SEO Review

How To Think About Webmedia

We’ve all seen Web video campaigns and television commercials that we actually enjoyed watching, not once, but over and over again. Whether it’s the Mac Versus PC ads or the thoroughly entertaining Visa Pizza Twirling Commercial, great campaigns are as memorable as great movies or television shows. When commercial presentations meet that standard, they transcend mere commercial status, and reach the level of Experiences.

Killer Campaigns is all about marketing campaigns that are memorable experiences, but why is that important; why should you care? Well if you want to grow your business, create, establish, or enhance a brand, or just plain sell more stuff on the Web, then you have to learn how to turn “advertising into content and content into an experience.”

What We’ll Show You

Each segment will feature an example of what we consider a great campaign that achieves memorable experience status. It may be a television commercial, a YouTube video, or even a video microsite, but whatever form it takes it will be worth watching, or more to the point, worth experiencing.

But just watching excellent advertising is not enough to understand why and how it works. You have to understand the technique used, and why it is effective. In some cases we may even show you failed examples of the same technique used, and explain why one campaign worked and one didn’t.

Our Perspective

We start with a particular point-of-view. You may agree with it or you may not, but by the time you’ve been through several segments of The Killer Campaign series you will at least understand how to think about great marketing concepts, and you will watch webmedia from a whole new frame-of-reference, and with a more critical eye.

Our perspective is deceivingly simple: we create marketing communication, that’s video campaigns, websites, and video microsites based on the notion that Web traffic is an audience, not prospects, clients, or potential suckers, but an audience.

The Technique and Why It Worked

The analysis we use to evaluate the effectiveness of these techniques is based on the preceding perspective of treating website traffic like an audience. Why you may ask don’t we do what everybody else does, and look at the numbers? And the answer is simple: numbers lie. Numbers themselves don’t tell you the whole story.

An effective campaign may fail because of poor implementation or faulty targeting, or any number of other reasons that don’t speak to the creation and effectiveness of the media itself. After all, one of the greatest commercials ever made, the introduction of the Macintosh computer, hardly ever got shown because certain members of the board of directors got cold feet.

Killer Campaigns: Words & Music

As powerful and important as visual communication is, without finely crafted, supportive words and music, the visuals will fall flat; they will lack the emotional impact that connects you the advertiser, with them, the audience.

The Visa Pizza Twirler Commercial with the Morgan Freeman voice-over is a tour-de-force of commercial communication. Take a look and listen:

Visa Pizza Twirler Video with Sound

But what would this presentation be like without words and music? Here’s a video of the filming of the pizza-tossing scene without any voice-over or music. The pizza-chef is brilliant but without the words and music it’s merely a pleasant distraction without emotional or commercial relevance.

Visa Pizza Twirler Video – No Words and Music

The Web and television are both multimedia communication venues that rely on visual impact and sound design combined with the element of performance, but at least one major difference makes commercial presentation on the Web a more difficult challenge: television watching is a passive exercise, while Web surfing is a proactive activity. You’ll suffer through bad television commercials to watch your favorite program but on the Web, people won’t tolerate it. That said, there are some great commercials that do get it right.

HTC You Campaign

The HTC You Campaign hits the proverbial marketing nail right on the head. This is a company that communicates the right message in the right way, because the message is not about the phone, it’s about what you need in a phone. Just listen to the tag line: “you don’t need to get a phone, you need a phone that gets you, and you, and you, and we are HTC.”

This is a presentation that transcends commercial status. At the heart of the video are words and music that form a hypnotizing poetic social commentary on our over-stimulated hectic lives, and it provides a human solution, not a technical one. The concept is brilliant: this is not a product, it’s a life enabler, and who couldn’t use one of those. There is no discussion of features or price. It’s not even about the phone; it’s about making life easier for you, and it does it with a brilliant script and a hypnotic musical score.

HTC You Campaign Video

Conclusion

In order for a commercial, a website, or a webmedia campaign to attain the level of an effective content experience, it must connect with an audience on an emotional level, the level at which decisions are made, and actions approved.

