Wednesday, 7 February 2007

扩张博客媒体

好久没有关心网络世界了,今天补补课。

记得以前我曾经提到过——广告接触和影响受众的效果如何,要看媒体做得创意如何。看看江南春先生的基业是如何建立的,再问问为什么《财富》中文版为什么要把传统的杂志页面特地为广告主UPS伸展开,就能够明白其中缘由。在传统媒体思路下,有创意的媒体似乎比较容易实现。比如,把巨大的“金刚”模型放在楼顶上宣传该电影。网络上也能如此实现,比如Second Life等网络游戏或者虚拟社区就是很好的媒体。将Coca-Cola的红色易拉罐放在游戏中不比现实中的易拉罐差。

而现在,我可能要多说一句话——广告的效果如何,需要看媒体组合得如何。先不说传统户外媒体们的互相兼并收购,形成了现在的5大媒体集团,现在有位John Battelle先生已经在2.0世界(管他是web2.0, business2.0还是marketing2.0,反正都是概念),将一些优质媒体抢先组织起来,这就是他的Federated Media Publishing Ltd. 最近正在做的事情。

昨天浏览Duct Tape Marketing(Top 150 marketing blogs)的时候,无意中发现Business Week对John Battelle的报导。不过报导登出的日期很奇怪——居然是2007年2月12日。


John Battelle是著名Wired Magazine(连线杂志)的创办者,现在是Federated Media Publishing(FM)的创办人。他的公司目前搜集了很多的优质媒体——也就是有很大读者流量的博客。打开Federated Media的网站,最显眼的就是那一排被他拿下的博客们的icon。除了Digg.com,Boing Boing这些已经非常著名的博客之外,《魔鬼经济学》作者的博客也榜上有名。而FM是作为广告主和博客们的中间人存在,负责向广告客户提供高访问量的博客作为广告媒体,并收取40%的广告佣金作为酬劳。目前被FM搜集的,都是拥有“骨灰级”流量的博客网站。

作为一个媒体公司,FM详细列出了不同博客们的广告价格。左边的截图提供了浏览《魔鬼经济学》作者的博客的观众的资料:72%的读者是男性等等,还有广告的尺寸大小和价格。当然这个博客的情况和TechCrunch的读者资料不同,比如TechCrunch 82%的读者是男性等。大概是因为页面排版的不同,TechCrunch上面的广告尺寸也大都与前者不一样,但是相同尺寸广告位置的价格(比如728 x 90)没有因为TechCrunch的名号更加响亮而水涨船高。

FM其实就是广告中间商,如同Google一样。不同的是,如果说Google是在实践着长尾,那John Battelle就是直接找长尾那巨大的头部。也如同传统媒体不断的兼并收购一样,找到最好最热门的博客作为的媒体,让后去敲开广告客户的门,就是John正在做的事情。

不知道以后会不会有其他类似的对手与John争夺这些博客。我不是业内认识,但是猜想如果FM将这些博客当作自己的媒体买断了(当然,假设博客主门同意的话),说不定有一天,等到博客投放广告让广告主们倡导甜头了,真会有兼并和收购博客媒体的热闹场面。

Sunday, 4 February 2007

British Council Annual Dinner

周六晚在威海路的四季酒店参加了留英同学网和British Council组织的Annual Dinner。在四楼,容纳了300多号人和37桌的大厅让人不禁回忆起在国内当海归前,在诺丁汉参加的Postgraduate Ball的氛围。不同的是大家手里都揣着当初没有的,厚厚的一打名片。

整个活动给人感觉非常不错。除了来自BC和诺丁汉上海同学会的主持人游刃有余的主持外,还有火辣的肚皮舞,Virgin Altantic赞助的往返上海和伦敦的头等舱机票,各个热门行业的职场的新生代和前辈,各式各样的女式晚装和闪光的相机。

说来邪门,整个晚会差不多可以算作女性的胜利之夜。除了赢得几次男女直接交锋之外,晚会最后压轴的12次抽奖机会当中,竟只有2位男同胞被抽中。看来,不论运气和实力,女性们都在上海这个女性的舞台更上一层楼了。

