Open Source Marketing
Here’s a new Change This Manifesto on Open Source marketing… Worth a read. James Cherkoff is a Director of Collaborate Marketing, an independent consultancy in London. I’m not sure that conveniently bundling all new forms of marketing – guerrilla, social networking, community etc… under the banner of Open Source isn’t a bit of a disservice to both them and Open Source. What James does do is provide a useful construct though for rethinking marketing. Thanks to Steve for pointing to this one.
My Categories
I’m going to get serious about my categories. First, they are a key organizing element and integral to the information architecture of the blog. Second, I’m keen to write on a range of topics and don’t want you bothered by, say, hotel reviews and rants on Super12 Rugby when all you are really interested in is Communications. So, here is my thinking.
- Communications:- writings on brand, media, public and analyst relations.
- Media:- thoughts on media trends and reporting.
- Social Networking Technologies:- on blogging, wikis, participatory communications
- Reviews & Raves:- reviews on books, music, hotels, wine and food. In fact, just about anything I’ve paid money for.
- Crossings:- thoughts on growing successful enterprises with a heavy marketing bent. I do a lot of work with New Zealand and Australian-based start-ups. These pieces are intended for them.
- Technology:- writing what is happening in tech
- Sporting Rants:- rugby, sailing, women’s’ Olympic volleyball
The focus of my blog remains unchanged – the revolution occurring in communications and business driven by the ethics and transparency crisis and the emergence of social networking technologies. I’m a firm believer that traditional communications practices such as PR and brand communications are being turned on their head by a confluence of events.
Let me know if this helps or if there are other categories I might add to help you navigate my site.
HEADLINE STYLES
Great story on Poynter on headline styles… here’s a snippet:
ALL CAPITALS
Type set in all capitals is harder to read. When ascenders and descenders are eliminated, words become rectangles and are harder to recognize. This is particularly true for long lines of text.
THE ALL CAPS STYLE IS HARDER TO READ. WHEN ASCENDERS AND DESCENDERS ARE ELIMINATED, WORDS BECOME RECTANGLES AND ARE HARDER TO RECOGNIZE. THIS IS PARTICULARLY TRUE FOR LONG LINES OF TEXT SUCH AS THIS.
Reserve the all-caps style for small amounts of type — one- to three-word headlines, labels, headers, and other navigational items that only use a few words.
Sans Serif typefaces tend to work better in all-caps than serif faces. In this case, the serifs get in the way and erode readability and reading speed.
In addition, using all capitals takes up more space…
Citizen Marketers
Great post over at the Church Of the Customer on Citizen Marketers. Some great pointers to Citizen Marketers:
- George Masters and his homemade iPod ad
- The volunteers who market the Firefox web browser (24 million download in 3 months)
- People who create fan sites like this one for the Broadway show “Brooklyn the Musical”
- The quirky guys behind the campaign to bring back Surge cola
- The creators of TiVocommunity.com
- Customers who post photos with their reviews on Amazon.com
- The people who created ads for the “Bush in 30 Seconds” contest from Moveon.org
Also love the mind maps from their Customer Evangelism University.
Watch out for those Counterfeit Minis
The brand assault continues from Mini… the newest twist being a Counter Counterfeit Commission to prevent, you guessed it, counterfeit Minis. I’d only want the original – with racing stripes of course!
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