General

Unlike most elections, this year is a little different. I have been asked by my dear friend Cendrix Bouchard from French CBC to be part of a TV show on RDI (Reseau de l’Information), which presents a few “undecided” Canadians from every province, to answer questions in a weekly interview and provide my impressions on the weekly progress that has been made in the current campaign. In light of such experiment, which I enjoy thoroughly, I would like to share something that has been sent to me with regards to the lack of funding by the conservative party in cultural events. I think it is hilarious (and shocking) and regardless of where you are coming from (French and/or English), I am sure you will find this clip delightful (make sure you turn the close caption on, from the bottom right corner).

If you care about the culture, here is something you have to watch:

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Boris Mann

Boris is a great man. Last weekend, while he was part of the stellar organizing committee of Northern Voice Conference 2008 on Personal Blogging, he celebrated his birthday. Of course we sang happy birthday, although I must admit, all these personal bloggers gathered for the occasion are better in blogging than singing. Nevertheless, we all appreciated the intense presence of Boris during the conference. He is so generous of his knowledge of everything that happens online. A quick get together with him and you will see that his passion is contagious. You will want to do more online just because he said so.

I had the pleasure you celebrate my last birthday with him. Boris was kind enough to give me the best gift an SEO guy can ask for: a Link. Of course I would do the same for you bud. You know how much I like you. So for those who are wondering what Boris does, please take a look at Boris Mann Consulting Services: Vancouver Internet Marketing Expert, Social Media Blogger, Drupal Specialist & Entrepreneur. Is this link love or what? You can also find a lot on his personal & professional blog about Social Software, VoIP, Home Networking, Web Development and Mac related items. Please let me know how much you like the packaging of your birthday gift. I could do a little more wrapping if you like. Enjoy responsibly.

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It is Valentines day and for the occasion, James, chief punk of Adhack, created a little assignment for his alphanauts (those are the people part of this secret society) to come up with an ad that reflects romance, sex or both.

The DIY (Do It Yourself) ads came in quite fast so here they are:

** Chocolate Love:
http://adhack2.com/public/detail/2444-1177
** M & Ms Valentine’s Ad --
http://adhack2.com/public/detail/2443-1177
** Potted Love --
http://adhack2.com/public/detail/1952-1177

Have a favourite? Share it! Email a link. Show it to friends. Blog it. Add it to your Facebook / MySpace page. StumbleUpon it. Digg it. Let the world know!

But now, Adhack is opening this up to even more lovers. Yes, that is right! Adhack is opening the gates to Adhack Alpha. Therefore, if you are in love, or think love is a good thing, here is what you can do:

1 - Invite friends to join Adhack. We’ve created a welcome page so they get the skinny: http://adhack2.com/public/welcome

2 - Make an ad. We’re getting more interest all the time. So we’re going public. Nuts to this ‘private alpha’ business. We’ll rock with what we got.

And public means we’ll be selling the ads. You may make some scratch. You may earn glory. You’ll only know if you make an ad.

3 - Official AdHack Materials, like a Press Release, below, if you need to describe AdHack to anyone.

Have any other suggestions? Contact James at

Here is some more about Valentines day, Chocolate, Sex and everything in between:
Chocolates and Sex in Valentine’s Day Advertising
(http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/2/prweb699003.htm)

Chocolates for your love on Valentine’s Day? Some people say chocolate is an aphrodisiac. But according to research, 6 out of 10 women prefer chocolates to sex. Can this be true? AdHack, a community of designers, photographers and creators, is spicing things up this Valentine’s Day with a racy advertising for chocolate lovers.

Vancouver, BC (PRWEB) February 14, 2008—Chocolates for your love on Valentine’s Day? Some people say chocolate is an aphrodisiac. But according to research, 6 out of 10 women prefer chocolates to sex. Can this be true?

Perhaps the Scots know best. According to the Scotsman, they prefer sex over chocolate.
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/features/Sex-and-the-Scottish.3766459.jp

Is it because European advertising is sexier than North American advertising?

