PardonMyFrench

Our Search Work for John McCain Wins Best Tech Award at AAPC

This year's AAPC (American Association of Political Consultants) conference was an extraordinary event.  Connell Donatelli and Campaign Solutions (basically Becki Donatelli's political companies) won a ton of Pollie Awards for our political and public affair marketing work.  I'm pretty sure nobody has come close to winning abound the 40 awards we got this year.  The one I'm most proud of is the award we won for best use of new technology for the search marketing work we did for Senator McCain.

You long time readers know my involvement in the campaign in the search marketing work, but in my zeal to promote the work I often didn't think I gave enough credit to some of my team members.  It really was remarkable work that a small group of us did all of Senator McCain's work in addition to the RNC's.  We spent millions of dollars for both McCain and the RNC and that was just in the last 10 weeks of the campaign - you folks out there in corporate America would be jealous of the marketing.  Some of my favorite memories.....

• Meeting with Rick Davis as part of the Straight Talk America PAC and listening to early Presidential conversations and political tactics; none of those meetings would have occurred if it wasn't for Becki Donatelli.  I also wouldn't have had the drive or the experience if Becki didn't share her knowledge with me.
• Ryan Waite and Jason Johnson were the creative geniuses behind some of our best banner ads and creatives that we ran.  Most specifically, the hippie Hillary ad that superimposed Hillary's head on a hippie body.  That ad as I remember had click rates north of 2%.  The other famous ad we ran was One Man Video which was a flash ad with 5 seconds of Senator McCain leaving as a POW; the great thing about that ad was that it included video inside standard flash size limits.
• Jackie Huelbig whom I've known for many years was our ace reporting genius who probably had the toughest job around - she had to put up with relentless requests from me and Becki when we had to know yesterday what the results of our search campaign were and how much money we brought in the hour before.  Jackie was also the one that helped me clean up a lot of the ads and loaded up the hundreds of video and display ads into Google AdSense.
• And finally, of course the campaign that pretty much gave me free reign to do what we needed to do; I can only remember one ad that was rejected and that's because I thought it was controversial enough during the Michigan Primary that I wanted a check.

This video that Ryan produced for our AAPC award is a great summary of the importance of our search campaign.  It features Peter Greenberger from Google,  Rick Davis McCain's Campaign Manager.  Friend and former RNC eCampaign director Cyrus Krohn.  Give it a watch - it shows how a well run search marketing campaign can handle rapid response, email and donation generating tactics, all while bringing much needed branding and traffic to issue pages. It really was an awesome experience.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Senator Cardin's Bill to Save Newspapers Is a Waste of Ink

Before I slam the point of Senator Cardin's bill to make newspapers non-profits, let me set the record straight.  If you haven't guessed already, I'm over 40 years old and I only have one newspaper delivered to my house - my weekly local paper The Observer Tribune.  I believe advertising in newspapers is the most wasteful form of advertising any marketer can do and it just isn't due to the declining circulation numbers.  You can't properly target the ads.  You don't know who actually sees your ad.  You can never capture all of the traffic generated from an ad to your site.  Finally, the ads are boring.  I once got kicked out of a meeting with the Bank of Montreal because I argued so much against spending crucial dollars on a wasteful ad campaign in the WSJ.

Senator Cardin's bill to allow newspapers to reorganize as nonprofits to gain tax breaks is an example of the Federal Government's sticking their nose in the free markets where it doesn't belong.  This quote found in the Reuters article that I linked to shows how the reverse logic of Congress works:

"We are losing our newspaper industry," Cardin said. "The economy has caused an immediate problem, but the business model for newspapers, based on circulation and advertising revenue, is broken, and that is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy."

Advertising revenues are down because marketers have finally woken up to the scam that is newspaper advertising.  Circulation numbers are down because people can get news faster and in more appealing manners than paper.  The cost structure for newspapers is bloated; these dinosaurs are so slow to react to changing economies that they didn't reorganize fast enough to become smaller and more nimble.

Look people.  If you like your newspaper, that's cool with me.  As my wife noticed the other day we are the only person on our block that doesn't have a daily newspaper delivered.   Do I miss reading the Sunday Paper while eating breakfast?  Nope.  My iPhone works just fine in my house and I don't need to recycle the papers any more. 

