February 2007 , Number 93
AWARD TIME
Well, it’s time for three of the biggest betting contests of the year:
1. The Super Bowl (my pick: Colts, and yes, I’ll give the points)
2. The Oscars (my pick: Letters from Iwo Jima)
3. March Madness (my pick: North Carolina)
I was thinking of parlaying my online poker winnings to put a big bet down on the Colts this year, but since (a) I haven’t played poker online and (b) it’s now illegal (I think), I guess I’m shut out of serious betting activity. But I will enter the local video store’s Oscar picks contest, where because of diligent Internet research and a modicum of luck, I’ve been able to watch DVDs the past couple of years for free.
Anyway, all this betting and awards frenzy has made me think about another category: the coolest website on the Internet for people interested in marketing. So I’m now officially opening nominations: let me know your picks for the best marketing website. I’m talking about websites for people interested in marketing, not websites that market products to consumers (for a great site to look at websites that market to consumers see http://www.webaward.org/, which lists award-winning sites in 96 industries).
While we are waiting for your picks, here are some sites that we think are interesting for marketers:
• http://imagini.net — The creators of this site think that pictures are more fun and revealing than words. They use images to make consumer surveys more fun to take and give you insight into people’s preferences based on their emotional responses to images. Imagini has been working with companies like Vodafone and Microsoft. Some skeptics think information based on tracking web surfing is more predictive, but other businesses are pleased with the large response to Imagini’s online tests. Take Imagini’s Valentine’s test on their website and judge for yourself!
• http://www.caffeinenow.com — Sweepstakes promotions are a lot of fun for your customers. They give your customers a small chance to win big at no cost. As a side benefit, sweepstakes give customers a reason to come to your store or website, where they just might spend some money with you.
But sweepstakes have some drawbacks. The prizes, of course, are expensive, and there are costs to put the sweepstakes together. Often, there are state as well as national legal hurdles to running a sweepstakes. These barriers discourage many small businesses from even attempting a sweepstakes promotion.
Caffeinenow.com’s organizers have figure out a way to offer the big rewards of sweepstakes to small business operators. The concept is intriguing and is explained well on their website. Take a look and see what you think.
• http://alexa.com — Alexa is a search engine with a nice twist. They have a section called “traffic rankings” which is updated daily and ranks websites in order of popularity of millions of Alexa Toolbar users. You can see which websites are hot and which are not. The top 10 U.S. websites on Jan. 31 were: 1. Yahoo, 2. Google, 3. Myspace, 4. Microsoft Network, 5. EBay, 6. YouTube, 7. Amazon, 8. Wikipedia, 9. Craigslist, 10. Thefacebook. Incidentally, the hottest site right now is the official Academy Awards site, www.oscar.com.
• http://www.archive.org — One of my favorite sites for analyzing web marketing is www.archive.org. This ingenious site has a Wayback Machine (remember the Rocky and Bullwinkle show?). The Wayback Machine lets you see what any website looked like in the past. Just type the name of the site into the wayback machine and you have a history of that site on the net. If, for example, you type in www.raphel.com, you see all the various designs our website has had. Some of the previous versions of our site we would like to forget, but there is no way to discard your past on the web. That is why we tell our children to be careful what they put on MySpace or Facebook or even in an email. There is no way to prevent people interviewing you for a job five years from now from finding the one entry on the Internet you wish you could erase.
• http://oracleofbacon.org — This site shows you how easy it is to find someone connected to somebody else. It doesn’t have a lot to do with marketing, but it is such a great site I thought you would enjoy it. And it is Oscar season! Go to the link of “How it Works” and then click on “Find the link from Actor A to Actor B.” If, for instance, you type in Bela Lugosi and Demi Moore, two actors I wouldn’t necessarily think of in the same breath, you’ll find that Demi Moore was in No Small Affair (1984) with Arthur Taxier. Arthur Taxier, it turns out, was in Monster in the Closet (1987) with John Carradine. And John Carradine was in The Black Sleep (1956) with Bela Lugosi. So there’s the link between Demi and Bela. Take my word for it. It’s a fun site. And it does point out that two seemingly unrelated people often manage to have surprisingly close connections.
So there are our nominees. Let us know which marketing sites you like best. And hurry up. Like the Oscars, our winners are announced on February 25, 2007.