BrandBlog (tm) / Marketing + Branding Blog

Advantage of Youth: ignorance

Young people make better entrepreneurs because they're too inexperienced to know that their ideas are silly:

The mistakes novices make come from a lack of experience. They overestimate mere fads, seeing revolution everywhere, and they make this kind of mistake a thousand times before they learn better. But the experts make the opposite mistake, so that when a real once-in-a-lifetime change comes along, they regard it as a fad. As a result of this asymmetry, the novice makes their one good call during an actual revolution, at exactly the same time the expert makes their one big mistake, but at that moment, that’s all that is needed to give the newcomer a considerable edge.

» corante.com [ Contribute: submit link / submit article / submit company ]

A Fair(y) Use Tale: Disney Characters Explain Copyright

"A Fair(y) Use Tale" mashes up all your Disney favorites to humorously and effectively explain copyright law. The ten minute movie, directed by Eric Faden, came out of Stanford University's Fair Use Project Documentary Film Program. Stanford's Fair Use Project--to which Stanford Law professor, Copyright guru, Creative Commons advocate and Wired writer Lawrence Lessig contributes--was founded last year to "support to a range of projects designed to clarify, and extend, the boundaries of fair use in order to enhance creative freedom." And, well, the movie is damn sure creative, and certainly seems to take the boundaries of fair use about as far as they can go.

Professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University created the short film. He "is an assistant professor of Film Studies and English at Bucknell University. His research includes early cinema and digital imagery. He has also made several experimental films that imagine what academic research might look like as a product of electronic (rather than literary) culture."

» watch on youtube.com » mp4 [ Contribute: submit link / submit article / submit company ]

Phantom Audi TV commercial in Toronto

Audi apparently thought it could pull one over on the residents of Toronto, but it got caught. The automaker from Ingolstadt applied for a permit from the Film and Television Office of Toronto to shoot a commercial that would allow it to place double "T" statues that measure six feet high and fifteen feet long all over the city for a period of three days. A press release issued by Audi, however, confirms that no commercial would be shot, but rather that the statues are meant to act as billboards advertising the new Audi TT. The placement of the statues as advertisements, though, violates the city's signage laws.

» illegalsigns.ca / pr [ Contribute: submit link / submit article / submit company ]

Microsoft splashes $6bn on aQuantive

Microsoft agreed to spend $6bn buying digital marketing company aQuantive, based locally in Seattle, Washington. Now $6bn is pretty much small change for Microsoft - indeed the software group said the deal is not expected to have a significant impact on the company’s financial guidance - but this is an 85% premium on Thursday’s close for aQuantive, which must raise some eyebrows. The shares closed at $35.87 on Thursday - compare that to the $66.50 a share in cash Microsoft has just tabled.

Consolidation in the online advertising space has been rather brisk recently, with Google snapping up DoubleClick for $3.1bn, Yahoo! buying Right Media and WPP grabbing 24/7 Real Media just this week. Indeed, as a result of the Google/DoubleClick love-in, people started to question where that leaves Microsoft and recent speculation has seen its name linked with that of Yahoo! as a result.

» ft.com [ Contribute: submit link / submit article / submit company ]

[PDF] How To Beat The Stock Market: Buy Companies With High Customer Satisfaction Scores

A study in the Journal of Marketing concludes that you can beat the market consistently by buying stock in companies with high customer satisfaction ratings:

Using a back-tested paper portfolio and an actual case, the authors of a study published in the Journal of Marketing found that companies at the top 20% of the the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) greatly outperformed the the stock market, generating a 40% return. From 1996-2003, the portfolio outperformed the Dow Jones Industrial Average by 93%, the S&P 500 by 201%, and NASDAQ by 335%.

[ PDF ] view document » consumerist.com [ Contribute: submit link / submit article / submit company ]

Use Your Driver's License as a Debit Card

A startup promises to save both drivers and gas station owners a bundle at the pump by cutting credit cards out of the payment process. A two-year-old company called National Payment Card allows customers to pay for gas by swiping their driver's license and entering a PIN.

Aurora Bisig is a big believer in retailer discount cards. At her last count, she had a dozen—from Sam's Club (WMT) to nearly every grocery store in Central Texas. So this March, when the Austin (Tex.) insurance agent pulled into a gas station for a fill-up and saw a sign promising an additional 10¢ off per gallon for signing up with a new e-payment program, she was interested.

She was also pleased to learn that the "RollbackPrice" program wouldn't require her to add another piece of plastic to her overstuffed wallet. Instead, after entering her driver's license number and bank account information online with a two-year-old company called National Payment Card (NPC), she'd be able to pay for gas just by swiping her driver's license (linked directly, via the existing magnetic stripe, to her bank account), and entering a personal identification number.

» businessweek.com [ Contribute: submit link / submit article / submit company ]

Survey: Second Life residents are in favour of brands

CB News in partnership with Repères presents an opinion poll conducted among 1085 Second Life residents on their perception of Real Life brands in this universe.

The main thing learnt from the poll was that the presence of RL brands is perceived as positive by a great majority of Second Life residents: 66% believe that the presence of RL brands has a positive impact on SL, whereas 22% believe that RL brands have no impact on SL, and only 11% believe that RL brands have a negative impact on SL. Therefore there is no evidence of any overexposure effect or rejection. On the contrary, the avatars are looking forward to the presence of brands (45% of respondents even want more brands) because they enhance and give more credibility to Second Life:

- they give realism and substance to SL by establishing a link with Real Life,
- they make SL more interesting by increasing the number of residents and thus contribute to a greater permanence of this universe.

On the contrary, the main obstacles have more to do with the fear of spoiling the universe, by being too close to real life or too commercial.

[ PDF ] view document » f.abiven [ Contribute: submit link / submit article / submit company ]

Web 2.0 hype is making web firms neglect the basics of good design

Describing Web 2.0 as the "latest fashion", Mr Nielsen said many sites paying attention to it were neglecting some of the principles of good design and usability established over the last decade. Good practices include making a site easy to use, good search tools, the use of text free of jargon, usability testing and a consideration of design even before the first line of code is written.

Sadly, said Mr Nielsen, the rush to embrace Web 2.0 technology meant that many firms were turning their back on the basics. "They should get the basics right first," he said. "Sadly most websites do not have those primary things right."

» bbc.co.uk [ Contribute: submit link / submit article / submit company ]

PlayStation 3 Virtual World / Home Beta Trial

Home is a real-time 3D, networked community that serves as a meeting place for PlayStation 3 users from around the world, where they can interact, communicate, join online games, shop, share content and even build their own personal spaces. Home will be available as a free download from the PlayStation Store and will launch directly from the PS3 system's Home Menu.

» homebetatrial.com [ Contribute: submit link / submit article / submit company ]

New Way to Read Online Text - LiveLink

Scientists at a small startup called Walker Reading Technologies in Minnesota have determined that the human brain is not wired properly to read block text. They have found that our eyes view text as if they're peering through a straw. Not only does your brain see the text on the line you're reading, but it's also uploading superfluous information from the two lines above and the two lines below. This causes your brain to engage in a tug of war as it fights to filter and ignore the noise. The result is slower reading speeds and decreased comprehension. The company has developed a product that automatically re-formats text in a way that your brain can more easily comprehend.

» liveink.com