We’ve been slightly behind with our blog posting efforts but have hopes of getting back on track with some lighter posts (such as this one).  Our lack of posting is not because we’ve been slow or lazy but actually because we’ve been too busy (hopefully executing what we talk about on this blog).  We’ve got some exciting things in the works for 2009 and hope to use this as a venue to share our learnings for the good of all marketers.   For today’s post I’m just going to share a few examples I’ve seen in the last week of using the web to reach customers, develop brands, and build companies.

Reaching customers - We all know that there’s nothing like being bombarded with banners on websites.  Most of us have probably at this point tuned our eyes to not even take notice of banners - or any ads for that matter.  This past week Apple ran an incredibly unique ad on yahoo gaming page.  When I saw it earlier this week I probably loaded it about 5 times because it was so cool.  Unfortunately it’s down now but you can get the idea here (watch in high res for best results). 

Developing brands -  Seth Godin (marketing guru, author) hosted an event sponsored by American Express where they discussed several marketing topics with the founders of Facebook and Wikipedia.  The site in and of itself is a great example of a company (Amex) creating content in a way that strengthens their position as the preferred brand by business leaders and entrepreneurs.  That’s example #1.  Example #2 has to do with a hot new word in the web world: crowd-sourcing.  Jimmy Wales (of Wikipedia) shares the important point that crowd-sourcing is not all about getting FREE or cheap work out of people although many view it that way.  The real point is that there are a lot of people who enjoy being contributors on wikipedia, or submitting ads for a fast food burger, or designing a logo for a company and are willing to do so for free or cheap.  One of my friends recently used www.99designs.com to design their company logo.  He had nearly 100 designers submit logos in hopes of winning the $300 prize, and in the end he had a really great logo.  

Building their company - Wait, who is building their company in a recession?  Some business experts argue a downturn is a great time for solid companies to shore up and recruit the top talent (supply is greater than demand).  That’s exactly what Johnson Controls is seeking to do by launching a site called “ingenuity welcome” and creating a series of engineering puzzles that are actually quite fun (at least to the type of person they’re trying to recruit).

It encourages me to see that in the midst of an economic downturn we are seeing excellent examples of ingenuity.   While many pundits are predicting this to be the worst recession since the great depression I argue that a key difference in this recession will be an incredibly efficient and powerful medium (the web) that can continue to push markets to be efficient, companies to innovate, and ultimately drive us towards the upward trending part of the business cycle.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 at 3:48 pm and is filed under web marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.