The HTC You Campaign illustrates how poetic words, delivered in an inspiring voice-over, supported by a hypnotic musical score, with associated images, turn advertising into content and content into an experience.

Does your website presentation or webmedia marketing strike this kind of cord with your audience, or are you still trying to win the hearts and minds of your audience with just another feature or price adjustment?

The Web is a different kind of communication venue. The old broadcast scenario of repeat, repeat, repeat, until they say your brand name in their sleep, just won’t work on the Web. You may only get one shot at any individual audience member, don’t screw it up.

About The Author

Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design and marketing firm that specializes in Web-video Marketing Campaigns and Video Websites. Visit www.mrpwebmedia.com, www.136words.com, and www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

“My mechanic told me, ‘He couldn’t repair my brakes, so he made my horn louder.’” – Comedian, Steven Wright

We all want our websites to be more effective, and if you’re like most business people you are constantly searching the Web for anything that will help. What you find is a cabal of experts armed with statistics, analysis, charts and graphs all pointing to how they can get you high-up on the search engines and drive more traffíc to your site. The problem is that like Steven Wright’s mechanic these guys are adjusting your horn when it’s your brakes that need fixing.

There is little point in attracting more visitors to your site if your site has little of interest to say. Even if your site is jammed packed with useful products, services and solutions if it doesn’t connect with your audience, they won’t ever invest the time necessary for you to make your case.

When websites fail it’s most often because they do not function effectively as your primary communication tool. The Web is overcrowded with options and unless you’re prepared to deliver a compelling differentiating presentation you will be quickly dismissed as irrelevant. Let’s face it; business is tough, probably tougher than it’s ever been before.

Something is Missing

You’ve done all the technical tweaks and responded to all the research and analytics. You’re blogging, micro-blogging, social networking, and search optimizing, but still something is not quite right, something is missing. What’s the missing ingredient? You know it’s out there, but you can’t for the life of you figure out what it is.

You know the Web offers the potential to access new markets, find new customers, and reach new heights, but with all that potential, the results always seem just out of reach. If research and analytics were the answer you’d already be rich. Of course it was an over-reliance on research that brought us the Edsel, New Coke, and that wonderful Wall Street goody called Derivatives, one of the greatest investment boondoggles of our time.

There is something artificially comforting about putting your faith in seemingly logical yet unfathomable solutions based on indecipherable scientific modeling and over-hyped research analysis, all brought to you by computer scientists and mathematicians who haven’t ever run a marketing department or launched a new product or business.

Business leaders have adopted the attitude that, “It must be right, because I sure as heck don’t understand it.” And when it all goes wrong, or results are anemic, well, “What are you going to do? It’s not my fault, it all looked good on paper.” Ad agencies and Wall Street have been getting away with this kind of bunkum for decades, and look at the mess they’ve made of things.

What’s It All About, Alfie?

Business success is all about your ability to engage your audience with a message that compels them to action. Simply put, your business relies on your ability to communicate. Eureka!

And your website is the best communication vehicle you have. The question is how do you use your website to communicate your marketing message in the most engaging, compelling, and memorable manner? What is the missing ingredient that will turn your scientifically sterile online cookie-cutter presentation into something that cuts through the massive sameness of Internet clutter, and makes a statement that your audience will respond to?

Finding Your Emotional and Psychological Value Proposition

One of the hardest things for tough-minded business people to accept is that sales and marketing success is based on the subconscious emotional and psychological appeal of a brand. That’s the reason, reliance on feature selling rarely works, and only tends to commoditize a product or service – the guy with the most bells and whistles for the least amount of money wins, and why would you want to play that game?

