Gypsy Bandito

Marketing in a Recession

CT Moore — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 19:04:55 +0000

I’ve been blogging about the recession in a few places lately, and I’ve been focusing on how there opportunities in appealing to consumers looking for discounts. The undertone to that is that bean-counting is overtaking lifestyle considerations in consumers’ buying decisions.

Well, the marketing counterpart to lifestyle is branding, so if marketers want to keep their jobs, they’re going to have to start thinking about ROI a whole lot more. Incidentally, Gary Vaynerchuk beat me to the punch. Here’s a clip of him explaining which marketers are going to lose out (hat tip Pat Phelan).

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Sequel Nokia E71 Review

CT Moore — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:14:06 +0000

So today I send back my Nokia E71. Since my last review, it’s grown on me. I’m slow to adapt to new technology that way. I’m going to miss this funky little mobile device.

iPhone Version

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Branding vs Search

CT Moore — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:18:35 +0000

So Chris Brogan just finished reading Branding is for Cattle, and he highlighted couple of points made by the author:

The first was that money spent on marketing should be money spent on shifting a buyer’s behavior closer towards buying. […]

[and] marketing strategies that don’t include a heavy element of search won’t work well for us.

Search engine marketing is so powerfully, basically, because it doesn’t just complement consumers’ behavior, it targets it. After all, to search for a certain kind of product offer is, itself, a certain kind behavior, and a very targeted one at that because the consumer is showing an active interest in that range of products.

This is why a confluence of SEO and PPC is so powerful (and necessary) to any successful marketing campaign: because they help you reach out to consumers who are already calling out to you. With search and social media giving consumers as much prerogative as they have, so-called “conventional” branding strategies start to look like cerebral spam. And that reminds me of this video I found on the American Apparel blog over year ago.

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Mobile Communities: Web 3.0

CT Moore — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 22:28:52 +0000

The mobile web is going to look nothing like the web that we use today. I mean, sure, there’ll still be “mobile sites” for users who are searching unfamiliar information, but the bulk of the mobile web will be community based.

Social media changed the web by letting users go beyond consuming content. It let them produce it, interact with it, and build communities around it. As those users go mobile, those communities are going to evolve. They’re going to become more tangible, and transcend cyber-space into the real world.

We’re going to take our communities with us everywhere we go. Our actual location will define who we interact with and the content we consume. (more…)

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Akoha: Austin Hill Interview

CT Moore — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:37:07 +0000

I caught up with Austin Hill, one of the founders of Akoha, at the last Podcamp Montreal. We sat down to chat, and Austin told me how Akoha is a web-based game with reality-based play (very cool), and how he hopes it will make the world a better place by changing the way people think about acts of kindness. In another part of our conversation, Austin discusses Akoha’s revenue model.

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Loren Feldman: Schmuck, Genius, Mensch

CT Moore — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:10:57 +0000

Okay, so some of you know who he is, some of you don’t, and a lot more of you (few of which are reading this, granted) couldn’t give a shit either way. But Loren Feldman is a talented guy.

His talents, mind you, don’t exactly lie on the surface. To those of us who know who he is, Loren is firstly, a video blogger; secondly, a tech commenter; and thirdly, a comedian. Below the surface, however, he’s part schmuck, part genius, and part mensch. (more…)

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Podcamp Montreal Montage

CT Moore — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 17:19:42 +0000

So last weekend marked the first ever Podcamp Montreal. It was f**king awesome, and attracted the likes of Wanker Girl, Eden Spodek, Laurent Lasalle, and many, many more. The real fun, though, was on the first night when I dragged my roommate and a couple of non-geeks to the opener. Here’s an account of that opener — from what I’ve been able to piece together from the hazy bits in my memory, that is…

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Michelle Sullivan is Podcamp Montreal

CT Moore — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 16:27:04 +0000

So at last week’s (first ever), I found out that Michelle Sullivan not only played a role in organizing Podcamp Montreal, but a kind of important one. Because Michelle didn’t get enough credit where it was due, we thought we’d add a multi-media-memo to the record and clear things up for once and all (even if Julien Smith tried to steal the spotlight). In any case, let it be know that Michelle was part an parcel of this magnificent event, and may her client (present and future) forgive her for trusting a video blogger with footage of her while her guard was down.

iPhone Version

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Product Placement Paradox

CT Moore — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:37:20 +0000

I came across this in the archives of Chris Brogan’s blog. Even though I share Lynch’s frustration, I feel that product placement is kind of paradoxical (at least for my generation): we’re more likely to notice if an actor/character is consuming a non-branded product

For example, I’ll notice it if Brad Pitt is drinking Acme Cola; but if he’s drinking Coca Cola, my brain will tune it out altogether (or will it?).

Where product placement becomes problematic is when superfluous shots are set up not only to get the product in there, but to feature them. That’s when marketing starts circumscribing art instead of vice versa.

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My Workshop at Nokia Open Lab in Helsinki

CT Moore — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:10:25 +0000

Because I’m into me, myself, and I, here’s me opening up a workshop on social media and the mobile web in a business setting at Nokia Open Lab 2008. Since leaving Helsinki, I’ve been thinking a lot about social media and the mobile web, and it might just circumscribe a lot of what I produce in the near future, but we’ll see how much time I have to post in the coming weeks. Also, if you’re interested in what some of the workshop groups concluded, here are some links: Part II - Part III - Part IV

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