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The Sitewire Expert Series is honored to welcome Charlene Li, co-author of national bestseller Groundswell to Tempe on September 18th, 2008.Ever heard of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube or Google?  We’re betting you have.  But do you know - really know - how everyday consumers are using the Internet and social media to make buying decisions? Do you truly understand the immense impact social media can have on a brand or bottom line?

Social technology has changed the Internet as we know it, and it will continue to change each and everyday. Are you on board?

Whether you are part of the groundswell or are trying to get your foot in the door, you can’t miss this event.

When: Thursday, September 18, 2008
8:30 - 11am

Where: Tempe Center for the Arts
Lakeside Room
700 W Rio Salado Pkwy
Tempe, AZ 85281

Event Cost: $60

Register Today! 

I’m sure there’ve been a few times in your life when someone has told you to “think outside the box.” And I know there’ve been a few times that Taco Bell has told you to “think outside the bun.” But what about “think outside the billboard?”

It seems like companies are doing just that.

$7.3 billion was spent on outdoor advertising last year, a 7% raise from 2006. 16% of that was used for “alternative advertising,” i.e. not billboards, bus shelters, etc. And it seems to have been put to good use.

Kraft Foods stuck a sticker of a large Oreo cookie onto the side of a glass elevator in Manhattan Mall; as the elevator descended, the Oreo “dunked” into a sticker of a glass of milk. The ad was only there for a day, but the YouTube video has been viewed over 100,000 times! Milk’s favorite cookie, indeed!

Right Guard deodorant sewed video screens playing Right Guard commercials into the arm-pits of a team of people crowded in subways across London. Yes, “pit-vertising” was about as awkward as the structure of the previous sentence.

A Chevrolet ad in the U.K. was covered with pennies…and quickly stripped of said pennies within 30 minutes. I’m sure there’s a witty joke here about the European economy, but it’s lost on me.

A really big ad project was just completed outside the Denver International Airport. Papa John’s Pizza made a massive, crop circle-esque display, advertising their new whole-wheat crust pizza. Appropriately, it is located in a wheat field.

So are these crazy advertising gimmicks a success? Well, I’m writing about them, and you’re reading about them so…

For a few more examples, read the complete article from “The New York Times” here.

P.S. I just had to add this picture of a “Kill Bill” ad…this ad takes the “think outside the billboard” challenge to a whole new level!

For many companies, landing big clients is the key to transforming sales. Whale Hunting, a management strategy for company growth, has become a hot topic as of late.

As an advocate for business mentorship and growth in the Phoenix community, Sitewire’s Margie Traylor and Bret Giles are excited to welcome the author of Whale Hunters. On September 10^th, Sitewire and Dr. Barbara Weaver Smith will present the Whale Hunting Seminar.

Online registration is available.

A PR Nightmare Turned Into Valuable Buzz Marketing

While shooting a TV commercial for The Price Is Right video game last week, an executive’s worst nightmare happened: accidentally losing $30,000. One of the TV spots to promote the new video game included the actual video case falling down the infamous “Plinko” board into the $10,000 slot. In order to save time for shooting, the Plinko game board was rigged. Stage workers at the game show mistakenly took the same game and used it for play during that day’s game show taping, and one lucky contestant starting playing her Plinko chips. By the time producers realized what had happened, the contestant had won $30,000. The show stopped rolling tape and producers explained the mishap to the poor contestant.

Despite the mistake, CBS executives decided to give the contestant her $30,000 price money and let her play again so they could re-shoot the segment. She won $33,000 when all was said and done. What most businesses woud think was a disaster, actually turned into some valuable buzz marketing for The Price Is Right, CBS, and ThePriceIsRightVideoGame.com.

The story was quickly picked up by TMZ.com (http://www.tmz.com/2008/07/29/the-price-is-wrong/) and was also fed to AOL.com, showing up in front of thousands of viewers. This story could have sparked company wide chaos with executives fearing that people would think all The Price Is Right games are rigged. But instead, they kept their cool, and let the media take its course. Within one day of the mishap being published online, site traffic to www.ThePriceIsRightVideoGame.com spiked, and entries to their sweepstakes started to increase dramatically. Without a huge marketing push, users came to the site all on their own to check out the video game before its September 2008 release.

So what most business owners would deem a PR nightmare and a large financial loss, turned into a marketer’s dream; valuable buzz marketing leading to increased site traffic and conversions. So, was the $30,000 price tag worth it? In this case, we think the “the price is right”.

The news story ended up on AOL’s homepage as breaking news, but quickly spread into positive buzz marketing.

The Price is Right video game is expected to be released in September 2008. To enter the online sweepstakes, visit www.ThePriceIsRightVideoGame.com

Right after I posted The New Search Engine on The Block (Jun 28, 2008) we had our weekly media meeting and were instantly side tracked into a debate over which search engine is the best. Andrew, our media director, took control and suggested we conduct a completely scientific and unbiased poll to decide the winner – in other words we went around the room and voted. We compared Google, Yahoo!, MSN (Live), Ask, Cuil, Mahalo and Snap using a gamut of difficult and exhaustive tests – namely two keyword searches.

The first test was searching for a generic term: “Jeans.” We did the same search in each engine and analyzed the results. We judged on the way it looked – most of us like when there are pictures of the site or product. We also talked about how relevant the results were. eBay and brand name listings were good, random pictures of people in jeans, not as good. The next search was for a long tail phrase – some of the guys came up with “501 acid wash jeans.”(Personally I think all this talk about OC Style Week is starting to rub off on them.) Anyways, then we judged the results on the same things – this time we noticed if there were listings that lead to a page where that product could actually be purchased, such as Google’s shopping results.

After all this testing we can say with 100% certainty that 25% of Sitewire feels that the search engines are ranked as follows:

7. Snap – it’s a really fun engine, we like how you can roll over results and see the page, even bookmark it. But some of the results weren’t that relevant and that’s the real point of a search engine right?

6. Live – It’s pretty plain, there aren’t any exciting features or cool additions and the results aren’t nearly as relevant as some of the other major league engines

5. Yahoo! – I think this engine fell so far down the list because we’re just so used to it. It doesn’t have anything attention grabbing and it’s also not the best results. We did like the drop down menu of additional search ideas but most of the engines are doing that now too.

4. Ask – everyone liked that you could roll over the site and see a picture, as well as see major stats for the site. This might be because we’re all such internet media geeks but seeing how many visitors a site got without having to do any research won Ask some major points.

3. Mahalo – This site is actually really cool. It lets users create custom pages for searches with top 10 pages, buying guides, popular brands, retailers, bargains…the list goes on! And that was a little annoying, you could scroll for a while through all this content and it seemed a little busy on the page. But another great feature is that you can click through tabs on the site and see results for all the other major search engines as well as Wikipedia, Del.icio.us and Flickr.

2. Cuil – maybe just because it’s new but we were all pretty excited about this engine. The layout is really nice and the categories and tabs make it easy to narrow your search. The results are pretty relevant and the pictures are right there besides the listing. A few more technology updates and this could become the next big thing.

1. Google – Big surprise. But we all still swear by the master of all search engines. Google’s shopping results were right on every time, it had relevant results and even corrects our spelling when we mess up. With as much time as we spend using it, talking about it, optimizing for it and managing campaigns in it – it’s almost like an old friend. Or ok, maybe not, but it’s still our favorite engine.

So there you have it. Results don’t get more conclusive than that.