Randy Pausch

The power of blogs.
Today I was introduced to a great man Dr. Randy Pausch when reading Jeremiah Owyang's blog. Being in Sri Lanka I haven't heard of him before and sorry if I am being ignorant. If you enjoyed the "Sun Screen" song you will love this.
He passed away last week and one thing he didn't have in his child hood dreams was to live for ever....I think I just figured out the "head fake"

Is Sri Lanka looking at the wrong markets for Travel?

This is a presentation made last year at WTM which has interesting figures on the Asian Traveler. The west is turning to the east for many things as they are going back to the roots. Now they might be looking at stealing our travelers too whilst us in this lovely island nation still focus on attracting low spending Europeans!

Using online to tap into the booming Asian market

view presentation (tags: internet travel)

FMCG Brands

This is a good article which I spotted whilst researching for a new FMCG client I am developing a strategy for. It is relevant to the Sri Lankan market too due to low internet penetration. However the two website examples are not that great as this idea can be developed to build a community on the website. Extending this to a diet blog, Youtube or facebook could take it to the next level. FMCG companies should focus on developing brand interaction and not e-business. Online should be viewed as a part of your media mix and not a distribution channel. We still have time to visit the supermarket or the neighborhood store to buy the stuff in Sri Lanka.

Its from Dave Duarte

Why FMCG brands should be marketed on the web

Published by Dave
on June 11, 2008

Why would you market a consumable on the internet – isn’t this a niche medium that targets approximately only 10% of the South African public?

Lindy Upson from Artefact Online sent me her ideas on this:

You need to market FMCG products on the internet because these are brands that rely on the relationships they have formed with their consumers.

When you buy your favourite brand of peanut butter, yoghurt, milk, washing up liquid it is because you feel a familiarity with your chosen brands – it is a relationship based on trust developed out of years of quality delivery. You might say these brands have become like familiar friends you wouldn’t want to lose.

The challenge is for FMCG marketers to develop and maintain these relationships with their loyal market base and not to let them stray to other, more innovative, maybe new, brands on the block.

Artifact Advertising’s digital marketing company, Artifact Online, views the integration of online marketing activities into a typical FMCG marketing mix as such:
* TV/ radio/ print – selling your product to a mass audience that fits your demographic, driving the consumer to the store.
* Instore Marketing – making sure you grab the consumer in the aisle and close the sale at point of purchase
* Online marketing – a tool to establish, reward, and revitalise the relationship your consumers have with your brand. A tool to encourage those consumers to interact with you and entrench their loyalty to your brand.

Apart from the obvious big players, for example Coke and Nike who have been active on the internet for years, it was interesting to see a recent example of a South African brand effectively using this channel as part of their marketing mix.

Pyotts Pro-vita recently launched an interactive website with a “build a sandwich” and useful BMI calculator. www.provita.co.za. Pyotts has also launched a fun party website which invites you to create your e-vites online and manage your RSVPs to any party – see www.partywithpyotts.co.za

Pro-vita consumers should be impressed by their innovation and would hopefully remember to visit the party site to create e-vites for their next function as this is a tool worth using.

If other brands were to concentrate efforts instore, using traditional media, email campaigns and sms communication to drive consumers to an interactive fun site and reward them for doing so, then they would be entrenching loyalty amongst a significant segment of their consumer base.

A solid online media campaign on South Africa’s high traffic sites would also ensure they reach a significant number of new consumers. The reach of these sites should not be underestimated.

Says Lindy:
So that’s why you would market a consumable on the internet – a “not that niche” medium that has the potential to reach over 5 million of your South African consumers.

Note to bloggers

I have seen many blogs opening the links on the same page without it opening it on a new window or tab. This effectively takes your reader out of the blog to the site you referred. As most of us are not coders it is some thing we need to live with. Wrong, html is a simple method which can be edited by anyone.

This is how you open the link in a new window.

Add this tag - TARGET="_blank" after your link.

Normal insert link code is
<a href="http://THIS IS THE PAGE LINK>THIS IS THE NAME OF LINK HEADING"/a>

Insert link with the HTML code to open in new window -
<a href="http://THIS IS THE PAGE LINK"TARGET="_blank">Web Site Content That Builds Brands/a>

Useful Articles from Forrester

These are some great reports from Forrester which will help any marketer on online brand building. Try them out.

Web Site Content That Builds Brands

by Ron Rogowski

with Harley Manning, Steven Geller

Executive Summary

Web content is the backbone of a company's online brand presence. But many firms struggle to provide useful, relevant content that allows users to accomplish their goals and supports the company's brand positioning. In order to hit the sweet-spot where useful, usable content makes a lasting brand impression, firms should use personas to focus the design effort on target users and checklist all content before it goes live to ensure that it reinforces brand attributes.

Web Site Copy That Builds Brands

by Ron Rogowski

with Harley Manning, Steven Geller
Executive Summary

Few companies achieve the proper balance of clarity and color when it comes to the language used in their online content. But some firms have done an exceptional job at describing their products and services clearly in a tone that reflects their brands. In order to enhance brand experiences with language, customer experience professionals should first create clear, concise descriptions of their products and services, then inject the right vocabulary to bring their brands to life, and ultimately review all text and video content for style before sending it live.

Rich Internet Applications That Build Brands

by Ron Rogowski

with Harley Manning, Steven Geller
Executive Summary (This is a document excerpt)

Compared with HTML, rich Internet applications (RIAs) offer greater interactivity, improved user experiences, and better differentiation. But most firms miss out on the brand-building potential of RIAs. To help companies that struggle with this problem, we uncovered examples of RIAs that provide top-notch user experiences and complement key brand attributes. Firms looking to differentiate their brands through online functionality should start with a clear understanding of user goals, maintain a relentless focus on brand attributes, enlist expert help, and test designs for compliance with brand positioning before going live.

Best And Worst Of Brand Building Web Sites, 2007
Forrester Applies Its Web Site Brand Review Methodology To The Sites Of 20 Top Brands

by Ron Rogowski

with Harley Manning, Ross Popoff-Walker, Steven Geller
Executive Summary (This is a document excerpt)

How good is the overall experience offered by top brands' Web sites today? To find out, we graded the sites of 20 of the world's top brands on how well they cater to user needs (Brand Action) and how well they infuse their Brand Image into the Web experience. Only one site managed to differentiate itself in both these dimensions: Lexus.com. Common Brand Action problems included poor text legibility and confusing category names. On the Brand Image side, sites were guilty of lackluster function and using imagery and layouts that didn't align with offline materials. To improve the online brand experience, top firms should focus first on supporting user goals, distributing brand "cheat-sheets" to designers and stakeholders, and checklisting proposed content and function against brand attributes.

Silver Lining for online media

With the rapid slowdown of the US economy it was expected that advertising spend would take a hit as usual. Adage research just out claims “Advertiser optimism is waning across all major media categories, with fewer buyers expecting to increase budgets in TV, newspapers, radio and outdoor than they were a year ago.” However the same survey states that companies are looking to increase advertising spend online, cable TV and Mobile advertising.


With the local economy hitting rock bottom and businesses struggling to stay afloat Sri Lanka can learn from the above. Make your ad budgets count with looking at interactive media. This is the only medium which can track your spend to the Rupee. With the penetration of broadband and mobile it is up to the marketers to embrace this medium which will help grow the interactive industry too. One can use above the line (ATL) media to direct traffic online which can serve as a yardstick to even monitor the success of the ATL campaign. Remember online and mobile is a marketing function and don’t call your IT to develop the solution.