How Clear is Your Writing?

Dale Carnegie said, "There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it." Our advertisements and articles must convey correct and easy to retrieve information.

Tips on Formatting Your Writing

Sans Serif fonts, like Arial, are the easiest to read.

Use a maximum of three typestyles in one document.

Text boxes and graphics may be used to break up the space on a page.

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Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
T. S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)
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Highlight important information in yellow for readers who browse rather than read.

If your market is the over-50 crowd, enlarge your text size to increase ease of reading.

Always use the alt tag for graphics, including banners, for individuals using screen readers.

View your web page using different web browsers and varying screen resolutions and monitors.

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Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash
your hands afterwards. Robert Heinlein (1907 - 1988)
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Research has found that headlines written in red, the color of power, seem to attract the reader.

Bold or italicize key words. If you underline key words (like hyperlinks), this may confuse readers.

Sites that automatically load flash movies, sound bites or videos tend to make readers leave your page.

Seven Strategies to Survive Downturn

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Thursday, March 12, 2009, 1 PM ET

• The latest stats on media and marketing spending.
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Tags: survive the downturn, seven strategies to survive, free webinar, geoff ramsey

Pot Smokers as a Market Segment

This is a followup to this post: Kellogg : No Second Chances, Michael. The Marijuana Policy Project is calling a ban on Kelloggs for dropping sponsorship of Michael Phelps. Watch the short video below.



I personally think the video is an effective ad. I felt like crying when I saw him hunched over, draped in an American flag. Watch it and tell me if you agree.

The Petition to Boycott Kellogg's for Treatment of Michael Phelps by Lee Stranahan on the Huffington Post is a riot! Read it and tell me if you disagree.

It is amazing the amount of people all over the Internet that are defending Mr. Phelps. I guess I never realized that the sugar-laden cereals and snacks made by Kelloggs were the munchie of choice of America's pot smokers. Now, there is a market segment !!

I think we will all be better off if we do not eat Pop Tarts or Sugar Frosted Flakes. As a nation, Americans are FAT.

I guess, Kelloggs can just drag up that tattered, tired tiger on steroids as a spokesperson. Then, next year, they can explain their need for a bailout to Congress. LOL

Tags: kelloggs, phelps, marijuana policy project, pot smokers, market segment

Blogs to Flog Cheetos Brand

Some well-known blogs will write sponsored posts based on the theme of beating boredom that include video or text. Cheetos wants the public to associate their brand with "taking a break." I guess this is a change from associating Cheetos with mischief commercials that have aired lately.

Frito-Lay Puts Cheetos Brand in Bloggers' Hands

Cheetos is asking the bloggers themselves to create sponsored content integrating the brand, over which Cheetos and its ad agencies, Omnicom Group's Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and OMD, will have no creative control.

Be on the lookout for these posts. Support your fellow bloggers, which will hopefully encourage brands to use more blogs for their messages. It is a win/win proposition for all.

Tags: cheetos, sponsored posts, bloggers, taking a break

Sex, Alcohol, Violence & Viagra Sells

NFL Study results | Common Sense Media

Common Sense Media recently released a study on the content of ads shown during NFL broadcasts. The report, Broadcast Dysfunction: Sex, Violence, Alcohol and the NFL (PDF), looked at ads in more than 50 games from this season and found it was impossible to watch a single game without coming up against sex, violence, or Viagra®.

Below is a summary of their findings:

• 1 out of every 6 commercials shown contained messages and images that were inappropriate for young kids.
• 40% of the games included advertisements for erectile-dysfunction drugs (Viagra® and Cialis®).
• More than 500 of the ads involved significant levels of violence, including gun fights, explosions and murders.
• 300 of the ads were for alcohol.
• 80 of the ads included significant levels of sexuality, including scenes about prostitution and strippers.
• Nearly half (44.7%) of the violent and sexual ads were promotions by the networks for their own programs.

Viewing a football game was a family activity that has segued to something that should be shown after 10 PM. This is not the way it should be.

