From today’s Adweek: Carat, the only independent media agency network in the world, recently merged its media agency with its digital agency. Why? Because in the next two decades, approximately 80% of all advertising will be digital, and Carat knows that. Check out a quick-read interview with Carat’s CEO, David Verklin.

Q&A: Carat’s Verklin
July 30, 2007
By Steve McClellan

NEW YORK In a move last week that underscores the growing importance of digital offerings in the ad agency business, Aegis Group’s Carat merged its Carat USA traditional media agency with Carat Fusion, its digital shop, creating an entity with an estimated $300 million in revenue and $7.6 billion in billings.
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What a bitter time for sports. The Tour De France is getting nailed with doping allegations, the NFL is dragged into the Michael Vick dog-fighting case, nobody wants Barry Bonds to break the home-run record and don’t even begin talking about Kobe Bryant.

Scratch that, let’s begin with Kobe and his deal with Nike. With their “swish” of a deal with Michael Jordan it seemed to make sense to executives at Nike that Kobe Bryant, the self-ordained heir to Jordan, would fill his shoes. Get it, his shoes? Moving on. There are some differences between Jordan and Bryant but none became more clear than in June of 2003 when Kobe was charged with sexually assaulting a 19 year old hotel employee in one of the most publicized trials ever. In the end charges were dropped and a civil lawsuit was settled but the image that Nike had hoped to leverage was damaged. In fact, Nike waited 2 and a half years before airing their first commercial for Kobe. Hardly an ideal situation for their $45 million deal.

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Viral marketing, Web 2.0, two improv comedians, 5 Vloggie awards and winner of 2007 Webby Award for Actor of the Year are all spices that make up the fine dish of AskaNinja.com. Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine began AskaNinja.com in late 2005 and exploded into popularity, with the help of YouTube.com, in the beginning of 2006.

The quick-witted, ninja related comedy is served in 2-3 minute episodes and can expand a little longer for special occasions. There’s no better example than the movie interview for Blades of Glory when “Ninja” exchanges hilarious banter with Will Ferrell (view on YouTube). Normal episodes answer questions from viewers, blending video with the online community of the Internet to create unique, over-the-top comedy each time.

Despite the prominent visibility, numerous awards and loyal fans the popularity seems to have hit a peek. Alexa traffic rankings point out that AskaNinja.com has slowly declined for a little over a year and lost nearly 8,000 places in ranking in the last three months alone. So if you are one of the people who loves the series but hasn’t visited their site in a while you might soon be redirected to SaveaNinja.com.

There’s always time for a cheap plug to buy Ninja throwing stars at ThrowingStar.net!

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Today i watched a great video that i consider excellent and I would like to share it. You can find it here.

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User generated content is one of the key foundations of Web 2.0. and everybody create and rate content on heavy hitting sites such as MySpace, Wikipedia and YouTube. As i read in a recent article, a survey showed that within the 16-44 age group 74% have rated or reviewed products, content or services. A picture, a video, a comment, everything is rated. In web 1.0 content rating was the task of experts, but in Web 2.0 this task has been assigned to the average user.

In most sites, the rating system used, is a scale from one to five, one for worst, five for best. My doubt here is if this rating system is right. Let’s take youtube for example: i watch a video in the funny category, which i think is very cool and i rate it with 5 stars … which is maximum. After that, i watch another related video, in the same category, with the same subject, but i think is better than the previous one. How should i rate it? Should i give it 5 stars? That would seem to be the right choice, but is it? If I give it 5 stars, it would mean that i rate it to be the same as the previous one, but in my opinion it isn’t. Can i go back and rate it again? No! So … what should i do?

Another rating method is: “i like it” or “i don’t like it” as seen in Stumble. I find this method to be better than the previous one, because i only have to say what is cool for me or what is not. Let’s go back to the videos. I watch the first movie and i like it. I watch the second, i like it also. No grades, no scales, nothing. I just liked them and i rated them to be cool. In my case, if i don’t like it i don’t vote, or if i see something that i really DON’T like, i vote that i don’t like it. The more votes of “I like it” the better that content is.

I think in a rating system we must consider the following: number of views, number of votes, the date when it was posted and user profiling of the one that votes. I really don’t know what is the exact ratio for each one in the formula, but i find these as key elements of this process.

In the end, i want to ask some questions and everyone’s opinion might improve this system:

1. How can we discover quality content in Web 2.0?
2. What ratings should we trust?
3. How accurate this ratings are?

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The marketing for “The Simpsons Movie” has taken a slightly unconventional turn, with some unexpected tricks up Fox‘s sleeve. Take 7-11, for example, who turned 12 of their stores (11 in the U.S and one in Canada) into Kwik-E-Marts overnight to spoof on the food mart made famous from the Simpsons television show. Find the one nearest you.

Burger King created a website that will “Simpsonize” your photo, turning a real photograph of yourself into a cartoon, Simpson-style. Try it out yourself.

JetBlue has kindly “lended” a portion of their site for Mr. Burns, the wealthiest man in Springfield, to write a blog instead of David Neeleman, the former CEO of JetBlue. You can check it out (for now) at by clicking here.

Reportedly other companies are getting into the mix too! Samsung is creating a phone with a Simpsons theme, Microsoft is creating a limited edition XBox with a Simpsons theme, Ben & Jerry’s is creating a “beer and doughnut” flavored ice cream and so on.