Senator Cardin, let the free market decide their fate.  Newspaper's in their current form is nearly dead and that's the way they should be.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric 

Does eBay Need Some Targeting Help?

I got this email the other day out of the blues.  It was a marketing communication from eBay regarding a favorite seller of mine.  Now, I don't remember making this guy a favorite and he is the only one listed in my account, but anyway that's not what gets me on this email.

What gets me is that I have no clue what this guy is selling.  I have no clue why I would be interested in these items.  If eBay took a look at my buying patterns, they'd see that I pretty much only buy Springsteen Tickets, Amazing Spider-man (note the official use of the hyphen) CGC rated comic books, and baseball cards.  That's it.  Really simple patterns.

Instead of looking at that to give me items that I'm clearly interested in, they sent me an email from a favorite sellers with a pleater and some aurora scenes.  I have NO idea what these things are.

So this got me thinking.  What exactly can eBay market to its customers?  Why send emails from favorite sellers that has items I clearly have no interest in.  That's like Macy's sending me a communication for any random item in their store.  It seems very odd for an internet company like eBay. 

If eBay is going to send an email, you'd think they'd make it more targeted than just some random item from a store.  I know there are tons of Spideys going online every day....seems odd to me.  Perhaps using targeted emails better eBay can generate more money....or just shut this stuff down.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

I'm Down to My Last (Paper) Newspaper

Any day now my wife will call into The Star Ledger and cancel my daily subscription.  That will end my subscriptions to paper editions of daily publications leaving only my once per week local newspaper The Observer Tribune.  Yes - no more daily Ledgers, Wall Street Journals or Daily Records (unless of course I'm interviewed in them). 

Will I miss the paper versions?  I don't think so and here's why:

Twitter + iPhone + RSS Feeds = Faster and More Interesting News

Yes the iPhone-Twitter combination killed any chance I had as a continuing paper subscriber.  Why?  Simple I used to love to read the newspaper on the couch or in the men's room or just waiting around.  Now, I have my iPhone and sure it gets flagged, but now I have all my news, books (via Kindle 2), email, and etc at my palm and it easily replaced my Star Ledger.  So where am I getting my news without the newspaper?

• WSJ Twitter feeds for national and business news
• ESPN Radio via XM and ESPN Tweets for national sports news and commentary
• Daily Record for New Jersey and local NJ news (ht to one of my favorite Twitters @meghanvandyk)
• I get Yankees news from @MLBYankees and of course ESPN
• The Star Ledger Twitter feeds gives me breaking news, NY Giants news, and NJ breaking news
• I subscribe to Paul Mulshine's RSS feed because Paul doesn't have a Twitter feed yet
• The iPhone besides providing me with Google Reader and Twitter, I've also downloaded Apps for The New York Times (yes I wrote that - see below) and AP News.  BTW - Star Ledger gets a LOT of their stories via AP so why pay for the paper edition
• Heck, the iPhone has Suduko Apps so that paper addiction is no longer necessary
• Fox News first thing in the morning and CNBC in the afternoon for business/stock information

With all of this electronic news, why would I subject myself to wrapping up newspapers every weekend?  No more.  The iPhone with Twitter has helped me to kick the paper newspaper habit.  Unfortunately, I'm not the only person as paper newspapers are slowly going out of business. 

Join the electronic revolution and ditch your paper newspapers.  I did.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

NY Times Note - Yes I still think the NY Times is biased towards the liberal left.  However, I do enjoy it when they take the Democrats to task when that occurs on the rare occasion.  Plus, I did miss their Business, Science, NY Food, and Sports stories but now I'm back thanks to my free iPhone App.

For Cajun Food in New Jersey, Try Butler's Louisiana Kitchen in Long Valley

    ***UPDATE ON 4-23-09********** We stopped by last night and there was a note on the door that Butler's is temporarily closed due to the economic conditions.  You should call before you just show up.  I really hope it is temporary because the food in Long Valley is just pizza, burgers, and beer.***********************

We love Butler's Louisiana Kitchen in the center of Long Valley, NJ.  Our entire family has eaten there about a half dozen times and ALL of us love the food.  Those that you know me, know that I love finding great restaurants and I'm happy to report that there's a great place just 10 minutes from my house.  We've tasted the following menu items and have loved them all:

