Friday Roundup 30th May 2008

And the standout advert of the week goes to....

H O N D A

If someone suggested to you that a great way to promote your brand was to have skydivers spell it out as they plummetted to Earth, you might think they were a little mad, although I guess H O N D A is easier than M I T S U B I S H I! But if they then said let's broadcast it live from another country... well that's a standout ad.

Watch the video courtesy of a post by Ben Matthews.

Best regards,

Andrew and the MarCom Professional team.

10 Landing Page Copywriting Tips to Push Readers All the Way to the Checkout

by Matt Ambrose of The Copywriter's Crucible

Now, whilst I might stand on my soap box every week preaching on the need to engage prospects with content of value, the fact is that persuasively written landing pages are potent hooks for reeling in sales.

A finely tuned page will catch visitors when they land, push them through your benefits pitch, testimonials and success stories and then park them safely at the checkout till. Landing pages need to keep hold of a reader’s attention, have no distractions and a pitch so convincing that they’ll be falling over themselves to sign up or buy. More...

Honda's 'Live' Advert

by Ben Matthews of Pudding Relations

From the Jai and Wal blog:

"Yesterday evening at 8.10pm Honda and Channel4 broad casted a live advert. We understand it's not the first live commercial in TV history, but it's bloody great. It fits very well in the rest of the Honda Accord campaign Difficult is Worth Doing. The 'real' advert, also about skydiving formations, will break this Sunday. We're curious what W+K has up their sleeves."Look out for the camera man's special message: More...

Impatience rules the day online

by Graham Jones of Internet Psychology

Web users are becoming increasingly impatient, according to the web usability expert Jakob Nielsen. Apparently, we spend much less time waiting for pages to load and to find out what they are about. If it's not an "instant" message, we move on.

Well, apart from the fact that Jakob Nielsen's own web site is, how do I put this politely, unusable and completely non "instant" in terms of what it is about, he does have a point. More than ever before, people want to know "what is this web page about?". More...

The future of PR: Should your CEO blog?

by David Meerman Scott of David Meerman Scott

Several weeks ago I led a panel discussion at the The 2008 Milken Institute Global Conference. The Milken event "brought together some of the most extraordinary people in the world - from scientists, business executives and philanthropists to journalists, academics and Nobel laureates - for three days of discussions on how to solve some of our most pressing social, political and economic challenges."

My panel was called The Changing Rules of PR and Corporate Influence in the Digital Age and included the following panelists: More...

Ranking Mobile Advertising Forms

by si crowhurst of We Love Mobile

Trawling through my reading pile this weekend (it was Bank Holiday in the UK), I happened upon a free M-Metrics white paper that was sponsored by a shortcode (or common short code) provider in the US. It is essentially a plug for using shortcodes and puts forward a strong case as to why advertisers should choose this type of mobile marketing over others. It was produced in late 2007, but I think the arguements are still very relevant. You could read the whole report here, but actually its pretty well summarised in the table above. More...

Grade your press release (for free!)

by David Meerman Scott of David Meerman Scott

HubSpot's Press Release Grader is a free application that evaluates your press release and provides a "marketing effectiveness score". The score is based on the language and content of the release, plus advanced factors from Internet marketing experts at HubSpot such as links and search engine optimization characteristics.

Wow. This is such an awesome tool. You’re hearing about it here first, but my guess is that this will become a popular little application in PR circles.

Press Release Grader is totally free. More...

Don’t Ask the PM about Social Media

by Daljit Bhurji of Daljit Bhurji

So I was asked by PR Week on Monday for my views on Gordon Brown’s Ask the PM initiative on YouTube. This was the latest foray into the online world by Downing Street, following its recent embrace of Twitter. My assessment that Ask the PM “smacks of gimmickry and desperation” led the article and there was a clear consensus from other industry commentators, that this project was a typical case of ‘too little, too late’.

I had a couple of interesting conversations on Friday in response to the piece. More...

The B2B Social Web - my interview with the Ecommerce Times

by Philip Sheldrake of Racepoint Group UK

The B2B Social Web has arrived and it's not going to go away.

I was interviewed recently about the Social Web for a series of articles for Ecommerce Times, and here's the first half of our conversation...

1) What is THE most significant issue regarding the appearance of Web phenomena like social professional networks?

If being an expert or leader in your market is defined as others' regard for your insight, skills or services, then you must participate in the networks where this expertise is being shared, and where the people you want to influence are going to help shape their viewpoint. More...