Louise McGregor Communication

Millionth Word is a PR Stunt

Not literally. The millionth word was “Web 2.0” at least according to the Global Language Monitor, I don’t believe it (and I’m ignoring the debate on whether it’s really a word, or what methodology should be used to count it). It’s not possible that Web 2.0 took longer to reach the qualifying threshold than octomom and chengguan.

“As expected, English crossed the 1,000,000 word threshold on June 10, 2009 at 10:22 am GMT” according to the Global Language Monitor. The GLM monitors the use of words in English and to qualifies new words as having been used at least 25,000 times, with a depth of uses and a wide geographic spread.

Early this morning there were 15 finalists listed, some hijacked from other langauges some drawn from the online world. I was secretly hoping “noob” meaning a new person in the gaming world, would cross the line as the millionth word. But no such luck.

  • The 999,999th word was Jai Ho!
  • The 1,000,000th word was Web 2.0
  • The 1,000,001th word was Financial Tsunami

It’s odd, I was really surprised that Jai Ho and Financial Tsunami come in at the same time as Web 2.0 which has been around somewhat longer and pops up far more frequently in my world. So I checked google and now I beleive the results even less.

“Web 2.0” has 60 million more hits than the nearest competitor “slumdog” a term that was popularised by the movie Slumdog Millionaire. After some searching I can’t find a use of the term that predates the movie, indeed there are few uses of the term not in connection to the movie.

“Web 2.0” has 80,000% more hits than the 1,000,001 word “financial tsunami” which dates back to at least 2005,  but seems to appear only in business literature.

In contrast the term Web 2.0 was coined in 1999, and is widespread in business, technical and general writings globally. It’s completely impossible that 60 million entries of the term did not qualify. Particularly as the entries for noob and slumdog are genre specific and I suspect the term octomom has a fairly narrow geographic use. It’s nonsense.

I think this is a PR stunt, and Global Language Monitor (and lets face it, who’d heard of them before?) decided that Web 2.0 would generate lots of publicity and so chose it at as their millionth word and worked the PR.

Louise McGregor Communication

Copyright or Right to Copy?

In amongst all the flag waving and chest beating following the EU election was the news that the Pirate Party has won at least one seat in the EU parliament. This lead to a flurry of lame nautical puns in various newspaper headings “Ahoy! Pirate Party gets berth in European Parliament” for example.

It’s a relatively new party, started in 2006 and getting a huge publicity boost based on the conviction in the Pirate Bay case in Sweden. In the days following the verdict around 9000 people joined the party, making it the largest in Sweden.

The Pirate Party has a fairly narrow platform, their three stated goals are;

  • reform of copyright law
  • abolish the patent system
  • respect for the right to privacy

The first has a particular relevance to online communications, where theft of content is frequent and difficult to combat.

The Pirate Party wants to reduce the term of copyright to five years, and argues that the current long copyright terms stifle creativity and only support corporate value. I have my doubts about this so decided to do some digging. Continue reading “Copyright or Right to Copy?” →

Louise McGregor Book of the Month, Book Review

Buy-ology


Screen Shot 2014-09-27 at 13.48.23Buy-ology; How Everything We Believe About Why We Buy Is Wrong
By Martin Lindstrom

Buy-ology takes a scientific look at our decision-making process around buying, in a series of tests they examine the connection between advertising and sound, advertising and religion, advertising and sex. It comes up with some interesting conclusions.

The research was done using fMRI and SST, two brain scanning techniques that have been used to “map” brain activity to show which parts of the brain are active on specific tasks and in response to specific stimuli. Work has already been done on which areas of the brain are linked to various emotions and Linsdstrom connects that research to our reactions to various advertisements to examine whether warnings on smoking packets work (no), whether adverstising/shopping gives us anything like a religious experience in terms of brain chemistry (yes). And other critical marketing questions such as product placement.

