Top (& Bottom) Tens: Names, Industries

Top 10 Best and Worst Internet Company Names of the Decade

Like the internet phenoms they trumpeted, Internet company names of the last decade have been, by turns, wildly inventive, deeply troubled, breathtakingly silly, serviceable (if dull)—and, occasionally, brilliant. Having christened their share of Internet phenoms, the good folks at Catchword decided to looked back to identify the 10 biggest dot-com naming trends—and their best and worst examples.

Top 10 Growing and Shrinking US Industries

A report this month from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) predicts that department stores, newspaper publishing and the postal service are among the top 10 industries in the US headed for extinction, while management, scientific and technical consulting, employment services, full-service restaurants and a range of healthcare-related service industries will experience the most wage and salary employment growth by 2018.

Merry Christmas!

Here’s my (second) favourite Christmas story …

“One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six…”

Future: Magazines, Agencies

The future of Magazines

Berg have been working with Bonnier R&D exploring the future of digital magazines, and creating Mag+. Bonnier publish Popular Science and many other titles.

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

The Future of Agencies

Agencies have played such a crucial role in helping companies market their products and services for more than a century. Names like McCann Erickson, Young & Rubicam, J. Walter Thompson, Ogilvy, and Saatchi & Saatchi (among others) are practically household names. There’s even a massively popular and critically acclaimed television show capturing life in the golden age of legendary agencies on Madison Avenue. Yet the agency model was built during a time when there were only a handful of channels in which they could push one way messages en masse. Does that model still work in a time when nearly a quarter of online US adults now create content online?

Exploring the Ruins of Friendster

Exploring The Ruins Of Friendster
A recent Onion spoof highlights a fictional discovery of the ruins of the “Friendster Civilization.” An “Internet anthropologist” is seen describing a once-vibrant culture that seems to have vanished overnight. It’s a funny but interesting way to examine how we represent ourselves, and how future generations may see us (if having to decipher our culture based on social media profiles).

Top 10s

10 Rules for Increasing Community Engagement

Getting people to interact with others and upload content to a community-driven site enough may sound easy, but engagement doesn’t happen automatically. It takes time and work, and much of the right formula is deduced through trial and error. Here are 10 tips for increasing user engagement that work for news community web sites, but can apply to all types of online user-engagement communities.

YouTube Top 10 Lists

For the first time YouTube are sharing theri official Most Watched lists and some of the fastest-rising search terms on YouTube. “Some moments were big (President Obama’s inauguration), some small (a Minnesota wedding party erupts into dance), some expected (“New Moon”), some surprising (Susan Boyle) — but all of them inspired, entertained and connected millions of people around the world via YouTube.”

Social Media: Saatchi’s Screw Up

I read in mUmBRELLA about “How Saatchi & Saatchi’s Toyota social media disaster unfolded”…

“Toyota’s now disastrous foray into social media offers a demonstration of what skills an agency needs to play in that space. It’s now obvious that PR expertise is not an optional extra that ad agencies having a bit of a dabble in social media can do without. Although advertising has always had the potential to be controversial, for social media that possibility grows exponentially and that risk needs to be controlled. And as Saatchi & Saatchi has demonstrated, it now goes without saying that you actually need to understand social media before you start. You can’t start learning on the client’s time.”

I won’t bore you with the details, as the above post is very detailed … and this graphic is very telling …

There have been a few comments flying around to the effect that “any publicity is good publicity” – a notion I reject. Toyota doesn’t have an awareness problem … but it may have a perception problem. Something like this can only have a negative impact on the latter.

In mitigation, at least Australia is a small-ish territory (Pop. 22MM) , and I don’t think many of Toyota’s prospects will have been exposed to this (in Australia or elsewhere) … except us social media nerds that is …

Virtue v Vice

It seems my old mate Spencer Baim is kickin’ ass down at Virtue (the company he founded with Vice Magazine). The idea was to create a company that would add credible Vice-like mojo to brands and activate through Vice’s various media and experience channels. I just came across this article about “How Vice, and Virtue, Are Helping to Sell Brands” – seems they have picked up an AoR assignment …!

“Starting in January 2010, Virtue will serve as the agency of record for Palladium’s global creative and media accounts as the boot expands its relaunch campaign into countries like the U.K., Germany, Holland, Hong Kong, Japan, the Phillippines and Taiwan in the coming months, all markets where Vice has a presence.”

Recession: Unbranded Couch-Potatoism …

Consumers Defect From Iconic Brands

Consumers are defecting from iconic CPG brands as they try to save money by purchasing less-expensive store and private-label brands. While this trend is not new, it has become more pervasive since the economic downturn started in December 2007, per eMarketer. In fact, 59 percent of U.S. consumers reported having switched to store brand food and household products over the past six months, according to a May 2009 study by ICOM.

Recession Intensifies ‘Couch Potatoism’ as TV, Internet Converge
Some 26% more Americans chose TV as their favorite type of media than they did last year, according to a new study by Deloitte, which lends credence to the theory that the recession has intensified America’s love for television. The study revealed that more than 70% of respondents ranked TV among their top-three favorite media activities; 34% placed it at the top of the list. TV also snared more than double the numbers of the second most popular media choice, the internet, which came in at 14%, according to MediaBuyerPlanner.

Digital Out Of Home: Delta and Digitas

Delta’s DOOH Campaign Targets New York Frequent, Int’l Flyers

A digital out-of-home campaign aimed at increasing awareness of Delta Airline’s flight schedule in the New York City area accomplished its task – by a measure of more than 28%. From February to mid June, the airline and its ad agency, Digitas, ran a campaign using both DOOH and traditional media. Edison Research, which surveyed consumers prior to the launch and during it, also found that business travelers’ perception of Delta’s international schedule increased by 26% and overall awareness by 15% (via Digital Sign Today).

How Delta Microtargets Business Travelers
When Delta Airlines wanted to reach business travelers just in the New York area last spring, it decided to test the idea of microtargeting with place-based media. So it teamed up with out-of-home vertical SeeSaw Networks to create multiple 15-second spots customized to a wide array of venues across five different digital out-of-home vendors.

Agency of the Decade: CP+B

I confess when I read AdWeek‘s announcement about Agency of the Decade, I had something of a “WTF?” moment. Goodby? Thankfully sanity prevailed in their “People’s choice” vote, and CP+B romped home. AdAge’s Agencies of the Decade feature also gave it to Crispin. I think it’s pretty unarguable.