If Valentine’s is about love, romance and feeling sexy, why are the advertisements so boring?

Love is never boring.

That’s why the AdHack community decided to spice things up this Valentine’s Day.
AdHack is a community of designers, photographers and creators who are pushing the advertising envelope.

Have a look at the “Chocolate Love” ad created by AdHack member Giant Ant Media.
http://adhack2.com/public/detail/2444-1177

The Assignment:
Create an ad for the best romance item ever received.

The Chocolate Love Ad Concept:
Giant Ant Media says “Pretty simple. We wanted to make a connection between chocolate and romance, and chocolate as an aphrodisiac but without using people. By using the chocolates, the video is still racy, which we wanted, but not crude and still retains a ‘cuteness’ about it. This video could work as an ad for a chocolate company (Purdy’s/Lindt), or even for a brand that sells ‘romantic’ goods (Oh My/Kama Sutra).”

“Chocolate Love” is a short, stop-motion animation, shot on a light box. 367 Frames.

See for yourself: “Chocolate Love” ad by Giant Ant Media
http://adhack.com/chocolate-love-on-valentines-day/

About AdHack
AdHack is a web-based marketplace for advertising creative. Anyone can create an ad. Anyone can buy an ad. AdHack acts like an eBay for ad creative, connecting ad buyers and ad creators. Learn more on the public site at http://www.adhack.com

AdHack is currently in a private alpha rollout. For more information contact James Sherrett: 604-788-1502 or

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SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, just launch a section on YouTube where they put all their videos from various sources. You will find videos there from many people sitting on the Board of Directors where they talk about SEMPO, SEMPO Institute, SEMPO Research & Marketing and all the other SEMPO committees. These are the leaders shaping the Search Engine Marketing industry worldwide and it is very inspiring to hear them speak about their respective responsibilities as part of SEMPO. I selected this one for your review, where SEMPO Director Dana Todd talks about SEMPO and the SEMPO Institute.

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I have been receiving newsletters lately from ForestEthics, a non-profit organization that focuses on preserving endangered forest in Canada. In their last few emails, they were fiercefully attacking Sears Canada for their environmental policy with regards to the printing of their well known and heavy catalogues. Since 1880, Sears has been famous for their catalogues, but now it is 2007 and Sears must face this new era of climate change and recognize their role in it. They produce around 425 million catalogues every year - and the paper is coming from Canada’s Boreal Forest.

Change can happen. A few months ago month, Forest Ethics got a new commitment from Victoria’s Secret for adopting a more sensitive environmental policy with the printing of their catalogues.

Forest Ethics Activist Campaign against Victoria’s Secret in 2004:

See more about it on VictoriaDirtySecret.net

I personally love to support these initiatives. What is the link with Search Marketing? I think Google has brought up an environmental solution to an economic problem by allowing customers and suppliers to meet online as opposed to a paper-based support. It seems like more and more people are making this analogy with regards to search marketing. I hear it everywhere now in each Online Marketing conference. Not only will you get a better return on your advertising investment by doing Search Marketing, you will also save trees and the environment in the same way. What’s not to like? I can’t wait to see major companies like Sears Canada, who are selling thousands of products, adopting search marketing best practices with thousands of search terms. 

Now it is Sears Canada’s turn to adopt such environmental policy. As such, since the holiday season is just around the corner and so is their first International Day of Action on the Sears Campaign - you are invited to protest! On Tuesday, December 4, people across Canada and the United States will be taking action to tell Sears that they’re on our collective naughty list and it’s time to be nice to our Endangered Forests.