Does product placement work? Are we more likely to buy a certain product when we see it on screen in a movie or tv programme. Well no and yes. Let’s take the no part of the story first. Continue reading “Buy-ology” →

Louise McGregor TV

The Apprentice – The Final

The final task for the candidates was to develop a new chocolate, along with packaging and shoot an advertisement.

The two remaining candidates are the team leaders and had to choose their team. Yasmina won the toss and chose first.

They started with the idea of marketing chocolates to men, but were talked out of it by the experts rather quickly – it’s women who eat chocolate and women who buy chocolate.

In a quick change Yasmina decided on a different path; “Coco Electric” chocolates with unusual flavour combinations such as strawberry and basil. Their branding was good, using black and shocking pink they created a logo, posters and good packaging. The pricing was at 6 pounds for a box of 18 chocolates.

The downside was the flavours, the actors used in the ads spat them out – not a good start. The ad itself was fairly cheesy, a small group sitting around eating chocolate and getting a “shock”.

On Kate’s team Ben came up with the concept of his and hers chocolates, and wanted to put them in a box shaped like a “69”. Kate squashed the box idea by saying she couldn’t credibly present it at the pitch. But she cleverly took the best of the idea and transformed it. Creating three trays in a small box “for him”, “for her” and “to share”.

The flavours were fairly high end luxury flavours – chosen by Debra, they sounded great, but came with a heavy price tag of 16 pounds. This took it out of mass market, but it was not a specialist/artisan product.

The initial name was awful “Intimate” when combined with the pastel colours gave quite the wrong branding, reminding Nick of a product in the category “feminine freshness”. Debra spotted it, Kate listened, and a ten minute brainstorm later it was rebranded as “Choc D’Amour”. The ad took romance into the naughty zone, and apart from the smeared chocolate was really good.

The presentations were both good, Kate was a much better presenter but there was more styling in Yasmina’s presentation.

In the board room Sir Alan kept the audience guessing, or at least tried to, balancing Kate’s shortcomings against the possibility of Yasmina leaving to continue her own business.

Right on cue: Yasmina; you’re hired.

Good decision – I think she has incredible determination and a lot of untapped potential. I think we’ve already seen the best of Kate.

So that’s it until next year, when there’ll be at least one change to the line up, Margaret Mountford is leaving the show to be a student. OK I guess studying for a Ph.D. in papyrology isn’t that “studentish”. The show won’t be the same without her.

Louise McGregor Buzzword

Critical Path

This is a term that I occasionally hear used in great dramatic tones to impart a sense of urgency to the listeners. Sometimes coming from people with a background in project management, and sometimes not.

Picture 8Critical Path Method comes out of project management theory, developed in the 1950s at Dupont. The concept was developed to help in the planning phase of project management, and it’s often visualised with a Gantt Chart (which predates CPM).

This helps to visualise tasks that are dependent on each other throughout a project, and the tasks that must be completed on time in order for the project to be deliverd on time are coloured red (as shown above).

These tasks are the critical path.

I suspect that most people use to refert to tasks that did not start out on the critical path, but have become critical because someone hasn’t completed their non-critical task on schedule.

image: architecture via pixabay

Louise McGregor Marketing

The 4 Ps of Internet Marketing

In the “old days”, back when I did my MBA, one of the key models of marketing was the “The four Ps“; Product, Price, Placement and Promotion. The theory wasn’t new then, it was developed by Professor Neil Borden at Harvard Business School in the early 60s.

I picked up an article via twitter that theorised that these four principles have changed due to the transformation of business by the internet. According to the writer the four Ps have been changed into; traffic, conversion, growth and content.

Can you spot what’s missing?

Internet marketing is different, but you can have the best marketing campaign in the world and if the product is not clear, and the price is not stated you’ve got no sales. So your campaign is a waste of time. Conversion and growth are a result of your campaign – not part of it. I don’t see this model replacing the tradition one any time soon.

Let’s look at how the old model has changed in the online world. Continue reading “The 4 Ps of Internet Marketing” →