) to the Twitter widget on the right of this blog (and any other place I have integration like Facebook, Plaxo Pulse, etc).

Currently, the tracks that I will be attending include the following.

Tuesday

• Mobile Marketing and Advertising Metrics: Establishing Meaningful Benchmarks and KPIs
• Mobile Marketing Ecosystem: What Carriers Want?
• Mobile Marketing Ecosystem: What Brands and Agencies Want?
• Mobile Social Networks

Wednesday

• mCommerce: Device, Application, or Technology?
• Consumers, Mobile Devices, and LBS – Defining the Marketing Zen Moment
• The Common Short Code Potential: Picking Apart the Pieces of the Puzzle
• Accelerating Mobile Use: Upsetting the Mobile Paradigm

I’m hoping to post a summary of the event (probably a presentation via slideshare) in late September in preparation for a presentation I’ll be giving Oct 1.

If you are at the event yourself or want more details about it (I’ve been to the event the last 3 years), give me a shout or leave a comment.

Posted in CTIA, advertising, mobile, technology, twitter | 2 Comments »

Exporting contact list trickery with Outlook and Exchange

One of my goals when networking is to always walk away with contact information, preferably in the form of a business card.

Why, you ask? In this day of social networks, you’d be surprised how easily you can connect to others through a few degrees of separation.

Let me use LinkedIn as an example. I currently have about 480 connections on LinkedIn. Three degrees, though, I’m connect to almost 3 million people.

Although Facebook doesn’t have the same “friend of a friend” contact mechanism, it is easy enough to see who each person is connected to and do some manual footwork to establish a connection.

So as I was working through my contact list that I exported from Outlook (about 1000 contacts in all), I noticed several that several email addresses were listed like the following:

/o=ORGANIZATION_NAME/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=Tester2 EX Tester2 Tester2LastName (Tester2@corp.organization.com)

You might ask why I use Outlook when I run a Mac as my main work laptop? Well, I use Outlook in Parallels when it comes to things like contact management because it seems easier to deal with (at least in my mind) than Entourage, Microsoft’s email and calendar client that we use on the Mac side.

Well, that format above isn’t very helpful when you are trying to import the list into another program, such as Evite, for sending out invitations to a party.

After a bit of searching, I stumbled upon the solution from a site in Australia with a blog entry title of Outlook Change Email Address Type.

The problem is due to the fact that we use Microsoft Exchange Server for our email and calendar management, and any internal email address it stores in a format that is easier for the server to read. This also has to do with the way that I added the contact.

In order to fix this and save the actual email address and not the MS Exchange Server information as part of the contact, you have to modify the contact and trick it into thinking it is a stand alone contact and not connected to the mail server.

The hack to change Email Address Type is below. Is it a hassle to fix? Definitely, as I had about 100 contacts that I had to correct, but maintaining the contact information is an important component of maintaining an active social network. I recommend exporting your contacts as a CSV format (comma delimited) and uploading them to sites like LinkedIn at least once a quarter.

LinkedIn and others due have plugins for Outlook that allow you to sync your data much easier, but I prefer the old school method, because it also forces me to cleanup my contacts.

1. Select the contact’s details.
2. In the General tab, replace the existing the e-mail address with a string starting with smtp:. For example, replace a.b@mail.x.com with smtp:a.b@mail.x.com. Note: you have to type in the new dummy address; if you use a suggestion from Outlook, the address type does not change.
3. Select the Properties context menu item of the dummy e-mail address. Outlook should display the E-mail Properties dialog. Note that the E-mail type: field now has a value of SMTP.
4. In this dialog, remove the smtp: prefix from the e-mail address.
5. Press the OK button and the dialog should close.
6. Initially, the Contact’s e-mail address does not seem to have changed. If you click on the Display As: field, Outlook corrects the e-mail address.
7. Delete the string in the Display As: field and press Enter. Outlook should refresh the Display As: field.
8. Save the updated contact.

Technorati Tags: LinkedIn, Outlook, Exchange, contact, export, email

Posted in Barkley, event, technology | 2 Comments »

Home Depot gets props for recycling compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs)

A few years ago, I started replacing my standard light bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs. Note: Keep in mind that when you start replacing bulbs that there are a few different size bulbs, as well as different levels of true white light (soft white vs. day light). Also, only a few support the dimming option, so if they are on a dimmer, make sure you get the right kind.

I wrote about the European incandescent-light-bulb-ban about a year ago.