People are gathering in Vancouver (BC):
In Vancouver, we will be gathering at the downtown Sears outlet at 701 Granville St. from 12:30-1:00PM to send a message to the department store giant to stop cutting Canadian forests for their catalogues. Please call 604-724-4307 or send en email to Neil Monckton: neil{at}forestethics.org, if you can join ForestEthics on Dec. 4 over lunchtime at the Vancouver Sears outlet. Details are below:

Date: Tues., Dec. 4
Time: Lunchtime, 12:30-1:00PM
Location: Sears Canada, 701 Granville St. (northeast entrance at Georgia and Granville)
Contact: Call 604-724-4307 or email to RSVP

Tell Sears you don’t want a Wishbook, but that we’re wishing they would stop destroying Canadian forests! For more info, please contact Neil Monckton, ForestEthics Senior Organizing Associate - British Columbia. If you can’t attend the Vancouver event, please consider staging your own action at your local Sears outlet.

Remember: there are alternatives to reach your audience without printing catalogues and destroying our forests. Thanks!

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I hope you can read this in its original format. People don’t like any form of interruption advertising. Here is an excerpt from the press release:

Une étude réalisée par Australie et Ipsos met à jour le peu d’estime que portent les consommateurs français à la création publicitaire. Selon cette enquête, 79% d’entre eux trouvent la publicité “envahissante” et 65% la qualifient de “banale”.  Critiques, les Français sont aussi méfiants. La moitié jugent la pub “dangereuse”. Le nombre de publiphobes a d’ailleurs augmenté (30% contre 25% en 2004). Le phénomène est tempéré par Jean-Marc Lech, coprésident d’Ipsos, qui affirme dans une entrevue pour le magazine Influencia, que “ce n’est pas un phénomène militant”.

La recherche révèle par ailleurs que la perception de la pub est influencée par la pratique d’Internet. “Les gros consommateurs d’Internet sont les plus critiques (35% de publiphobes), bien qu’il soient accros de la consommation”, note Vincent Leclabart, président d’Australie. Ils trouvent la pub sur le Net ennuyeuse (73%), terriblement envahissante (94%) et très agressante (77%). Seulement 20% la jugent convaincante. Les Français sont particulièrement virulents envers la publicité télévisée. Ainsi, 90% la jugent envahissante, et 57% l’estiment banale et agressante.

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You may have heard the news last month about Facebook opening profiles to search engine indexing. It may be a good time to take a second look at your profile and polish it to make sure it won’t offend anyone.

Now, since I saw my Facebook profile indexed in Google as well as in Yahoo over the weekend, I can confirm that it is likely that your Facebook profile may have been indexed as well. Don’t wait a second and Google yourself right now and see if it is there. It should appear on the first page of search results.

What does this mean to you?
Since your Facebook profile is now indexed, anyone can Google your name and access it. Because of Facebook popularity, it is likely that your Facebook profile may appear on the first page of search results and thus get a fair share of the traffic from Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). But, unlike your LinkedIn profile, which is generally speaking more professional & polished, your Facebook profile contains a wider variety of content that is prone to interpretation. There are elements in most Facebook profiles that I would not want prospective clients to know for instance. Therefore, it would be helpful for you to review it carefully and remove any controversial items that may have been posted by you and/or your friends or any information that may be wrongfully interpreted. Tell your friends to be careful when they post content on your wall as well as pictures of you in different contexts or settings that you do not appear at your best (!) or for a business-type audience.

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Emanuel Krebs from ToughtPatterns.ca made an impactful post 2 days ago for the international day for the eradication of poverty, which included an easy-to-understand video on web 2.0 opportunities.

Emanuel Krebs, Blogger, ThoughtPatterns.ca

Emanuel pinpointed embarrassing stats in our humanitarian effort and what would be needed to solve major challenges in the developing world. As part of his well documented article, he mentions that whereas technology will not solve the problem, it can greatly help. As an example, GiveMeaning.com, an online fundraising site emphasizing creative fundraising ideas and other unique forms of charity donation has gained a lot of momentum in the last year. If you are not aware of GiveMeaning.com and how start ups like this one can help solve our biggest challenges, please check it out and step in.

