As if you needed another reason to believe that Songsmith is evil

Ok so you’ve all probably seen the horrendous Songsmith ads that have been making the rounds to wild and unintended hilarity. Now, as if you needed more evidence that Microsoft’s attempt at entering some state of relevance is vastly misguided I present you with this

I just saw this on Crunchgear and was as flabbergasted as a very flabbergasted thing on a very flabbergasty day in the lovely town of Flabbergastiville. There are no words.

Bizarre search terms driving traffic

Just a short post: I’ve had a cursory look through  my blog stats (wordpress’s very own) and am rather alarmed at where my traffic is coming from. It seems the most popular terms which my blog appears has to do with young, red haired girls. Yes, this is due to the blog post of months ago where I discussed the internet-based show Quarterlife by the guys who made My So Called Life. MSCL if you don’t know, starred a very young Claire Danes as a young teen who is distraught and confused and other teenage emotions as well. She dyes her hair bright red in one episode, I mentioned it once or twice in the post. 

I can’t imagine what most people are looking for (/snark), but they must be so disappointed to come across the blog of yours truly. I am especially concerned over a particular person who was looking for ‘red hair cleavage’. The disappointment is practically palpable. I have no idea what ‘red hair cleavage’ refers to but I can only imagine that the resulting blog post was less than satisfactory. The ramblings of a young woman about digital marketing, general geekery, and shoes can only serve as the biggest let down since the Phantom Menace. 

Le sigh, I just realised that repeating my bizarre search terms will probably make matters worse – or maybe it’ll just drive even more BSTs and it can turn into a weekly feature?  What bizarre search terms drive traffic to your site?

The end of the halcyon days of web 2.0?

Much to do has been made in recent months over the impending (although some may say it’s already begun) burst of our second .com bubble in 10 years. In recent months, we’ve all enjoyed the schadenfreude fest on the news, watching the bankers and top douchebags who wrecked the world’s economies get their comeuppance. We thrilled at their saddened faces as they carried their belongings out of their offices in those little boxes – distraught that bottle service at ‘trendy’ hotspots will no longer be amongst their bags of goodies they’d enjoyed for far too long, whilst the people they screwed over try to figure out how to stay in their homes. Of course, this comeuppance was topped with the whole DABA phenomenon – the dominion of douchebaggery crumbles before our very eyes and we laugh.

However, those of us in the digital sector should not be so cocky as we’re in for a rude awakening of our own. It’s life Jim, but not as we know it.

Ok maybe I’m  being rather dramatic but all the signs are pointing to another major shift of the proverbial plates. We’ve had about 10 years of unprecedented growth: anyone with a cool idea that taps into all the crazy shenanigans of the youngin’s could have their company valued for bajillions of monies and live it up! Huzzah! Forget the business plans and ideas to make cold hard cash – make it popular and the VCs and/or other monied types can figure out how to make it spit out cash. 

Those days are pretty much over, and an industry is forced to grow up. It’s highly doubtful that 2.0 will come to a complete end, that the bubble will burst and other cliches as well. I mean, the last big internet-based boom and bust didn’t really break anything, just our complacency and the way things were done. And now it looks like we’re due for another massive spring clean: the ride we’ve been on for the last 4-5 years is coming to an end and we are going to have to do some serious re-thinking.

It’s like the approach of adulthood after a few wild years of teenage insanity – you got away with it then  because you could. Now, we can’t get away with it and we need to grow up and act like adults (*shudder*).  Now we have to have proper business plans, worry about how to make money (and real money, not speculative-someone-will-buy-us-for-insane-cash money) and other things we well. 

So, not only are we all going to suffer the next couple years of recession (thanks bankers!) and job insecurity, but those of us in a relatively young industry (one we chose precisely because it was so young and away from the stuffiness of older industries) are going to have to do some growing up. We don’t have to be happy about it, but we’ve got to do it.

She’s ALIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!

So I’ve totally been off the radar for so long, but a lot of changes have been going on. Last most people who used to read this blog knew, I’d left Equator and went out into the big wide world with no contingency plan. Exciting or crazy? You tell me. Most people couldn’t grasp the move but hey, life’s too short and all that.

I am now at Yomego, or DA Group as it was in a former life and pretty happy. It’s definitely a different experience! Anyhoo, whilst not directly currently in online marketing, it is still my chief passion. That and writing (oh yes, back in the day I had aspirations of a literary nature if you could grasp that). I am most definitely back, and most definitely still obsessed with all things online marketing.

I feel a bit overwhelmed, so much has happened since November and so much I want to talk about that I don’t really know where to begin: the atrocity that is this season’s Doctor Who, the tragedy that was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (CGI prairie dogs? WTF?), all the AWESOME campaigns that I’ve seen – including certain campaigns that were total I’ve-seen-that-before-somewhere-deja-vu campaigns which I will name in future posts when I’ve not just polished off the best part of a bottle of Chardonnay and can be bothered with the research.

I kid! Or do I? Either way, she’s alive and kicking and full of geeky excitement and raring to go. And as a side note, should I be worried that the majority recent traffic to my blog has been generated by the search term ‘teen girls with bright red hair’? Hmm… i wonder.

Quarterlife – it’s begun

A while back I posted a verbal avalanche about a brand spankin’ new show called Quarterlife – produced like a high budget tv show but shown solely on the internet, from the dudes who brought us My So Called Life. Well boys and girls, I’ve just finished watching Part 1 and Part 2 and I must say it could be pretty promising. It takes a bit of warming up to, but once it gets going I definitely think it’s got some legs and will be tuning in next week.

The really interesting bit that I got a bit “oooh” about was I got an email from the Quarterlife site, and it seems they’re setting up a creative and artistic community from the show’s fanbase. You go in, set up a profile and upload your work, discuss the show or whatever you wanted. Could be potentially a bit on the naff side but definitely cool looking and will be setting up my profile to dig into it and see what becomes of it. I wish there were some figures out about the number of people who watched it but I assume that will be coming soon. Also, while there were no lengthy ad breaks you did get a banner featuring Toyota scroll across the bottom of the screen – but you could close it so no major drama there.

All in all, pretty good start and I’m definitely getting into it – and love the whole community they’ve built up, hopefully it’ll take off. Worth a check out – about 20 mins in total and really hearkens back to My So Called Life – just as confused but grown up.

PS: did anyone see Simon Cowell on Top Gear last night? Botox city! YIKES! Plastic-ville. Yeesh!

Where in the world is Kerry?

Ok so I’ve been pretty MIA these past several weeks – so what’s up with that? you may ask. Well, a lot of stuff’s been going on. Firstly, I flew back home to Jordan for my bestest friend’s wedding – quick and shocking as the whole getting together was, she seems happy and in spite of the bridezilla-ness and the need to ply her with Zanax and some champagne it all went super well. I did however, discover that I hate weddings – despite 2 of my closest friends getting married this year, and a number of weddings I’ve been to as George’s plus one. Maybe I’m just wedding-ed out, considering I’m not used to going to too many.

And after all the business around the wedding, a few of the friends from abroad got together and did the whole tour of Jordan and I went along more as translator and token Arabic speaker. It was great – I do love doing the tourist round that you somehow never really end up doing unless someone’s visiting. We all went to Petra overnight, then camping in Wadi Rum, then drove up to the Dead Sea (which is the escape from Amman and all the bullshit during swim season). And best of all, I got a tan – again! Some pics are available here if you care to see. George has more and as soon as he gets his on flickr then I’ll put in a link.

But it was rapidly back to reality and what had become freezy Glasgow on my return and continuing the major job hunt. Yep boys and girls, am still in the process of job getting. I’ve had some really good leads and it’s come down to some final couple but between a rabid indecisiveness and god knows what, things haven’t moved on. More irons in the fire as they say and I’ll keep you posted.

I’ve also found it hard to find inspiration for my writing considering I’ve been out of the game for while. I mean it’s pretty hard to rant about stuff when it’s suddenly not your whole life anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I still think I did the right thing leaving Equator. I believe I was pigeonholed into what I was doing, and there was little room for progress and moving up. Plus the challenges moved from learning something new and figuring things out to trying not to allow myself to be run over by the bus on the way to work in the morning (scary when you start contemplating a stay in hospital as preferable but there you go!). I’m not really insane honest, just was very unhappy. But there you go, shit happens and for the most part you learn to deal but sometimes you realize that you’re going nowhere fast. I have always believed that you don’t have the right to sit and bitch and moan and not try to do anything about your situation – so I did.

I still do have a lot of rants, but I guess that’s for another time (still trying to find the diplomatic language here). I do still keep up with some of the blogs that I live by (professionally) and believe it or not with the forum. I am really bummed out that I couldn’t go to the expo and was considering going on my own – but sunshine, best friend, and a tan called! Tough choice that was, I tell ya. And now a days, I spend my time applying for jobs, interviews, occassional gym visit (need to go more!), and catching up with some old friends in the form of John Hughes movies (seriously, they have some great soundtracks). I am a mega stress puppy at the moment though, I hate not working and it’s sorta driving me up the wall. But hopefully this will all be remedied soon.

Anyway, more to come but thought I’d drop a line and share some pics so enjoy!

When crap email campaigns turn me into angry hulk type person

Ok, so I’ve been fairly rubbish lately at updating my blog. It’s really weird considering that it’s been a bit harder to think of things to write about ever since leaving equator – as a lot of the rantage was inspired by things I came across in my day to day affiliate management job. I do have a couple questions for the affiliate universe burning in my blog’s saved posts but I am currently trying to figure out how to write it diplomatically. Anyhoo, that’s neither here nor there, the point is although I’ve been keeping up with all the blogs I usually read and finding new ones I do feel a bit rant-less and hard up for inspiration – well at least one that’s related to affiliate marketing (I have plenty of rants about why was Rachel Zoe featured in Vogue? Why is she even taken seriously as a stylist? WHY? And some vapid columnist for Grazia – I only bought it because I was on the train to Dundee – and her lame, insipid, and vacuous coverage of New York fashion week).

Granted there have been a lot of things going on this week in the universe of internet and affiliate marketing. There’s the whole blogrush phenomenon, as well as a myriad of industry events that I would love to go to – Adtech London especially, as well as the Affiliate Summit and A4U expo (sadly I resigned before I got a chance to convince equator to send me there – oops!). Oh well, am sure there will be others in the near future. However, I’d have loved to go as it looks like it’ll be pretty interesting. I’d have paid my own way to go of course, but with footing the bill for another plane ticket home in a couple weeks (best friend’s wedding) I just couldn’t justify it.

I am looking forward to the reports back from these events though – and I know there will be plenty! Especially from Keith Bond who will be attending Ad tech London. It is a bummer though, and while the job search continues I have to live vicariously through our very active blogging community. Again, I digress. The reason for this blog post is due to the fact that I’ve taken umbrage with a marketing attack on my email inbox over the weekend.

So I check my email this weekend and I have an email from Specialoffers@asos.com – which is a bit weird as I’ve already received their weekly update, but figure hey why not? I open the email and find this -

Out of curiosity I click on the Play Message button and am re-directed here. It was a freaking ad for Scottish Hydro Electric! WTF? What does Scottish Hydro Electric have to do with ASOS? Why are ASOS promoting an electric company? And why are ASOS allowing Scottish Hydro Electric to advertise through their system using their database – especially when I specifically ticked the box saying: no thanks to receiving messages from third parties! This really pissed me off – and worse, it was a horrendous campaign anyway! What is WITH the donkey? And it’s not a clever leap ad – I’m not one to needs things to be obvious but come on! And worst of all, when I clicked on it again to show someone it said ‘My aren’t you keen? You’re already signed up!’ Signed up to what? TO WHAT?!

Judge for yourselves and have a look but this seriously pissed me off. I’m all for guerrilla marketing and blah blah yadda yadda but this was unrelated and really just a crap campaign! I will be writing a rather angry letter to ASOS about this and will post it up here when I’m done (along with my angry letter to Grazia about that insipid columnist – it’s a week of angry letters methinks). I know it could be a by-product to my alone time lately but it’s seriously pissed me off so much I want to punch the hell out of that smug freaking donkey! Or maybe I should get out to the gym more. Anyway have a look and feel free to comment on my downward spiral of insanity.

The internet as it should be used and bringing back my teen nostalgia.

I have a confession to make – as any normal teen growing up in the mid-90s I absolutely loved and adored a special little short-lived American show called My So Called Life. Ah yes, Claire Danes and her bright red hair (which I adored) and her oh-woe-is-me-for-I-am-a-teenage-girl-in-the-mid-90s-and-wear-my- sleeves-over-my-hands-because-I-want-to-GAWD! attitude which I, at the time, could like TOTALLY relate to (mock me if you will but I adored it). Including the whole crush on Jared Leto (before he became the renowned douche that he is now). I loved that show and as recently as a month ago was discussing its merits with Mike (once again, he never ceases to surprise me – first big surprise was a conversation we had about my mock Marc Jacobs ‘Mouse’ shoes, a story for another time methinks).

Now the producers of that fabulous show and my early to mid-teens nostalgia are back – all grown up and near enough my age group. Apparently, the producers of the show Quarterlife premiered as a pilot in 2005 on ABC in the US. However, it seemed ABC weren’t too keen on the show or direction of the show and decided to scrap it (insert shock horror here). The producers (Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick), frustrated with the way networks are interfering with the creativity and integrity of shows (yadda yadda) have decided to take their dissed show onto the interweb! Yep boys and girls, Quarterlife is premiering and showing purely online! Screw you boring ass US networks, we’ll get to see what we want when we want it and all online!

Herskovitz and Zwick have struck a deal with Myspace – which will stream the show weekly starting from November 11th. Myspace will have the rights to each episode for 24 hours after it first airs and then it goes onto the show’s website. Now I know what you’re thinking – ‘It’s been done before. Myspace is sooo over (still on my teen kick – sorry. Still mooning over the good old days – braces mysteriously vanished from my mid-day daydream)’ and ‘can anyone say Arctic Monkeys’ blah blah blah. All very good points, however it’s a tv show and not yet another band with a Myspace page.

I especially love the stick it to the networks attitude of Herskovtiz and Zwick – kind of like ‘well you don’t want to air our show we’ll take it to the masses anyway – via the internet!’. I love the fact that they’ve found another way, it’s kind of like old skool internet land isn’t it? Going back and doing what the internet was meant to do in the beginning – getting your stuff out there with minimal interference from networks, suits, ratings, etc. The fact that they’ve teemed the show with a whole social networking scene may be of interest to a lot of you dear readers out there. It’s just refreshing to see someone taking the chance, and I’m sure they’ll be plenty of people who follow once the initial risk is taken by Quarterlife. There is always lots of chat about using this medium for tv etc, and to an extent there has been a lot of use of it. However, this is the only show I know of (correct me if I’m wrong) which will have the look and feel of a real, big budget network show but be purely based online.

And best of all, after seeing the trailer I really can’t wait to see it. It looks like the evolved My So Called Life – it’s grown up, gone to university, and is figuring out what to do next minus all the flannel. I really hope it doesn’t let me down, as I’m rather dorkily looking forward to it (man I use a lot of parentheses).

Can merchants restrict SEO affiliates from ranking for their brand terms?

I made a rather flippant remark earlier on in the year regarding increasingly difficult (at times outrageous) demands from merchants when it comes to affiliate prorams and their brands. Said flippant remark along the lines of: ‘Before you know it, they’ll be forbidding affiliates from outranking them on their brand terms in Google! Scoff scoff!’. Hmmm, and yep, the rumblings are starting all over the place. It doesn’t seem to be a big issue just now but I can see the dust of the forthcoming raging hordes gathering over the hilltops.

First of all, let me say that I am 100% behind a merchant protecting their brand name – they’ve spent a lot of time and money on this brand and I totally get it, and to be honest I don’t see why many exceptions should be made. Now I love affiliate marketing, and I get that a lot of affiliates get jerked around by merchants but on somethings I really disagree – it’s just like: ok so the rules have changed now, how can we make this work? Let’s all move on here. But if the merchants are in the wrong, then I will try my upmost to make sure affiliates get a fair shake – although I may not always be successful (sometimes, as with everything in life, you get more of an outcome if you just repeatedly bang your head against a brick wall).

Anyway, I digress – the point is, despite all the mixed feelings outlined above I’ve always thought it was a bit of a stretch to ask affiliates NOT to outrank the merchants in search engines (usually Google). I’m sorry, but come on! The merchant will likely have the brand in their url as well as all the usual bits and pieces that make websites all SE friendly. If an affiliate site actually manages to outrank you for your OWN brand term than maybe you should be giving your SEO guys a good kicking rather than your affiliates. It should be fairly easy for a merchant to rank on brand terms, and in the case that an affiliate outranks you then maybe you should look into exactly what your friendly, neighborhood hired SEO guys have been charging you for.

As anyone who’s tried to get a site up a search engine’s rankings will tell you, it’s difficult to predict where your site will turn up and control what it does while it’s up there. Sites, especially affiliate sites, are totally subject to the SE gods and their will. It’s not like a PPC ad where you can lower your bid etc, and semi-control what and where your ad shows up. I think the fact that more and more SEO affiliates are showing up, merchants and networks (and us lowly agency folk) will have to think up terms and conditions to incorporate the whole SEO camp to help protect their brand but totally forbidding affiliates to outrank them in search engine’s natural listings is bordering on the hysterical. I get a bit frustrated sometimes and want to just say: ‘Ok, let’s all take a really deep breath, relax. Ok now let’s use some logic here this time’. Merchants need to really start viewing affiliates as marketing partners, and affiliates need to hold up their end of the bargain by accepting what it means to be a partner and act like one.

And on that note, I’m off to listen to some Pony Up and my new favorite song The truth about cats and dogs (is that they die). Meh, I like it!

My musical twist today

I’ve been on a bizarre musical journey today – usually Radio 6 is quite good, but the guy who was filling in for Gideon Coe’s show this morning was pish. So instead it was on to Last.fm and youtube for a bizarre mixture of mid-90s and 80s pop, etc. Some of the highlights – The Primitives- Crash, Run DMC – Run’s House (planning on blasting it and moonwalking out of the eqtr offices to it – hehee), a LOT of Elastica, and of course a spattering of others of that ilk (thanks Last.fm) such as Kenickie and such. All in all, for a rubbish Monday, at least musically I’ve been kept alive and amused. So if you like the sound of all that, check out the handy dandy links and hope it makes your day a bit better!