• Smoked Hog Wings
• Creole Hot Salad
• Seafood Gumbo
• Smoked Brisket and Smoked Ribs - both have been ordered multiple times per visit!
• Jambalaya
• Etoufee
• Beans, Greens, and Mac-Cheese

The only complaint that I have is that the food isn't spicy enough for me, but that's me being a little picky.  Seriously the food is awesome, priced right, and you can bring your own booze.  So since this is a recession busting time, allow me to resurrect Old School Facelift for Butler's for marketing the restaurant:

OLD SCHOOL FACELIFT #10: 5 QUICK RECESSION BUSTING MARKETING TECHNIQUES FOR BUTLER'S

1. Revisit Your Web Designer to Talk Social Networking:  The way to build a business online is to tap into social networks these days.  It helps with a couple of things:  it helps your Google rankings and it gets people talking about your business online.  You don't need to change the site much, but you could link out to say a YouTube page or a Facebook page.  On YouTube you could post videos of your recipes, Saturday nights shows you are hosting, and on Facebook you could allow people to load up photos, comment, and Fan you (that's friending in business terms).
2. Online Coupons:  Sure, somebody is going to tell you that you need an email list to send out coupons, but that is too old school for you.  Build up your Fans on your Facebook page and push messages and coupons out there.  Simple stuff, like take a picture of a coupon you designed and load it up and let any fan get access to the photo.  Bingo cheap coupon marketing.
3. Cajun Cooking Contests:  Run questions in your Facebook page asking people to tell you what their favorite Cajun recipes are and then have a night of customer request menus.  Run other contests like showing people making their own Cajun recipes at home, naming menu items, or loading up reviews of the restaurant.
4. Display Ads:  Google now has a build your own banner ad product that you can geo-target.  Their network covers about 80% of the US so you can get a ton of cheap cost per click impressions or CPM ads and cover say a 60 mile radius around NJ.  Trust me I pretty much pioneered the Google Blast or Google Surge for politics and it will work.  Also, once you have a decent enough Facebook fans, you can use their DIRT CHEAP ad platform that also lets people know if anyone in their personal network is a fan of Butler's - that's a cool Word of Mouth Marketing tool.
5. GOOGLE PAY PER CLICK ADS - I saved the best for last.  Run pay per click search ads targeted to searches in a 60 mile radius around Long Valley.  I'd organize the campaign in this manner and if you make me a lunch or early dinner, I'll set you up for free.  Oh and before I forget, under no circumstances should you pay for print advertising.
   
   • Brand name
   • Cajun
   • Restaurants
   • Long Valley

If you want good Cajun food and are tired of the standard pizza stuff, try Butler's Louisiana Kitchen.  Get the ribs or the brisket and post your thanks below. 

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

AT&T's More Bars Network vs Can You Hear Me Verizon Network

I've been testing out my iPhone for about a month now and my conclusion is that the iPhone is by far the greatest cell phone currently on the market, but AT&T's network is either the worst or the best depending on where you are.  And before you flame me for not knowing anything a little back ground first.  I worked at AT&T for 10 years and pioneered from a marketing perspective marketing bundles of wireless and wireline communications starting in 1995.  The program I volunteered to work on called Cheetah in 1995 is widely considered the first marketing of a free cell phone for a new account.

I of course had an AT&T Wireless cell phone - one of those bricks back in 1995 and stuck with AT&T until about 2000 when I left AT&T.  I got a Verizon phone not because I was angry at AT&T but because of the horrible dropped calls I'd get on NJ transit and on Route 78.  After years of upgrading, I  had to get the latest iPhone because my Verizon phones just could not deliver on good wireless internet surfing and the applications were sub par.

Well driving around to NYC the past few days I've noticed that AT&T's network still SUCKs on Route 78 and Route 287.  It is so bad, that I've begin to seriously doubt AT&T's claim of of More Bars in More Places.  They may have more bars, but that doesn't stop the calls from being dropped.  Around my house, in my town, and neighboring towns the service is crystal clear, but once I get on one of those two highways, my old Verizon phone works a lot better.  Plus, on a recent trip to DC the iPhone was unusable but Verizon was fine.

Net, net around my home in Long Valley and Chester NJ the AT&T/iPhone is awesome, but once out on the main roads, Verizon seems to be a better shot.  The phone itself is something that I can't put down and often replaces my laptop even in my house.  AT&T's 3G is blazing fast when you get it too.  For me, unfortunately, I'm a two cell phone kind of guy now.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Are You Sure You Understand How Obama's Plan Will Save Jobs?

