Marketers Studio - David Berkowitz's Marketing Blog

Barry, You Listened!

Well, once in awhile, a prediction comes true. Jeeves, Ask.com's butler is retired, but Barry Diller is finally trying to get the Ask.com acquisition to really pay off for IAC. See the news below from MarketingVox, and then see my words to Barry from April 2005.

From MarketingVox, November 2006:

InterActiveCorp. Chairman and CEO Barry Diller said the company will unveil a new local information service Dec. 4 that combines the functions of Ask.com, CitySearch, Evite, and Ticketmaster.

"We are coming out with AskCity, which is our local service," Diller told the Reuters Media Summit in New York. "It integrates maps, integrates events, integrates all of these different attributes that we have got in the best thing you will be able to use in a city to do things."

Ask.com is looking to stay several steps ahead of far larger search rivals Google, Yahoo and Microsoft by innovating faster and taking advantage of its stable of web and e-commerce sites, he said.

From my MediaPost Search Insider column, April 2005:

Almost all of IAC’s properties pivot around local angles, and those that don’t should either be retooled or dropped. Local-focused properties include: Citysearch, Entertainment Publications (which produces the coupon books), Expedia, Hotels.com, HSN, Match.com, RealEstate.com, and TicketMaster. ZeroDegrees, a struggling social networking site, could relaunch as a way to bring business professionals together. Gifts.com could tie in with the Evite social network to recommend popular gifts by people you’re connected to in your area. The word "local" isn’t in IAC’s mission statement, nor is any synonym, but given IAC’s expertise and its dreams for Ask Jeeves, that should change immediately. Barry, are you listening?

Jeeves, the beloved Ask.com butler, could become the face of local search if Diller invests in it with the same type of fervor in which he bid for Ask Jeeves in the first place. Some readers will be skeptical; this columnist is too. Yet Diller has two assets to exploit: vision and opportunity.

Barry, next time lunch is on you.

The MySpace Search Engine

I've written a fair amount, including in the recent column on social media at the Search Insider Summit, how MySpace (along with other sites like YouTube, Amazon, and Second Life) should be considered a search engine. Hitwise, in its latest monthly newsletter, just backed that up.

Google (www.google.com) was responsible for 18.16 percent of the visits to the PlayStation website (www.playstation.com) for the week ending November 11, 2006. Other leading sites driving traffic to the Playstation website were Yahoo! Search (www.search.yahoo.com), which accounted for 5.40 percent of upstream visits and MySpace (www.myspace.com), accounting for 4.57 percent of upstream visits in the same time period.

Wow. Expect to see a lot more than that. And notice that MySpace is mentioned here, not MSN. All the search engines should be taking notice, including Google, which paid $1.65 billion for YouTube and did a $900 million rev share deal with MySpace (addressed in another recent column, in a way).

Populist Search vs. Social Media

Once in awhile I try to write a column for the media buyers and planners, the original target audience of MediaPost, which has since expanded considerably. This one's for them, and anyone else who's interested in social media planning, which is a lot less revolutionary than search. The full column's in the extended entry or at the above link. If you've done campaigns on MySpace and YouTube, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Google Webmaster Resources

In toying around with Google Sitemaps, I came across some great reminders of advanced search features Google offers for webmasters, or for anyone looking for more info about a site. To use these, see the examples, or just go to google and type the query, such as site:www.yoursite.com.

site:	Indexed pages in your site	site:www.marketersstudio.com
link:	Pages that link to your site	link:www.marketersstudio.com
cache:	The current cache of your site	cache:www.marketersstudio.com
info:	Information we have about your site	info:www.marktersstudio.com

related:

Pages that are similar to your site

related:www.marketersstudio.com

"Lost" Seinfeld Episode

Via Digg: Catch the "lost" episode of Seinfeld, featuring the hilarious antics of Michael Richards' racist rant and subsequent apology.
http://www.planetboredom.net/video.php?id=2990

The Discovery Engine

Fortune has an excellent piece on the rise of the 'discovery engine' - essentially, a take on how recommendation engines will learn about you so well, they'll know your wants and needs before you ever explicitly express them (as you would with search).

 

The Web, they say, is leaving the era of search and entering one of discovery. What's the difference? Search is what you do when you're looking for something. Discovery is when something wonderful that you didn't know existed, or didn't know how to ask for, finds you. When it comes to search, there's a clear winner - a $145 billion company called Google.

