'Native advertising is the latest gimmick for infusing a dying old industry (and a sickly new one) with desperately needed cash.’

So says Bob Garfield in The Guardian. Native Advertising is content that blends seamlessly with other articles on a website, both in style and context. It’s visually indistinguishable from these and therefore tends to ambush readers. That’s what makes it different from the advertorials and infomercials of old, which were typically tagged as such and branded by their sponsors.   Read more

Brands are delicate - and easily damaged

Just after Barry O'Farrell famously showcased the value of Grange in his swansong as NSW Premier, Penfolds seems to be doing the exact opposite.  Read more

Is Big Data ready for the Real World of B2B Marketing? 

Or is it just the latest fad designed to confuse the innocent and mislead the ignorant?

A child born in 2012 will leave a data footprint detailed enough to assemble a day-by-day, even a minute-by-minute, account of his or her entire life, online and offline, from birth until death … ,’ writes Mark Sullivan in PCWorld. ‘Virtually every piece of personal information that you provide online will end up being bought and sold, segmented, packaged, analysed, repackaged, and sold again.’  Read more

What do Eccolo Media and MKR have in common?

We dig into Eccolo’s excellent 2014 B2B Technology Content Survey.

We’ve likened content marketing to dating, My Kitchen Rules, taking a family holiday and sending Christmas cards, and said it's nothing like spray tanning. But the big questions are what content works with whom, where and when?  Read more

It’s the KISS principle again:  Your landing pages are your first chance to show visitors everything you can do – but please don’t. Keep it simple. Give visitors one message and one call to action – or they’ll do the very thing you don’t want them to do: leave in confusion.  Read more

When he beat Roger Federer in the recent Brisbane International, Leyton Hewitt managed to make himself look like a complete idiot, even though he'd won. Here's how not to accept an award - and why tennis players, too, need to add public speaking to their training schedules.  (image above: Fairfax Media).   Read more

Why make registering for a download an obstacle course?

One of our pet peeves is being confronted with the third degree every time we want to download an interesting resource. Why do companies who just want you on their lists ask more questions than a bank you want to borrow from?  Read more

What it is, why you need it, and how to get it right.

Marketing creates new buzzwords almost as often as fashion houses produce new styles. Content Marketing is one you bump into around every corner. Have you noticed that everyone is using the term as if they’d grown up with it? Are you still wondering what it means? There are manyanswers, mostly precise or uniform, so let’s cut through the nonsense and make sense of it.  Read more

After almost 2 decades of working with WWW, there are still many sites that have us looking for the nearest exit the instant we arrive. Now is the best time to check that your website is attracting visitors - not driving them away.   Read more

Everybody is doing it

Facebook, Twitter et al, once social platforms for people, have become marketing and advertising platforms for business. But success has been slow to follow. ‘Digital has changed marketing,’ says Fujitsu’s Simon Carter. ‘The economy has changed marketing. Bad weather changes marketing. So social media must have some effect. But my role as a B2B marketer is barely affected by social media. In 2013, I can’t see any results from social media yet.’  Read more