A few weeks back I wrote a post called AT&T Lessons for Obama on Saving Jobs where I tried to understand how the Obama administration will save a job.  How will that saved job be measured? 

Sure the other day when he was at an event in Ohio where they were adding 25 new policemen to their role, you can count those folks.  However at a macro level, how do you measure saving millions of jobs? 

I still don't get it and an Associated Press article from over the weekend called Analysis: Obama's Ambitious Plans Raise Questions other people are starting to ask the same question.  Here's a quote from Montana Democrat Senator Max Baucus:

"You created a situation where you cannot be wrong," the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Montana Democrat Max Baucus, told Geithner last week.

"If the economy loses 2 million jobs over the next few years, you can say yes, but it would've lost 5.5 million jobs. If we create a million jobs, you can say, well, it would have lost 2.5 million jobs," Baucus said. "You've given yourself complete leverage where you cannot be wrong, because you can take any scenario and make yourself look correct."

That's right Obama's plan could still lose jobs (or written another way unemployment rates continue to rise) yet Obama can celebrate hitting their goal by saving 3 million jobs.  How those saved jobs gets measured at this point is anyone's guess.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Google's Expanding Ads Helps Advertisers and Google Too

Google announced March 4 on both their AdSense blog (for website owners) and their AdWords Blog that they are testing expanding ads placed via 3rd party ad servers in Google's Content network.  I've been running expanding and streaming video ads for as long as I can remember marketing online.  My original use with them was the old Enliven product and I've used BlueStreak, Atlas, Eyewonder, and PointRoll.  So I love them.

Google's version is a little different than what I've run in the past, but here's what they've told both advertisers and website owners.

• The ad expands on a click and not on a rollover
• The website earns money and/or the advertisers pays money on a click sent to a website or on a CPM basis.  So like Google video ads, no money is exchanged on the expanding unit.
• The advertiser must be using one of Google's approved 3rd party ad servers
• The expanding ad won't get larger than twice its size.

The reason Google is doing this is simple.  Expanding ads get higher click rates and while they are not huge jumps, based on Google's volume it provides a slight bump.  Based on my experience, I'd peg rich media increased CTRs at about 10% which is enough to make significant changes to Google's bottom line.  Advertisers love it because the interaction rates (% of people expanding ads and doing things within the expanded unit) are in the low single percentages which is awesome.

Are you an advertiser?  If yes, you should be building expanding ad units and now that you can run them on Google's AdSense network, you'll only pay a CPC if you buy it that way.  This is just another reason why Google dominates the online advertising world.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Citigroup's Stock Price Proves What The Market Thinks of Obama's Plan

OK, let's make this a really easy stock lesson for you and why the market forces think President Obama's bank and housing plan is the wrong path for the USA.  Before that, a little background on me.  I spent 5 years as a Managing Director at a brokerage firm called Harrisdirect/CSFBdirect/DLJdirect.  I obtained my Series 7 license and was well on my way to a Series 24 when E*trade acquired the  company.

Citigroup traded yesterday between 98 cents and $1.11 and closed at $1.02.  If you bought it at $1.02 that translated into a 2.70% dividend yield.   On March 9 almost 1.9 billion shares were traded and on that day Citigroup lost $1 in share price or almost 40% in its value.

Why are those numbers important?  Well you watch volume to see if the change in stock price is significant,  So the market significantly thinks that the future potential of Citigroup is, umm horrible.  But, wait a second.  Isn't the administration propping up Citigroup with tax revenue to keep it afloat?  Yes.  Doesn't that mean Citigroup is too big to fail?  Yes.  And, doesn't that dividend yield help?  A little.

What this means is that the stock market thinks that owning Citigroup, even when it is too big to fail and receiving money from we taxpayers, is not a worthy investment.  And since Obama is feeding them money, the market believes that Obama's banking and housing plan IS NOT WORTH INVESTING IN.  They believe that the future is bleak for a Government run business.

Should you watch the stock market day to day?  Probably not.  I can't because if you try to, you realize that sometimes it doesn't make a lot of sense.  However, when a stock gets pounded like this and you know the Government has deemed it too big to fail (fail  = stock price of $0) so you'd think there is little risk, but based on Obama's plan there is LITTLE UPSIDE FOR YOU in owning this stock. 