Here is the clip on the power of Web 2.0 Applications:

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Every Monday morning, I get a newsletter that I truly look forward to receive: The Monday Morning Memo from the Wizards of Ads. Unlike everything else I receive through various sources, The Monday Morning Memo from the Wizard of Ads offers a unique experience in our customers’ brain where Roy Williams dissects the human nature needs, behaviors and give us ways to better connect with our customers with an increased understanding of what they really want to satisfy. In most cases, customers’ needs go way beyond what they would say to define it. You need that extra layer of understanding in order to adjust your offer accordingly. This newsletter is awesome and I heartedly recommend it. 

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The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) and members of SEMPO Canada, announced today it is launching its first ever salary survey of in-house search engine marketing professionals. The survey is open to all in-house SEM professionals whether or not they are currently SEMPO members. Organic and/or Paid-Search, in-house professionals are all invited to take the survey.

The 20-question survey can be accessed here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=DZCiIcuGHhZtJqv7NrjTrQ_3d_3d

Respondents have anonymity when taking the survey. SEMPO is running the survey through October and possibly will continue it into November. Results of the survey will be published in November.

Among the data trends SEMPO hopes to gauge are the overall salary range of SEM jobs, from entry level to executive; salary variations by geographic markets, the total compensation package beyond salaries, such as bonuses, benefits and perks; SEM staffing levels within enterprises, and SEM budget levels. 

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Last week, I had a little chat with Brian Hauk, the publisher of BC Contacts Directory. BC Contacts Directory is an easy to use, regularly updated British Columbia, Canada business directory and marketing software package which can save you time and money finding clients, distributors, business partners, suppliers and investors. It can also help you create mutually beneficial relationships with other organizations offering complementary services or products.

BC Contacts Directory Screenshot

As part of this conversation, Brian was kind enough to give me access to the trial version of his software. I must say that I was quite impressed by the ease of use of his BC Contacts software and I seriously consider purchasing it in the near future. It would definitely help me contact a variety of businesses to work with in Vancouver and BC. Check it out when you have a minute and feel fee to contact Brian Hauk for more information: brian at BCContacts.Net or 778-834-9424.

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Workspace is a really cool shared space / co-working environment in Vancouver’s Gastown. 2 weeks ago, Workspace had their first year anniversary party. Unfortunately, thieves broke into Workspace before the party and stole the iMac front-desk computer and laptops. Bill MacEwen, the owner of Workspace, was able to retrieve a photo of one of the suspected thieves after one of them uploaded a picture of himself accidentally. After the incident, the Vancouver blogging community decided to help on the rescue effort to find the thief but more importantly Workspace’s computers.

This is the guy who purchased one of the stolen computers and uploaded his picture accidentally. We all thought he was the thief but apparently not. Poor guy, he has his face all over the Internet by now.

As a result of all this blogging activity, hundreds of accrued incoming links fuelled the blogosphere. According to Bill MacEwen and Technorati, prior to the incident, Workspace had between 100 and 200 incoming links. It’s now showing 446. Consequently, Workspace has seen a 300% increase in visitors and page views to the site during the month of September. That’s a sudden, impressive growth, which usually takes years to achieve organically. In the last few days, my friends Travis Smith from Hopstudios.com and Boris Mann from bmannconsulting.com then ask me THE question: what is the value of all this sudden blogging activity & accrued visitors to Workspace’s site?

That’s a tough question but I will make an attempt at finding a figure for you. Of course, it is not the just the sheer amount of links that matters here but the amount of traffic to the site and finally the requests for new business for Workspace as a result of all this. If we only take the amount of accrued visitors into account in this scenario along with an estimated value of each visitor at $0.30, which is a realistic CPC (cost per click) average, we come up with a total traffic value of $2,250.90. Just to clarify, if Workspace would have had to pay to get this accrued traffic to their site, especially within that time frame, through any available paid options, such as Pay per Click (PPC) Advertising, it would have cost them at least $2,250.90, net of PPC Management fee. PPC Management fee in this case could have easily been evaluated at $1,000, in time and effort. Therefore, it is with a reasonable level of confidence that we can evaluate Workspace’s viral communication campaign worth $3,251.