Visit www.commonsensemedia.org/bad-ads to email the NFL Commissioner with your concerns about adult content in advertisements.

I guess CommonSense members did not see Super Bowl Porn Courtesy of Comcast.

Tags: nfl, football ads, sex, violence, viagra, commonsense, broadcast dysfunction

Kellogg : No Second Chances, Michael

Kellogg to Drop Olympian Michael Phelps After Bong Photo - Advertising Age - News

"We originally built the relationship with Michael, as well as the other Olympic athletes, to support our association with the U.S. Olympic team," a Kellogg spokeswoman said in a statement. "Michael's most recent behavior is not consistent with the image of Kellogg. His contract expires at the end of February and we have made a decision not to extend his contract."

Michael Phelps won his many Olympic Gold medals fair and square. He never tested positive for steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs. He is stupid to allow himself to be filmed in a compromising situation; however, in my opinion, Kellogg is overreacting. Or, maybe not. They dropped their Olympic Team sponsorship, so maybe this is a good excuse to take a cost-saving measure.

I think they could have used this incident to connect to college aged consumers. Instead, they have alienated anyone who ever smoked a joint or got drunk in college. What do you think?

Tags: michael phelps, kellogg, olympic team sponsorship, bong hit

Super Bowl Porn Courtesy of Comcast

A man and his family, who live in Tuscon, Arizona, were watching the Super Bowl on Sunday night and received an unexpected surprise.

From http://www.comcastsuperbowlporn.com:

Our TV reception went bad and went blank………then all of a sudden we see a woman putting with her hands down some guys pants……..and she whips his ‘thing’ out….. All right on public television.

Comcast has determined that a brief porn clip aired to local Super Bowl viewers Sunday night was "an isolated malicious act," a spokeswoman said Monday.

This is not true, because someone slipped in a 10-second clip of credits for Club Jenna, an adult PPV channel, earlier in the game. Comcast does not know how these "hacking incidents" happened or they are not saying.

Now we know the true purpose to which Comcast wants to put the White Spaces of the Internet. Or, perhaps ad revenue was off and this was the only way to make up the shortfall? I thought the game was broadcast with a delay so things like this could not happen. No excuse for this. None at all.

Technorati Tags: comcast, comcast super bowl porn, comcast tucson, super bowl porn

Brave New World -- Step Into the Future

I feel as if I am living in the future. So many devices that fell only within the realm of science fiction when I was a teenager are now reality.

Snap, Map, Chat and Hyperlink (Science Daily January 9, 2009) provided my latest glimpse into the future. The article was about MOBVIS, a new use of technology, that:

. . . ultimately works like a picture-driven search engine about things that just surround the user. The picture is your search query, and the system matches the picture and the features it contains with results in its database.

After reading this article, I scouted around for more information on MOBVIS. There has been much research done in Europe, so my first stop was the Visual Cognitive Systems Laboratory, University of Ljubljana project:

MOBVIS concentrates its research on the integration of multi-modal context awareness, vision based object recognition, and intelligent map technology, into an innovative form of an attentive interface, which enables perception and reasoning on a vast amount of data and in a continuously operating framework.

The MOBVIS project site maintained by the Institute of Digital Image Processing has demos of object awareness, visual localization, multimodal positioning, visual context awareness, multimodal context, augmented digital city maps, geo-services and incremental map updating, visual attention and attentive interface.

Basically, this system will allow you to take a picture with a special mobile device and then review visually hyperlinked data about your location. You could use this technology to orient yourself in a new city, to identify a prominent landmark, to view neighborhood information, to find a local business, to locate a hospital or to download a train schedule.

There is always a "gotcha" to any new technology. While this could be useful technology for anyone who is lost, visually impaired, wounded or just needs a cup of Joe, it could also open a door to your perceptions and reasoning processes for commercial uses. Think about it.

Tags: mobvis, visual search, multimodal context awareness, vision based object recognition, intelligent mapping