According to ENERGY STAR:

If you have ever had to recycle the bulbs, you know how much of a hassle it can be. Since the bulbs have mercury in them, I hope that you don’t just throw them in the trash. I’ve been stockpiling the bulbs and waiting for a good time to recycle them and now is as good of a time as any, as we’re moving houses and need to move the bulbs.

According to Wikipedia (although no source is cited), only about 3% of CFL bulbs are recycled or disposed of properly.

The NY Times recently ran an article about Home Depot offering compact fluorescent bulb recycling, as the article states, “creating the nation’s most widespread recycling program for the bulbs.”

The article also mentions that 75 percent of the nation’s homes are within 10 miles of a Home Depot. With Home Depot stepping up to the plate, I’m hoping that others follow, such as Lowes. Menards (at least in MN) also offers free CFL recycling. Several other hardware stores also offer bulb recycling. Check with your local store for participation.

The EPA has a page on recycling the bulbs as well.

I broke a CF bulb a few weeks ago and was happy to find out that the amount of mercury in a CFL is relatively small.

But if you do break a bulb, the EPA also has lists some directions to follow. The key item to remember is to leave the area for at least 15 minutes (and research via Google what to do next).

Technorati Tags: recycle, compact fluorescent light bulb, CFL, Home Depot, green

Posted in business, environment, freshish thinking | 1 Comment »

Should mobile device use while driving be illegal?

I was catching up on my stack of magazines recently and ran across the April issue of Wired, and one of the articles was titled: A State-By-State Look at Where Cell Phones and Driving Don’t Mix.

The article was about the different government regulations that are being put in place for mobile phone use while driving:

Gabbing while crossing state lines can get you busted. By July, six states will ban the use of mobile handsets while driving, two will have explicit no-texting laws, and six will all but forbid drivers younger than 18 from touching their phones. Although research shows that hands-free devices do little to reduce crashes caused by distracted cell users, a Bluetooth headset can at least save you from hefty fines and free up a hand for still-legal munching and manicuring (not yet strictly prohibited).

So here is why I think this is ridiculous.

You can’t tell me that texting is any more dangerous than fooling with an iPod, changing the radio station, changing the temperature, etc. Every day on my way to work, I see plenty of people putting on makeup, searching their glove box, eating or carrying on a myriad of other random tasks.

Is texting while driving or messing around with email on your BlackBerry, iPhone or any other mobile device a bad idea? Yes, of course.

Should it be illegal? I think that’s a different question.

I think smoking in a car, especially with kids in the back, is a really bad idea, but I don’t see any laws on the docket for that.

According to one article, over a million people have been ticketed in New York since they passed a total ban on using hand-held devices in 2001.

Experts estimate that as many as 80 percent of motor vehicle crashes and 65 percent of near crashes have driver inattention as a contributing cause.

I talked to an attorney friend of mine about the subject and he mentioned that several states already have distracted driving laws in place, so I did a bit of research.

AAA put together a Microsoft Word document that outlines which states have Distracted Driving laws.

The problem with distracted driving laws, as I see them, is that they are open to interpretation. I don’t think that a distracted driving ticket would stand up in court, because I think it would be pretty tough for a police officer to prove unless it was video taped.

I did find this commentary about New Hampshire’s laws humorous, but it is a bit dated, with the article from 2005. Updates may have been made since then.

New Hampshire is the only state that doesn’t require adult motorists to wear seat belts, but it does ticket drivers for eating, drinking, talking on a cell phone or fussing with their makeup while behind the wheel.

The state whose motto is “Live Free or Die” passed the nation’s first law against distracted driving in 2001. Since then, every state has looked at ways to keep drivers’ minds on the road, but lawmakers in most states are choosing to focus more narrowly on restricting cell phone use while driving.

I agree with Jonathan Adkins of the Governors Highway Safety Association, “If you’re going to have a law, it should cover all distractions.”

So, in summary, I’m not so much against distracted driving laws, although I think that they would be difficult to uphold, but I’m not in favor of singling out texting and mobile phone use as the only activity to be prohibited.

I’d like to see an updated version of the 2003 study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety that listed the top distractions. I listed the chart from the document below. Although I’m sure that mobile use has increased and new items will be added (like watching TV), it still hits home that other distractions are equally as important.

The existing data suggest that cell phones are a factor in a tiny fraction of crashes. A 2003 report by NCSL said that crash data from seven states showed that cell phones were a factor in less than 1 percent of accidents.

What about the other 99%? Did lawmakers miss the boat?

Technorati Tags: mobile, texting, sms, legal, law, , distracted driving

Posted in government, mobile, technology | No Comments »