Here is below the traffic over time and the sudden increase in September 2007. We usually create these spikes through PPC Advertising. It is quite unusual to see spikes like these through organic traffic, especially within that time period.

Finally, since a lot more people in Vancouver know Workspace and its shared workspace service, this unfortunate event is now turning into a noticeable PR campaign. This in itself has a lot of intrinsic value and long term branding effect which is hard to quantify objectively. Time will tell if the generosity offered by local bloggers will overcome the loss that Workspace has suffered. I can easily speculate that we have not found the end of this story yet and there is more to come back to Workspace then hot computers.

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David Forde from Profectio, a Canadian online public relation company, just launched a Search Engine Marketing Survey in Canada. After some great input from Helen Overland (non-linear creations), Ezra Silverton (9th Sphere) and Martin Byrne (Yahoo! Canada) the first annual Secrets to Effective Canadian Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Survey is ready for Canadian advertisers, marketers and all SEM practitioners to complete and participate.

“Recognizing the growth of Search Engine Marketing in Canada and its impact on businesses we thought it was time to provide Canadian specific data that we can all use to make better choices when we consider Search Engine Marketing as part of our campaigns and improve our buying decisions.” As part of the survey, Profectio gives you the chance to win tickets to Dirty Dancing at The Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto or an Apple 2 GB iPod.

The results of the survey will be discussed at their upcoming events and made available on their site after the event. Please fill out the Search Marketing survey now. Contest and survey closes October 17, 2007.

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A friend of mine sent me this great article today by David Meerman Scott from Web Ink Now on why you should avoid working with Advertising Agencies to develop your site. The article presents a few reasons why Ad Agencies are so bad at it. It also provides examples. Here they are:

Reason #1: Ad Agencies focus on aesthetics over information.
Reason #2: Ad Agencies focus on the wrong part of the sales cycle.

I know I talked about this a few times lately, but please allow me to add a few of my own:

Reason #3: Ad Agencies can’t communicate (they don’t listen).
Reason #4: Ad Agencies don’t realize they are being caught lying.
Reason #5: Ad Agencies don’t care about online users.
Reason #6: Ad Agencies treat you like a consumer rather then a person

I believe that in order to communicate properly, you have to be a good listener. Listening is the basis of all good communication and at this, I think most Advertising Agencies fail dramatically. A few months ago I wrote this post summarizing my thoughts on why the Next Ad Agency must listen. Online users are now in control of most of the talking. They are empowered and they are using this power to communicate. Who needs an Ad Agency to “communicate” manufactured stories to us, while we are sharing real stories and experiences between one another?

Feel free to read the article on why you should avoid an Ad Agency to build your site. If you need good partners to build or redesign your site, please let me know, and I will point in the right direction.

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It is with a lot of regret that SEMPO Canada announced last week that Nurun / Ant Interactive decided not to renew their SEMPO membership and therefore withdraw from all SEMPO-related activities involving the growth of Search Marketing in Canada. They simply stated that they were not getting enough of this relationship and this position was shared by every member of the Nurun / Ant Interactive team. In an industry that is in development, especially in Canada, I would like to take a moment to ask for your feedback on the nature of these relationships between SEMPO but especially the underlying expectations that business people may have in regards to SEMPO, SEMPO Canada and the Canadian Search Marketing Industry in general.

It is becoming a common understanding that the Canadian business community expects more out of this industry than they contribute to its growth. We are facing a scarcity of Search Marketing talent in Canada since very few schools, colleges or universities have a search engine marketing learning curriculum. The industry does not regenerate itself yet, which is why it is adequate to raise the question why we would see such a major icon in the Canadian web economy leaving our organization.

I have been working hard to launch and support SEMPO Canada in order to create an entity that anyone can call upon when they need support on Search Marketing and as such I would like to ask you for suggestions, criticism or any type of input that you may have so that we can fulfill your expectations in a way that would entice you to stay in and contribute. In the long run, everyone will benefit from it.

We are all in this together.

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