While checking my personal e-mail on Yahoo! today (another) flash overlay advertisement disrupted the simple task that I was trying to do. Sure, this happens now and again but what was different about this one? Well, when I clicked on the ‘close’ button it opened the link to the product that was being advertised in another tab. So, I closed that and clicked ‘close’ again, thinking that I must have made an error and have missed clicking the ‘close’ button the first time (I was clicking ‘close’ quickly in frustration afterall). But no, it did exactly the same thing. While I’m not a fan of pop-up flash advertisements that cause me to be distracted from what I was originally doing, when I click close, I expect the ad to actually close! (more…)

I saw the new Microsoft advertisement on tv earlier today. Microsoft’s response to Apple’s “I’m a PC… I’m a Mac” advertisement seems more like a retaliation than an innovation. “I’m a PC and I’ve been made into a stereotype.” Is that an admission that the smaller rival is winning or are they taking them head-on?

What’s clever about Microsoft’s ad is that it focuses on the everyday nature of the PC and the good they can do in the world. A nerdy PC-user is just a scene setter. The ad then quickly moves through lots of different types of PC users including an African school teacher, a blogger for Obama, a McCain supporter, people wearing jeans, designing jeans, and studying genes and not to mention some celebrity endorsement in the form of Pharell Williams, Eva Longoria and BG himself. This is a refreshing contrast to the Apple ads because they take place in a variety of different, colorful locations, with a variety of races and cultures, rather than existing within Apple’s clinical, white world.

Microsoft’s I’m a PC – Life Without Walls website features more information and a chance for users to become a PC on TV by uploading their own “I’m a PC’ videos, which Microsoft will use for their online advertising and TV campaigns.True, this could be considered a great Parthian shot at Apple but what about the people who use both PC’s and Mac’s? We’ve got 2 Mac’s and 4 PC’s in our house… what does that make us? *Niamh walks away saying “I’m a PC and a MAC”… Though, I’m more of a Mac! *

Watch the “I’m a PC” video on YouTube.

On the drive home the other night, I could have been forgiven for thinking that there was an alien abduction or a rock concert taking place as one stretch of the Howth Road in Clontarf appeared to be fully illuminated as if someone were shining a huge torch at it from the other side of the road.

Driving past the illumination revealed that it is a display with a long conversational-style sentence written across it.

“Patrick! You are absolutely perfect!” (more…)

I recently embarked of some further study. I am three weeks into a Diploma in Digital Marketing with Advertising, Public Relations and E-Commerce (Dip. Dig. Mkting) with the Fitzwilliam Institute. This is the first time that the Institute are running the course, which can always be a bit of a gamble. However, I’m not new to this having been the 2nd year group of undergraduate students to undertake the BSc. Multimedia degree at the School of Communications in Dublin City University in 2000, and that gamble paid off in the end. So far, the diploma course has been very good and has reached my (high) expectations. One of the key things that attracted me to the course, aside from wanting a formal qualification in the digital marketing and advertising arena, was that the Institutes approach in selecting lecturers that are directly working or involved in their area of specialisation and that can demonstrate their experience with examples related to their own jobs and companies. I was interested to see that one of the lecturers, Anthony Quigley, was recently interviewed by The Innovation Magazine, the monthly supplement of the Irish Times. Quigley, founder and CEO of Online-Marketing.ie, is considered one of Ireland’s leading experts in the areas of online and internet marketing.

I also attended my first “Marketing Breakfast” organised by the Marketing Institute of Ireland yesterday morning, which took place in the Dome Restaurant (more…)

A colleague sent me the below in an e-mail today…

“Dial this number and wait to hear option 3 – 1890 866 07″.

Pretty funny, livened up our days anyway (we are obviously easily entertained! – Ah, small pleasures!)… Turns out it is a marketing ploy for Perlico, an Irish Internet and Phone company.

The duck appears to have had the desired outcome anyway, people are spreading the word. But how successful is viral marketing such as this? There is a current post about this on boards.ie; http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055142608 . Some posters there believed that the Perlico phone line had been ‘hacked’ and were wondering if it would be possible to do the same to Eircom! Another poster thinks that this type of marketing is really unprofessional. Regardless of these people’s various opinions of the marketing ploy, has it proved to be a success? (more…)