Written another way, there is little UPSIDE IN OBAMA'S BANKING AND HOUSING PLAN.  P.S. HT to @redstate.  The stock market has dropped 20% since Obama took office, officially making this The Obama Bear Market.  Hard to argue with those stats, Obama voters.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Skittles.com Revamp - Genius or Did Mars Spend too Much Time at Hot Dog Johnny's?

Twitter was all the rage this morning with the revamp of Skittles.com because it seems the folks in Mars' marketing division revamped the site so it is a 300x250 ad unit with a picture and links.  When you roll over the boxes it can either expands into landing pages or pops up a Twitter search results page or even Skittles's Facebook page. 

Unfortunately for Skittles I didn't see too many flattering posts.  Most people thought the revamp of the site was a hoax to drive traffic.  A lot of people thought that their marketing division spent too much time at Hot Dog Johnny's because they are relying on Twitter for consumer generated content or Facebook.  The Twitter ones could be particularly damaging because people  can post (or did post) unflattering comments that can appear on their homepage.  Or even worse, the frequent downtime of Twitter could display a Twitter apology.  Of course the classic web designers think it is an awful execution.  Me?  I think it is brilliant for a product just like it.

5 REASONS WHY SKITTLE'S REDESIGN IS BRILLIANT MARKETING

1. How much site utility did they have to start, none?  Yes that's right.  Why would anyone go back to this type of site?  Sure if there was a promotion, it would generate traffic, but this is candy.  How many times are you going back to look up the calorie value?  Sure if they had recipes, you'd get better traffic, but for candy? Zero.
2. Twitter Provides Sporadic Customer Updates.  Again this is a low involvement product.  How often are you going to Tweet how great the greens are?  Sure they could be taking a beating today from so called marketing gurus, but after the first few days blow over, they'll have Twitters world wide generating content for them.
3. Facebook Tells You Which of Your Friends Are Fans Too.  Yes.  When you look at the Fans on their Facebook page, you'll more likely than not see some of your Facebook friends who are also fans reinforcing for you that they like Skittles too.  That's an awesome feature because they just turned your Facebook friends into product ambassadors for Skittles.
4. No More Website Content.  No need to figure out how to update the content often.  Let Twitter and Facebook do it for you.  The rest of the site is media information, product information, and contact links - basically low involvement stuff that changes infrequently.
5. Websites Can Be Subservient to CGC.  People will spend a lot more time on their Facebook and Twitter pages (Google too) than they will ever spend on a CPG site like Skittles.com.  So instead of trying to pull people away from pages they'd rather visit, Skittles figured out how to keep their website front and center by making it a DHTML overlay.

I wrote a post a while back asking if you really need a website and it appears the good folks at Mars read a fellow Warren County/Morris County's blog post (Long Valley is about 10 minutes from Hackettstown).  Sites that won't update their content often or don't provide utility to bring people back on a regular basis should pay close attention to Skittles.com. 

Do you always need a website or should you just rely on Facebook and Twitter for your content?  Very interesting question and I wish Skittles.com a lot of success.  I think it is brilliant.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

JohnnyPinball - The Best In Home Pinball Repair in NJ

Thanks to some recent personal issues we acquired two really fun and unique items.  The first one is a 55 year old 100 song  Seeburg Jukebox and my favorite pinball machine from Rutgers, High Speed. Both of them when moved to our home suffered some problems.  The Jukebox had a broken needle which after searching around the internet I found an eCommerce site that supplies needles, but the pinball needed more attention.

I tried changing the fuses but things just got worse when the scoreboard went out on High Speed.  I found a guy in Hackettstown that repairs pinball machines but he doesn't do house calls.  So, back to the internet I went and found JohnnyPinball over in Stanhope.

JohnnyPinball came right over to my house after I schedule an appointment.  He was here for about 2 hours and completely overhauled the machine so now it plays beautifully.  No waiting, no mess and I certainly didn't have to bring the machine to him which would have been problematic.  i don't remember the exact cost, but I think it was around $75 - $100 for the two hours but that was weeks ago and the machine plays well.

If you are in New Jersey and have a pinball machine that needs repairs, trust JohnnyPinball out of Stanhope.  I did and they delivered.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric