Recently, I was walking around the office and was attracted by this cartoon. What does it mean?

I think it’s telling us that companies need have a strategy in order to create a competitive advantage in their field. This strategy is synonymous with yes….CREATIVITY!

If you have nothing…and I mean, you “can’t compete on price…quality, features or service,” then you need to have creativity work for you! Of course, creativity isn’t something that you can just scoop up in a minute. You need to think in and outside the box in order to evaluate the unique qualities of your business and then represent them through innovative marketing and branding tactics.

After all, that’s what creativity is:

“the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.” (dictionary.com)

Brand Image
Good news is that creativity is within reach of everyone. You don’t need to have the most innovative product, just be able to sell it! How? Well first off, you will need to satisfy the needs of your customers in order to sustain your success. That is, you must have a decent product or service, just not necessarily the #1 rated in the market. There are many firms who have created a competitive advantage not on their product or service offering quality, but on their creativity and brand image.

Any come to mind?

• How about Geico using the “gecko lizard” to target young audiences? Is Geico insurance anything exceptional?
• McDonald’s?  They have made a fortune on their image! They are proof that you can package artery-clogging “Supersized” meals and sell them when paired with images of active lifestyles.

So, perfect examples of creativity put to work on whatever it may be. The key is these companies are able to create meaningful representations in the minds of consumers.

On the other hand, I see many great companies that I wish had better marketing and branding efforts because they have a great product or service. They aren’t hopeless; they’re just lacking the creativity necessary to stand out or at least reach larger portions of their target markets. Hopefully they can do this before it’s too late.

Bottom Line
How you brand and present your company will likely be the first and most lasting impression customers will hold of you. This is why having creative campaigns that resonate are crucial for successful businesses. Likewise, you can have the best product out there, but if you don’t know how to market it, then some inferior but more creative entity will get the profits. So go ahead…mix it up, make a name for yourself and get creative with your ideas.
As for the cartoon…..it’s not fraud, it’s just common sense.

So you want to know the future of social media?

This song spells it out better than anyone else dares to try.

Can your business be confusing, or do you just think you could explain it better in claymation? Well, at Claytorial, you can find out. Claytorial takes your business and creates a visual idea storyboard using drawings, which are then animated for you to place on your site. Visit the Claytorial home page to see an example done for Tagga.com, a real world text messaging service.

The way people experience Web sites now, no on spends time reading through an entire Web site if it is all in paragraph format. They skim the copy for words that pop out, bullet points and images, especially videos. As a visual learner myself, I would rather watch a video on a site, then read multiple paragraphs of copy.

And now you, in three easy steps, can claymate your business!

Rumors now abound that Best of the Web (BOTW) will try to buy the Mozilla Directory (DMOZ), and Internet advertising agencies everywhere are talking about it.

This is a big deal in the search marketing world for two reasons. The first is that very little ever seems to change in the search engine marketing world. When news like this might be happening, Internet marketing agencies rejoice, if only too have something new to talk about. It’s rather like living in Mayberry and hearing that Opie’s been caught cooking crystal meth.

The other reason Internet advertising agencies are so chatty about this is… well, complicated. Let me roll out what is known before I get to that. If you already know this stuff, feel free to skip down to, “But I already know that!”

It has long been known that Google looks to DMOZ to supplement its own rankings. Internet advertising agencies that get their clients a listing in DMOZ’s golf section for instance, improve their clients’ chances of turning up in a golf-related search on Google. Doing well in Google means a lot more visitors, a lot more sales, and a lot more money.

DMOZ is a free service - but devilishly hard to get listed on. The reasons for this vary, with a lot of bitter SEMs saying it has to do with getting the right bribe to the right DMOZ editor.

Personally, I think that anything that will help a site’s Google ranking is going to be bum-rushed by Internet marketing agencies everywhere, and that will certainly mean DMOZ’s work load gets a little backed up.

For instance, DMOZ wasn’t accepting submissions for quite a while due to technical reasons - only to open up for business again at the end of 2007. I was able to get several of our clients listed on DMOZ in very short amount of time then, betting that they didn’t have any other sites to review and would therefore get my clients up in no time. I was right, but after word got out that DMOZ was processing submissions again, all of the other Internet advertising agencies submitted all of their clients too, and things went back to taking 6 months or longer to get listed. It still takes this long, if you can get listed at all.

BOTW is a paid inclusion directory - if you want on, you get charged for it. Their listings aren’t really worth having, since few people go to them first to find something.

Google has long had a policy against sites paying for inbound links in order to help their search placement. Since DMOZ is free, they’ve been a trusted source.

“But I already know that!”

Okay, so, the second reason, then, is that if a paid search directory buys the free search directory, there’s a very good chance the free search directory wouldn’t be so free anymore. Google would either have to alter it’s policy, which is unlikely, or abandon DMOZ as a supplement.

This opens up all sorts of comments from search bloggers who bemoan Google’s policy. “Why can’t I just pay for placement already!?! I need visitors! Stop making my life hard!” Google’s job has never been to make the lives of Internet advertising agencies easier. It is only interested in improving results for users.

If Google did accept paid links to judge natural search results, then the highest placing sites would almost all be businesses who could afford to buy the most links. Consumers wouldn’t get very good search results, and they would move on to somewhere else.

“Somewhere else” would likely be the next search entity to ignore paid links, so that natural search results are actually “natural.”

To be honest, I doubt DMOZ would sell itself to BOTW. This rumor may have started at BOTW so they could get people to learn who they are for all I know. The story originated at the ShoeMoney blog, so you can read the story there and judge for yourself. If DMOZ were for sale, though, I would bet Google would top the offer just to keep the site free.

This all assumes, of course, that BOTW changes DMOZ’s business model. After all, AOL owns DMOZ now - and they haven’t charged for inclusion.

If DMOZ were made a paid inclusion directory, its value would certainly evaporate. ANY directory that requires you to pay to be part of it, isn’t making money from the people visiting it - and therefore isn’t worth being a part of.

If they were abandoned by Google because of paid links, there would be no reason for SEMs to kill themselves trying to get listed - removing the need to pay for a listing. Now, BOTW would make money charging people who didn’t know there was no more value in DMOZ for a little while, but eventually everyone would wise up and DMOZ’s importance would be a memory.

What better way to walk through some of our favorite video sharing sites but to post a video blog? In this vlog I will cover Vimeo, Viddler and Flickr. Each site has cool features that you may not know about. You Tube is the most popular, but give these a try - you may be surprised!

Share with us your favorite sites for sharing video!

Video Blog: Favorite Video Sharing Sites from off madison ave on Vimeo.

Don’t expect to see your favorite gymnastics routine replayed on YouTube anytime soon - not legally, anyway. NBC, who has exclusive broadcast rights to the Olympics, is keeping a tight grip on who can and cannot air Olympic audiovisuals.

According to a recent article, NBC is employing lawyers to guard its coveted Olympic coverage – heck, even athletes cannot post audiovisual snippets to their own personal blogs. Luckily, NBC has partnered with major Internet moguls like Google and Yahoo to bring online users Olympic news and stats. Still, no Olympic videos on YouTube, Myspace or Facebook? Seems almost out of place to me.