Lost
in Spam?
The current dismal state of email in a world choked by communication pollution
suggests that the e-newsletter will become as unwanted and reviled as
its print cousin. The downside: you can't line the cat's litter box with
it. The upside: you can delete it with a click. Jakob
Nielsen (Alertbox 021704) finds a few rays of hope for the future,
though, for e-newsletters that are: 1) targeted to very specific, opt-in
audiences; 2) designed to be easily scanned; and 3) timely. "Designing
for users who scan rather than read is essential for a newsletter's survival…
The implications? Layouts must be designed to let users quickly grasp
each issue's content and zero in on specifics. Content and writing styles
must support users who read only part of the material," Nielsen says.
"Newsletters must justify their inbox space on a daily basis. Having
been relevant in the past is not enough. Because of the medium's immediacy,
newsletters must be relevant today and address the user's specific needs
in the moment."
| The
Almighty Ad Dollar
Media bottom-feeders,
take heart! We're getting better, according to marketer Paul Womington
of The Media Kitchen.
"Consumers have become masterful media editors," he
says, so marketers have to invent ever new strategies to sneak
messages in under consumer radar. Media Kitchen created this campaign
for the USA Network, placing ad stickers on 50,000 greenbacks
circulated as small change at hip bars in New York and Los Angeles.
"Money is one of the most viral things there is," Womington
says. The bills are expected to grease 30-50 consumer palms in
a month. It is the postmodern marketer's version of waltzing on
the edge of Occam's razor: how do you cut through the "data
smog" while pumping ever more tons of the stuff into the
mediasphere? You can hear more about the ad campaign on Marketplace
(012204).
|
Wilgoren
Watch
"First there were blogs," explains Howard Kirtz in the Washington
Post [011204]. "Then there were blogs about blogs. Then
there were blogs slamming news organizations. Now Jodi Wilgoren, who
covers Howard Dean for the New York Times, finds there is a blog devoted
to critiquing her work."
Let
Your Inner Anthropologist Flourish!
Bet you didn't know you had an inner anthropologist. If not, then who
is that watching and taking notes as you brush your teeth? Maybe you'll
find out in Margaret's Walking Stick, "a perpetual anthropology/ethnography
education project" produced on the web by the Context Research
Group, which sells cultural anthropology services to corporate marketing
clients. Who is watching whom here?
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