Industry News

Motrin Causes More Pain than it Cures

It kind of seems like a no-brainer, but viral marketing needs to be just as researched, focus grouped, and thought out as print advertising. While most people would respond to this with a hearty, “duh,” this is apparently a lesson that still needs to be learned by the ad agency that worked on the most recent viral campaign for the pain reliever Motrin.

Their latest marketing efforts created the following:

While Motrin wanted to convey the idea that they felt mother’s pain, the overly slick video only seemed to anger mothers and non-mothers alike. It’s painfully obvious now to Motrin (and most people who saw the ad) that this viral marketing effort was not created by or run by any real life mothers.
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Who Needs Guns When You’ve Got Keyboards?

Internet shopping may well reach records highs this holiday season. This influx of business is welcomed by online retailers and criminals alike. Criminals believe that online shoppers are vulnerable to their scams – and they’re right. These aren’t the crooks of yesteryear, today’s thieves don’t need guns – they’ve got technology.

In the last year internet fraud and identity theft have become more widespread than ever. Despite the risks many shoppers choose to do the bulk of their holiday buying online. Who can blame them? There’s nothing worse than standing for hours in line at a department store, battling raging drivers in traffic, or having to travel to several stores just to find one item (wasting gas and money in the process).

When it comes to shopping online the best advice is “buyer beware.” A 2007 survey reported the number of consumers taken in by bogus offers increased by 40 percent between the 2006 and 2007 holiday seasons. Three percent of the adults surveyed said that they lost money from phishing scam. Last year the overall costs to consumers of online fraud surpassed $3 billion, compared with $2 billion the year before.
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Italian Plumbers Rejoice, Nintendo Dominates the Internet

Everyone below the age of thirty-five who is even remotely interested in videogames holds strong to one steadfast truth—Nintendo rules. There’s really no way of avoiding that simple reality. Looming large in the development of many 80s-bred children, Nintendo has been able to seamlessly take their business online while others have fell short. What allows Nintendo to translate its awesome into the world of online business so well? Here are just a few of the possible contributing factors.

-Nintendo was the game of choice throughout the 80s. The children that grew up addicted to Tetris and 2-D Mario are the same kids that are currently addicted to MySpace. In short, their client base constitutes the “internet generation,” and it’s only natural they’d continue their love of Nintendo through online venues.

-While many companies hoard and protect every aspect of their intellectual creations, Nintendo has had a (relatively) open attitude. The iconic games and characters have been translated into just about every new technology, and they are often discussed, altered, and lampooned across the internet.
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Comedy Central Presents…Jokes.com

For everyone that thrives on a daily fix of humor, there’s good news in the world of online funniness. Comedy Central has officially announced the reopening of Jokes.com, a website dedicated to all things stand-up.

The site currently offers upwards of 5,000 clips of stand-up comedians, and this archive includes many of the popular comedians that have been previously featured on Comedy Central.

Other site features will include a database of 12,000 text-based jokes as well as a search feature so that users can easily find any of the comedians within Jokes.com. The site currently has over one thousand stand-up comedians and only looks to grow in the coming months.
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Search News Recap 12.12

As we approach the holidays, search engines are getting more attention than usual. I think this time of year sparks more interest in the topic because of the prevalence of online shopping, and the significant power and sway search engines hold over the economic fate of many e-commerce based businesses. With these business owners relying on organic, paid and social media avenues to drive conversions to their websites, everyone wants to know how to get the most out of their search engine exposure, and how to do this for a nice profit margin. This week I’m going to be talking about the interesting organic vs. paid listings debate, updates to Google’s SearchWiki, and the emergence of Google’s beta-less browser, Chrome.
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You Better Not Pout…SEO is Comin’ to Town

With economic troubles the focus of news reports across the nation, there appears to be a correlated trend in the world of search engine optimization (SEO). And that trend involves an increased interest in the practice.

While no simple list can explain this phenomenon, here are some possible reasons that SEO has found itself in the limelight in light of economic troubles.

Sales: The internet offers companies an amazing potential for income. For that reason, the urge to drive traffic to your site increases exponentially when the economy—and consequently sales—are down.
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Search News Recap 12.5

In keeping with my post last week about recapping the latest news in search, here’s some search engine stories of interest from around the web. This week, we’ll be talking about the recent releases of the data on the search trends of 2008, Google’s beta release of the social networking tool Friend Connect, and the on and off again drama of the Google / Yahoo search deal that has dominated headlines recently.

Search Trends 2008
It’s the time of year when the search giants like Google, Yahoo! and Ask.com give us some insight into the behavior of searchers. Some trends have remained consistent from 2007, but 2008 saw some interesting new topics rise and fall in the search box, most notably in American politics, natural disasters, the 2008 Olympics, and celebrity gossip. Search Engine Land has summarized the information quite nicely for us, highlighting the most important trends across all the engines that provided info. Here’s an overview:
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Take It From the Clowns…

When it comes to social media marketing, sometimes you’ve just got to listen to the clowns. Well, a very specific group of clowns anyway.

In particular, the mind-bendingly bendy group at Cirque du Soleil has once again thrown off convention and is currently leading the movement by established and successful organizations to move advertising online. While they haven’t completely abandoned traditional means of advertising, Soleil’s social media manager Jessica Berlin is spearheading the effort to make the high budget production known on forums such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and others.

In a recent panel discussion, Berlin divulged some key points about the benefits of moving advertising efforts online.
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Search News Recap 11.24

We only scratch the surface of the search engines when it comes to news on our blog here at iePlexus, and I think we need to devote a little more time to such a broad and important subject. From here on out, I’m instituting a weekly search news recap, a place where we can review and discuss the most recent developments in search engines, ranking, optimization, and technology. Although we don’t directly provide search engine optimization here at iePlexus, it’s vital to consider the engines in any online marketing campaign, and news relating to that subject is just as significant. Also, with any social media advertising or web 2.0 marketing campaign, greater exposure in the search engines is often a byproduct of effective work, so it makes perfect sense to be stay informed. I’ve always been an advocate of a comprehensive, all-inclusive approach to internet marketing, so despite the additional work, I’m just going to have to create a new blog category and start sifting through the archives for relevant posts. Sympathy is definitely appreciated.
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Google Meets Life

As if Google hadn’t already completely revolutionized how we use the internet, it had to take it one step further. The latest news surrounding the uber-search engine is an announcement that they have recently partnered with Life magazine.

And what does this new partnership mean for eager searchers? About 10 million of Life’s archived images available by keyword search. The project holds special significance considering the fact that the vast majority (somewhere around 97%) of the photographs have never been previously released to the public.

The massive undertaking required that all of these images be scanned and catalogued into one database. The images range from 1750 to present day, and the end result is one of the most comprehensive and impressive collections of online photographs to date.
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