Even the most casual market observer must recognize that all leading brands have one thing in common, no matter what they sell: the promise of their brand is based on a concept that is established through an emotional or psychological appeal. Apple is about thinking and acting creatively without the worry of technical issues; Starbucks is about reconnecting to the original coffee break ideal of a relaxing oasis away from the hustle bustle of everyday life; and Ikea is about stylish living on a budget. Each concept appeals to the deep-seated desires of the targeted audience. It is this singular concept that makes each of these companies special and different from their competition; it is the message that all their marketing, advertising, and promotion is based upon, and it is the true value they provide their audience that attracts interest, holds attention, and delivers promise.

Implementing Your Emotional and Psychological Value Proposition

In order to implement a company’s emotional and psychological value proposition, we use a process called the ConceptCreator. It starts with various sales’ points that need to be covered. Based on the supplied information, we develop a focused marketing concept using the Law of Dissatisfaction that enables us to discover the experiential human subtext of why people will want what you sell. The presentation concept is boiled-down to a movie-style logline that states the brand story to be presented in the Web Video campaign.

How Much Is A Concept Worth?

“Wait a minute – did he say a movie-style logline? That sure doesn’t sound business-like, and I haven’t heard any corporate CEO or MBA talk about movie loglines.” Maybe so, but think about it. Hollywood studios spend enormous sums of money to produce a movie with the potential of making hundreds of millions of dollars, and each financial investment starts with someone coming up with a clever logline that captures the imagination. Television commercials can cost ten thousand dollars a second to produce and without a guiding conceptual premise they become DOA when implemented. So why wouldn’t you start your Web Video campaign using the same proven formula.

The logline, mission statement, or elevator pitch if you prefer needs to state the characters, goals, obstacles, differentiating factors, and resolution within the context of a story scenario.

For Instance…

If it works for the movie industry will it work for the advertising and marketing industry? Let’s take a look at one of the most successful, popular, iconic marketing campaigns of the last number of years, The MAC versus PC campaign.

Example Logline Concept: A stylish, pleasant, mild-mannered young man verbally spars with his geeky competitive opposite (characters) in a series of humorous, relatable incidents (story scenario) that illustrate the people-friendly advantages (resolution) of the brand compared to its rigid, unbending competitor (differentiating factor) whose sheer size dominates the market (obstacle) in an effort to win the hearts and minds of the computer buying audience (goal). – The MAC Versus PC Ad Campaign.

“The Time Has Come The Walrus Said…”

- Lewis Carroll from ‘Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There,’ 1892

The time has come to realize that Web Video is the best communication tactic available to deliver your marketing message to a worldwide audience; an audience that craves answers and resolution to their every need, concern and desire. It is not good enough to list a bunch of features and hackneyed bulleted points or even to dump pages and pages of search engine optimized hard-to-read text, especially when it’s aimed at an audience raised on television, movies, music and video games. We must learn to speak the language of the audience, and use the appropriate communication tools they can understand in a way that connects on a human level.

It all starts with finding the emotional and psychological value proposition your product or service promises. In a world of frustrated, cranky, attention deficit consumers, the onus is on you to present what you provide in a way that relates to the human elements that make your brand relevant.

About The Author

Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit www.mrpwebmedia.com, www.136words.com, and www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

It’s early in the year, and it’s time to fulfill your resolution to give your site a quick legal check-up.

Online businesses are now highly regulated, and there’s substantial liability if your site’s not legally compliant. In addition, your customers are becoming more Internet savvy, and a site that’s not legally compliant is not going to be trusted.

So, let’s get started.

Use This Checklist If You Already Have The Basic Site Documents In Place

1. Copyright Notice. Check Your Copyright Notice. Your copyright notice consists of the following elements: the word "copyright" or copyright symbol (c in a circle) followed by the year of first publication followed by the name of the copyright owner. It’s also a good idea to add "All rights reserved worldwide". Example: Copyright 1996-09 Digital Contracts, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Note that if you update your site from time to time, you should add a date range reflecting the fact that the site has been updated each year within the date range. If you haven’t updated yet for 2009, do it now.

