Posted by Dario Meli

They say ‘the devil is in the details’ and thats no clich?©. Well maybe it is a clich?© but its also a statement of fact. Here are a couple lovely examples of people just getting it wrong and apparently nobody able to catch it before it ‘goes live.’

iPhone in an ad. This goes beyond a model not knowing how to hold the phone. Are you telling me nobody on this photo shoot knew which end was up? FAIL

And this is just unfortunate. Not even Barack has a grasp on a function he has been performing for many, many years:

OK, so that one is fake. It’s still somewhat entertaining and a perfect tie-in to the iPhone FAIL pic.

I know there are countless others. Post some links in the comments to your favorites.

Posted by Jenn Lowther

We are absolutely inundated with marketing and advertising messages from the time we wake up to when our heads hit the pillows at night. But, even with all this time, money, and effort that goes into these traditional and online campaign, unaided recall of most advertising is abysmal.? Think about it can you name and ad or two that you’ve seen in the past hour.? Didn’t think so.

Our brains receive so much information, they have learned to tune out things that are unimportant.? Unfortunately, advertising and marketing quite often falls into this realm.? In order to make sure that your message breaks through this filter, it needs to be unique and stand out from the rest of the noise.

Well one airline has managed to do just that with an innovative email newsletter.? It really does make you go WTF?

This newsletter takes an everyday acronym that anyone who has ever used IM is familiar with and has re-purposed it.? Because we are not expecting a corporate email to have the title WTF, it stands out in our heads.? We then look at their newsletter to see what they are talking about.

*I’d like to give credit to Media Bistro for blogging about this.? Although they didn’t like the email, it’s gotten us all talking about it, which really is the point of advertising.? Get your brand out there and have people talking about it.

Posted by Jenn Lowther

This one goes in the category of WTF were they thinking when they designed this product. I don’t know who to blame for it – branding or marketing – all I know is, is that I laughed hysterically when I read the packaging on the can of this energy drink. Enjoy.

When I looked up what horny goat weed is this is what I found:

Behind the funny name of horny goat weed stands a time-tested aphrodisiac that increases libido in men and women, and improves erectile function in men. Known also as Epimedium or Yin Yang Huo, horny goat weed was first described in ancient classical Chinese medicinal texts. Today, horny goat weed holds an important place in Traditional Chinese Medicine and is gaining popularity around the world.

Drink responsibly!

Posted by Jenn Lowther

The CBC has just published and article by Jesse Hirsh that looks into Facebook’s new advertising platform, Beacon. Beacon allows advertisers to install a small piece of code on their website that allows Facebook to track their users on these third party sites. This information is then imported into Facebook through recommendations in your friend’s newsfeeds and on your profile page. For instance, if I go to Ebay and buy The Life of Pi, this information will be imported to Facebook and disseminated amongst my friends by letting them know I just made this purchase. This advertising mechanism leverages the powerful force of word-of-mouth advertising.

The CBC article casts a critical eye on these new advertising updates on Facebook, calling into question the potential for privacy erosion associated with extending Facebook’s ability to harvest user data across advertising partners’ websites. It goes on to speculate that this could be a precipice in Facebook’s phenomenal growth over the past year and that this innovative marketing tool could send Facebook’s user base flocking to other social networking sites that are not actively engaging in the sale of user information to advertising companies.

I personally feel that this development in Facebook’s advertising platform will be both beneficial for Facebook’s users as well as advertisers. It allows the advertising that we see on the internet to be highly targeted towards our personal interest, rather than getting a static banner advertisement that is displayed to everyone regardless of their interest in the subject matter.

All of the people who are jumping up and down fretting about the possible incursion into our privacy are more than likely the same people who decreed that email would mean the end of worker productivity. No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.

The phenomenal success of facebook is staggering. Within a year of the platform opening to the public – previously, it was only available to college networks – it has become the fastest growing social networking site on the internet. Facebook currently boasts over 42 million active members worldwide and is expected to surpass 60 million users by the end of 2007. From September 2006 to September 2007 facebook increased its world wide ranking from 60th to 7th most visited website, and was the number one site for photos in the US, ahead of photo sharing site flickr, with over 8.5 million photos uploaded daily. According to Chris Hughes a spokesman for Facebook, – People spend an average of 19 minutes a day on Facebook. This level of user interaction combined with its sizable user base, gives companies a huge incentive to try and leverage facebook for their own business.

Facebook has opened up their platform to allow third parties the ability to create applications that run within member profiles on the site. This development has opened up many opportunities for outside companies to create apps that leverage their core competencies to grow their user base and expand their brand recognition. The viral nature of the facebook applications means that you can have tens of thousands of users adding your app to their profile in an extremely short period of time. When done properly, this allows these companies to monetize their custom facebook application creating the potential to create a large revenue stream for the company.

The key to a successful facebook application is twofold. The first is to create something that users want to add to their profile and then share it with their friends. This step is critical for the app to become successful. When developing your app, you need to keep this step foremost in your mind, as if you create something that does not incentivize the end user, it will not takeoff within the facebook community. Second, the app must be relevant to your product or service. In order to monetize your app, it must be relevant to you. You could create the most popular app on facebook and unless you have previously planned on ways to properly monetize it and parlay it into at least an ancillary part of your business, in the end it has just been a drain on your resources. If you have both of these steps properly thought-out from the outset and follow the game plan during the development state, you have a good chance of creating something that will become popular on facebook and have a good return on investment for your business.

Invoke Media has created facebook apps for several in-house and client initiatives with great success. We first have a brainstorming session to determine the functionality required and the business goals of the app. From this initial meeting, we then develop documentation that thoroughly outlines the functionality, development schedule, and launch plan. If you would like more information about creating and launching a facebook application for your business, contact us today.