Most of the time, you’d want your product advertised near a news item that relates to your product — but not always.
Thanks to AdPulp for the pointer.
Mac vs PC spoof ads
OK, so this morning I was going to write a rebuttal to Zern’s essay Dog food, exploding laptops and chlorine dioxide, but I got distracted by these wonderful spoofs of the Mac vs PC adverts.
There’s several, including that one about performance, plus others on security, gaming, upgrading, networking and portability. And if you watch any of them on YouTube, you’ll soon see links to other people’s efforts along the same lines.
Oh well, there’s 10 minutes of our lives we won’t get back…
The aim of PR
There’s two kinds o’people. Those who pay to be in the media, and those who are paid to be in the media. The aim of PR is to get you into the second group.
Paris Hilton, branding expert (apparently)
OK, I know that at one level I’m being sucked in by the very cult of celebrity I despise by even mentioning this, but… Paris Hilton has been offered a million dollars to teach a one-hour class on “How to Build Your Brand.”
Bill Zanker, president of The Learning Annex, previously paid Donald Trump $1.5M to lecture his students, so he must reckon Paris is roughly 67% as good:
“She’s a brilliant entrepreneur. I believe she can offer her knowledge and give back to other entrepreneurs. She’s obviously brilliant, and my students would love her.”
Bill, I’ll give you the Paris lessons for free:
- Start off rich. If you’re rich, you’ll automatically be invited to parties where paparazzi swarm. And without having to work for a living, you’ll have time for all the parties.
- Start off stupid. If people see that you’re rich and stupid, they’ll reckon it’ll be easy to separate the fool from her money. You’ll get a lot of attention. Just ask Rob Mills.
- Slut around like there’s no tomorrow. There’ll be plenty of Names at those parties. Pick a few and pork away! It’s all a numbers game anyway, so you’re aiming for quantity, not quality.
Et voila! An instantly-recognisable global brand!
Thanks (well, I guess it’s thanks) to Zern Liew for emailing me this vital information privately.
Is iPhone really such important news?
I wasn’t going to write anything about Apple’s new iPhone, because I knew it’d be analyzed to death pretty much everywhere else. But this blog posting (picture below) sums it up so nicely I just have to tell you.
Thanks to Hugh MacLeod for the pointer — and for linking to the more important news.
MYOB, you’re dumped! Hello NetAccounts
Marc Lehmann, you just scored your business Saasu a new customer because you commented on my gripes about MYOB. We’ve just made the decision to run my business with NetAccounts.
Marc, there was a steady flow of “Gee, wow!” moments as we looked at how NetAccounts might work for us — I’ll come back to that. But what really made the difference was how your company communicates. Especially when compared with MYOB…
- MYOB only ever communicate with me to ask for money. Once, they were quite aggressive about it.
- MYOB don’t reply to emails.
- You have to wade through so much clutter to find what you want on their website.
Imagine MYOB were a person. You’d say something to them, but they’d never respond. Instead, they’d just be talking at you — either asking for money or telling you how good they were. Constantly.
You, on the other hand, joined a conversation about MYOB by talking about your product — but you added another insight and kept the conversation alive. “Well,” I thought, “if they’ve won an award and they’re clueful about blogs, maybe I should look at their product.” So I did.
And while NetAccounts certainly looked capable of doing what we needed — gawd, our accounting needs aren’t rocket science! — it was the quality and sincerity of your communication which persuaded me to take a proper look.
- Your online demos are voiced by you, not some slick presenterdroid. This is reassuring.
- Your website won’t win a design award, but there’s no clutter and so far I’ve quickly found everything I’ve looked for.
- Saasu speaks in simple, direct language. You don’t shout about “Your business will be transformed”, you show me how I use your tool to do everyday things.
Imagine Saasu were a person. They’d be conversational, straightforward, to-the-point. All elements which build trust. All characteristics of someone you’d actually want to be involved with your business.
I’ll certainly have more to say about NetAccounts while I set it up over the weekend. But for now, my office manager Virginia Bridger had this to say after an hour or so poking around:
It’s a program that’s obviously been built knowing that human beings are going to be using it.
Oh, and Marc? I’ve just used your logo without asking first. I’m guessing that you won’t mind, given the context. 😉