This unconventional cartoon turned movie has certainly held up it’s end of the deal when it comes to unconventional marketing. “The Simpsons Movie” will be opening July 27th so it will be interesting to see if these wacky techniques will pay off. Are you going to see it?

Don’t forget to create your own Simpsons avatar.

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One of the more popular terms used recently around the holiday season is Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving. This comes immediately after Black Friday, the Friday after Thanksgiving, and is thought to be the busiest online shopping day of the year. The use of Cyber Monday started in 2005 compared to Black Friday being traced back to the 1970′s. Interestingly, Cyber Monday is not even close to the busiest online shopping day of the year. In fact, it ranked 12th during the 2006 season, with Wednesday, December 13th bringing in the most digital dollars ($666.9 million – according to ComScore).

The single most important marketing day, however, is Super Bowl Sunday. With ads costing an amazing $2.6 million for 30 seconds companies are betting that the 90 million viewers will buy their products. King Pharmaceuticals advertised their website www.beatyourisk.com during the 2007 Super Bowl and saw their change in market share increase more than 1,700% the two days after the game.

Aside from these two major events there really isn’t much information available about which days of the week are busier than others. Digging through critically important stats like browsers or versions of Flash finally yielded the needle in the haystack. TheCounter.com keeps track of global Internet usage by weekday, hoorah! It’s very clear that weekend has much lower traffic than the weekdays, with Saturday receiving HookorSink.com’s official “Worst Day of the Week” for online shopping.

Drum roll please… and the recipient of this year’s HookorSink.com “Most Important Day of the Week Award” goes to… Monday!!! Grabbing 16.29% of the weekly Internet Traffic (July 2006 – June 2007), Monday is marginally higher than any other day. As you can see in the graph below the traffic declines a little more each day before it resets itself the following Monday. Although there are exceptions to these trends, like Wednesday, December 12th (2006), it’s safe to say that if you’re trying to get the most impact for your marketing bucks target Monday shoppers!

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One of the staples of the social networking phenomenon, blogs act as a creative outlet, as a source of information, and as a personal opinion platform. But did you know that blogs are also being used as ammunition on the frontlines of guerilla marketing?

That’s right! With the proliferation of blogs has come the proliferation of alter egos for corporate and personal gain. Also known as “stealth marketing” or “buzz marketing,” fake blogs are becoming all too commonplace in corporate America.

Plenty of companies have already been chastised for their clandestine marketing efforts. Not long ago, Wal-Mart was exposed for using a phony blog to strengthen their brand with their “Wal-Marting Across America” blog. Similarly, Sony was caught using a fake blog to generate buzz for their PSP gaming system.

Most recently, the Chairman and CEO of Whole Foods Market was caught posting under an alter ego on Yahoo’s investment message boards in order to promote his company and belittle the competition.

Such secret activity begs the question: Is anonymous corporate blogging an acceptable way to market products or services to consumers? Is it appropriate to use a fake blog to strengthen one’s corporate brand? Do corporate executives cross the line when they use aliases to promote companies on blogs and message boards?

While I don’t want to be misled by corporate executives presenting themselves as the average consumer, I nevertheless believe in the importance of being an informed consumer, and of understanding that blogs and message boards are ultimately opinion platforms. The old age “buyer beware” certainly applies here.

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Characterized by greater levels of user participation and interaction, Web 2.0 advances – such as blogs, RSS feeds, podcasts and Ajax-driven Web sites – are fast becoming the norm these days. However, social network sites are really gaining momentum. Did the explosion of MySpace and Facebook cause an organic implosion of new sites?

More than 40 “build-your-own-social-network” vendors now let individuals and companies build instant MySpaces. Sites such as, Ning, Me.Com, OneSite and PeopleAggregator let anyone build a features-rich social network site in just a few clicks.

For example, on Me.Com, you’ll find thinkpoz.com, which is a community for people living with HIV, as well as their family and friends. Village.santa.com allows kids of all ages to write to Santa or Rudolph throughout the year. Orthodoxcircle.com is a laity-run community for Orthodox Christians to come together. And then there is Hollatime.com, a hip-hop and rap version of MySpace.

You name it, and most likely, there is a social network you can join. But what’s the dillio with all these social networking sites? Could it be that Facebook – which reached 30 million users last month – released a new platform that let others build applications targeting its users? Or could it be that social network users simply enjoy “being a part of something?”

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The Internet didn’t just change how business and marketing is done, it also changed how we consume. No concept better captures that then The Long Tail. A typical record store can only physically carry so many albums so they are sure to only carry the best sellers. However on the Internet and with digital storage, the number of albums an online store can carry is almost infinite – the long tail. When exposed to that long tail users have shown a penchant for picking up old hits they remember from the 80’s, their childhood, etc. more then grabbing hits from today. The total sales of albums in the long tail greatly out numbers those in the short end of current hits. With a music industry built on controlling distribution and profiting off the short tail, exposure to the long tail has not been good for business. CD music sales are down 20% compared to a year ago, contributing to the 7th year of declines as reported by the Wall Street Journal. It isn’t all doom and gloom; digital sales are up 50% for the year. But they couldn’t save the industry as overall revenue was down 25%. Digital sales simply aren’t as profitable as CD sales.

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