2. Blogs, etc. Have you recently added a blog or any other functionality that permits visitors to post text or digital files to your site? Or, do you plan to do so as part of your marketing plans for 2009? If so, you need to have a DMCA notice in your Terms of Use and you also need to file a DMCA Registration form with the U.S. Copyright Office. These steps will create a "safe harbor" from strict liability for copyright infringement if a site visitor posts infringing material to your site.

3. Personal Information. Do you collect personal information from site visitors? If so, review your Privacy Policy to make sure that you identify all of the categories of personal information you collect and the way in which you share this personal information. If you’ve changed these policies since you posted your Privacy Policy, amend it now… without delay.

4. Data Security. Check your data security measures. If you collect personal information, you are required to implement "reasonable and appropriate" data security measures. These measures are essentially moving targets since data security technology evolves at a relatively rapid pace. What may have been "reasonable and appropriate" a couple of years ago may not pass muster today. Update your security procedures, if necessary.

5. Future Sale of Your Business? If your online business is starting to be successful and generate positive revenue, have you ever considered that you might want to sell it for a profit in the future? If so, be sure that your Privacy Policy specifies that personal information collected may be transferred and shared in the event of a sale. If you don’t do this prior to collecting personal information, you won’t be able to pass it on to your purchaser. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) stipulated in recent settlements that personal information collected prior to posting this notice in your Privacy Policy will not be transferable in the event of a sale. And this personal information (your opt-in lists and customer lists) are the real value of your online business.

6. Service Providers. Do you use service providers to provide hosting, site maintenance, SEO services, or other site functions where they have access to your server? If you don’t collect personal information, your answer to this question is immaterial, but if you do (and only an email address will suffice), you need to enter into privacy and security agreements with your service providers. The FTC stipulated in a couple of recent settlements that you would be liable if you don’t.

7. Registration Agreement. Does your site require site visitors to register for certain benefits such as a membership or subscription rights? If so, you need an electronic agreement (a so-called "click-wrapped" agreement where the user clicks on "I ACCEPT"). Your agreement should be presented conspicuously in the registration process and it should require an affirmative act (clicking on "I ACCEPT") to complete the registration. You also need to be sure that all of your warranty disclaimers and limitations of liability pass muster.

8. Collect Birth Dates? Do you collect the date of birth as part of your registration process? If so, and if this date indicates that children under 13 are registering, you will be liable for substantial damages under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) if you do not comply with COPPA’s stringent requirements. You should either modify your information collection practices or comply with COPPA, or both.

9. Creditor Under FACTA? Do your registered users make periodic payments payable as monthly or quarterly installments, or do you extend credít so that payment is made after receipt of the product or service? If so, you fall within the statutory requirements of the Fair and Accurate Credít Transactions Act of 2003 (FACTA). FACTA requires that you adopt a "Red Flag" Identity Theft Policy before May 1, 2009, or face substantial liability.

10. Sales Intermediaries? Do you use affiliates or resellers? If so, a recent New York case illustrates that you may be liable for their actions if they violate certain laws acting on your behalf. For example, are your affiliates engaged in illegal spamming activities? If they are offering their own end user license agreements, do they properly disclose certain activities such as the use of pop up ads? You should check your affiliate and reseller agreements and modify them, if required.

Use This Checklist If You Don’t Have Your Site Documents In Place

You may be just starting your online business, or you may have procrastinated a little with your website legal compliance. If you fall into this group, you should get started without delay.

I’ve developed a procedure that will help you determine the correct mix of legal compliance documents for your site. Part of it is set out below.

First, if your site does not collect personal information, you should consider these documents:

• a Legal page for your intellectual property notices; and
• Terms of Use.
• And if you allow site visitors to post text or digital files to your site (for example via a blog, forum, or chat room), you’ll need a DMCA Registration Form (see No. 2 above).

Second, if your site collects personal information, but does not require registration to open an account or to use or purchase a product or service, you should consider these additional documents:

• Privacy Policy.
• And if you have service providers that have possession of your server or have access rights to it, you’ll need a privacy-security agreement for these service providers (see No. 6 above).