 

But there is no go-to discovery engine - yet. Building a personalized discovery mechanism will mean tapping into all the manners of expression, categorization, and opinions that exist on the Web today. It's no easy feat, but if a company can pull it off and make the formula portable so it works on your mobile phone - well, such a tool could change not just marketing, but all of commerce.

I'm convinced in the promise of this, but I don't think it will replace search. Actually, I think it will be an even bigger driver for it, as it will inspire people to search even more beyond what's being recommended. Additionally, the more you search, the better the recommendations. It's all connected.

This Week's Non-Sponsor: Shop.org's Cybermonday

This blog doesn't take real sponsorships. Instead, one site that is making the web and world a better place will reside atop the blog free of charge. To nominate a site for future week's non-sponsor, contact me. This week's non-sponsor was referred by Mike May.

One of interactive marketing's biggest challenges is hiring, and Shop.org offers a way to promote its members' contributions toward a worthwhile cause. Here's the summary from Shop.org Executive Director Scott Silverman:

Shop.org has launched www.cybermonday.com, an online shopping mall where nearly 400 merchants are showcasing their holiday promotions and sales.  It's an affiliate site and all of Shop.org's proceeds go to our Ray M. Greenly Scholarship Fund, which provides tuition assistance to college students interested in e-commerce careers. Through the site, Shop.org becomes an affiliate and we make affiliate commissions from any sale that originates from the site.

 

Don't Mess with Texas Branding

I spent Thanksgiving in Dallas, and during part of my stay, Cara took me on a road trip to Austin, with a number of stops along the way in towns as large as Austin and as small as… well, I’m not sure, but they all seemed to have a Bush’s Chicken, a chain that makes Kentucky Fried Chicken seem like fine dining (Bush’s has managed to sign up Time Warner Cable as a promotional partner, testifying either to Time Warner’s marketing brilliance or its desperation).

Along the way, we were constantly reminded of one thing: we were in Texas. We saw far more Texas flags than American flags, and every billboard, pit stop, and inch of space devoted to marketing had some Texas connection, outside of the ads for Kia, which doesn’t seem to get the whole Texas pride thing.

I can’t recall what the New York state flag looks like (I was writing this offline). I think it says something about the Empire State, I vaguely remember a tree, and I think it’s either blue or green, but that’s as close as I can get (it's blue, it says "Excelsior," and there's no tree). This is a state I’ve lived in all my life. On one road trip (we had to wander outside of Dallas for the full effect, as Dallas is only a little less Texan that New York City in most respects), the image of the state flag was branded into my brain to the point where I doubt I’ll never be able to forget it.

Austin was another story. Cara filled me in on the difference between the University of Texas Longhorns and the A&M Aggies. Go figure – the same weekend that I discovered I’m a fan of Vince Young’s alma mater, Vince Young punished my New York Giants and the Dallas Cowboys took first place. It’s tough having dual loyalties.

In Austin, everyone was clad in burnt orange Longhorns gear – really, everyone. Babies, grandparents, waitresses, bellhops… everyone. As Cara noted, even the homeless wear the merchandise. The street signs are in burnt orange, and there’s even this odd orange glow about the town. It’s brilliant in some ways from a marketing perspective, but from a visitor’s perspective, it’s either cultish or militaristic. They indoctrinate their young at birth (no joke), and there have been more than a few violent clashes between Longhorns (“hook em!”) and Aggies (“Gig em!”).

As an epilogue, when I was returning from lunch to the office today, I was in the elevator with a flower delivery guy wearing a gray sweatshirt with the word “Texas” in orange emblazoned across the chest, an orange Nike swoosh below. For the first time in my life, I actually knew what that shirt meant. I had to say something, so I did.

Me: UT?
Delivery Guy: Huh?
Me: Longhorns – are you a Longhorns fan?
Delivery Guy: Huh?
Me: Nevermind.
Delivery Guy: No, tell me.
Me: Your shirt – University of Texas Longhorns.
Delivery Guy: Oh, that – I was in Texas visiting a friend and got it there.
Me: I was just there too.

I got off at my floor and he stayed on the elevator, smiling. There we were, two non-Texans in completely different lines of work, 1,500 miles from Austin, bonding over a football team neither of us claim as our own. Branding (and merchandizing) unites us all.

Search Insider Summit Video

MediaPost recorded video footage of the Search Insider Summit in Palm Springs, CA earlier this month. Readers of this blog might be interested in the Social Media panel on Day 3; my session's the last one.

Happy Thanksgiving

I'm offline for the holiday weekend. Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers, and a good weekend to one and all.  - David