Third, if your site requires registration to open an account or to use or purchase a product or service, you should consider in addition to the foregoing documents, a customer agreement such as:

• a software as a service (SaaS) agreement; and/or
• a Software License Agreement (for software downloads).
• And if you are regulated by FACTA (see No. 9 above), you’ll need a Red Flag Identity Theft Policy — before the May 1, 2009 deadline.

Conclusion

The checklists provided above are not exhaustive. However, they should point you in the right direction as you give your site a new year’s legal compliance check-up.

A simple check-up — and remedial action if necessary — is one of the best investments you can make in your online business.

About The Author
Chip Cooper is a leading intellectual property, software, and Internet attorney who’s advised software and online businesses nationwide for 25+ years.

An interesting debate is raging among copy writers, web designers and content developers about the differences, if any, between writing copy for the web versus writing content.

According to prolific copywriter Nick Usborne of Excess Voice, a recent survey conducted among the readers of his newsletter of the same name offers some interesting results. They seem to be split almost three ways: one-third consists of copywriters, another content writers and the final third both.

But it’s wrong.

This is an important debate, I believe, since all online copy is content but not all content is copy. And that’s a real problem.

Most web designers, webmasters and content writers develop text for websites in a way to educate visitors. They also write it with the notion that "content is king," "content increases search engine rankings," "content makes a website sticky" and so on. That’s all fine and good.

But I believe content fails when it strives only at informing the reader, and thus lacks important elements that take her "by the hand" and compels her to do something – anything, including the simple act of reading.

In other words, while some websites may compel our attention, others fail to propel our actions, too. And their owners often end up screaming, "Why is my website not producing any sales," "why am I getting a lot of traffic but such a poor response" or "why are people leaving so quickly?" Well, if content is king, copy is the castle.

The Internet is not a traditional medium — at least not in the broadcast sense. It is intimate, dynamic and interactive. People are more involved when reading the content of a website than reading a conventional print publication, watching a show on TV or listening to a program on the radio.

And with the Internet, people have a powerful weapon that they don’t have with other types of media, and they usually don’t think twice about using it when the need confronts them: their mouse.

So, the idea is this: forget about writing content, at least in the traditional sense. Think copy. Think words and expressions that compel the reader to do something, even if it’s just to continue reading.

According to online dictionary Answers.com, "copy" is defined as "the words to be printed or spoken in an advertisement." (And "advertisement" is defined as "a notice or announcement designed to attract public patronage." It’s calling for some kind of action. It’s selling something, in other words.)

But the word "content," on the other hand, is defined as "the subject matter of a written work, such as a book or magazine." And keep in mind that there’s no mention of the Internet, here.

Nevertheless, this is why I submit that, with its multitude of links, scripts and hypertexts, the Internet transforms the passive reader into an active, responsive participant. (Or make that "response-able.") And she must therefore be treated as such – as a participant, not a reader.

Look at it this way: a book is limited by its front and back covers. When the book is done, it’s done. The web, however, is not.

If your content does not strive at getting the reader to do something, whether it’s to buy, subscribe, join, download, call, email, fíll out a form, clíck or whatever, then you need to seriously rethink your content and the words you use.

Here’s my explanation of the difference between content and copy. Content informs. Copy invites. Even if content invites a reader to keep reading, it’s still selling an idea. It’s still calling for action. And it’s still copy.

If your web page is only meant to inform people like some kind of book, then it’s content. (And like closing a book once it’s read, the only action left is to exit the website or close the browser.) But if it contains links or more content, then it’s copy. And you need to write content with that mindset.

Ultimately, incorporate within your content a direct response formula that compels your readers to do something. Don’t leave them hanging. Take them by the hand. Integrate a call for some kind of action, in other words. Ask your reader to "buy now," "join today," "get this," "download that, or …

… Better yet, simply "clíck here."

About The Author
Michel Fortin is a direct response copywriter, marketing strategy consultant, and instrumental in some of the most lucrative online businesses and wildly successful marketing campaigns to ever hit the web.