这次的Annual Dinner也迎来了诺丁汉大学宁波校区新上任的CEO, Peter和他的太太,和宁波诺丁汉大学国际金融研究中心的主任Sue,以及英国总领事馆文化教育处的文化教育领事, Jeff,等等一些重镑人物,以及一群不干寂寞,被我一直视为榜样的创业人士。

回国两年,知道国内海归多,但是不知道到底多到什么程度。虽然这是我第一次参加Annual Dinner,但是据说,今年的Annual Dinner继续了以前的火爆——近400人参加,但在举行的前一天仍然还有100多人在waiting list当中等候着那张请贴。去年,在上海的诺丁汉海归就至少有300人。光是这样数字,我们就可以想象上海的海归真的是一股势力了。

今年,诺丁汉上海校友会(NAAS)的首要任务就是举办一次大型的Reception以及获得诺丁汉校方的官方支持,以在此后逐步壮大,并与其他英国校友会团体互相取经。

真是要感谢BC和Educationuk的精心安排,真是一群可爱的人。

Wednesday, 31 January 2007

凯旋门上的Adidas

看了Adrant的一篇个人博客, 名为Adidas Tracks White Stripes On French Monument。其中介绍了Adidas在法国凯旋门用标志性的3条白条做的巨型广告。笔者本人对这个广告评价还不错:

To celebrate the opening of its performance store last fall, Adidas released an ad with its three telltale stripes running up the Arc de Triomphe. As a general rule we like the fusion of contemporary culture with traditional icons. So the ad is interesting in that way but there's not really much else going for it.

不得不说,Adidas把这个logo打在凯旋门上面非常有气势,创意也是一流。凯旋门作为法国的地标,将其传统图腾式的一面充分与Adidas的现代感结合在了一起。不过,联想到最近星巴克在中国的紫禁城事件中受到中国网民的待遇,这个创意在中国或许又要受到众多非议了。

Tuesday, 30 January 2007

The internet comes back to life

After 32 days without stable access to some key sites and tools that I regularly used, such as MSN Messenger, Site Meter and Blogger.com, the Internet got recovered yesterday with surprise (to me). I know its time to catch up everything.

The month-long disconnection caused dramatic decreased number of subscribers to my blog at CBN, slow transfering of my blog data to Blogger.com, unstable work of Gmail and Google Reader, and completely disability of MSN messenger and webmessenger. It took ages to read some foreign bloggers' ideas. Now all the troubles are gone well before Chinese Lunar New Year, except for the increase of subscribers to my weblog =).

Let me find out what I have done during the disconnection with the cyber world:
  • finished 3 books
  • continued posting new entries, especially comments to FT Chinese
  • moved to and decorated a new apartment
  • Shen Li, the chairmen of NAAS was out from Winner100 and had a gathering with committees
  • waiting, waiting and waiting for the reconnection. How sad!

Top 150 marketing blogs

Blogging is about writing and reading. Writing a blog is to publish and share ideas and information, and reading is for learning. 2 Minute Commute published an article introducing the existing top 150 marketing blogs in the world recommended by Todd And. The article briefly introduced that the 150 blogs are selected based on PageRank of Google, Technorati, Blogline subscription and the viewpoints from Todd And himself.

To me, and everyone who has interest, this is a convincing and powerful list of marketing blogs that share great ideas. Among the top 10 blogs, Duct Marketing blog is the only one I have subscribed to and have no idea how good it is. Thanks to Todd and 2 Minute Commute, these blogs are well organized and compared to one another.

Please click the link to see the full list.

Monday, 29 January 2007

YouTube to share revenue with uploaders

YouTube to share revenues

Today's FTChinese online reported that the leading video-sharing website, YouTube, is to share advertising revenues with its video uploaders, like what competitors are doing. This actually is what some experts have been arguing about, i.e., instead of merely making use of netizens, it should share interests and benefits with content contributors.

SEE I SEE

I didn't know that An internet-based research company, CIC Data, has already started its own blog named SEE I SEE, which talks about netizen insights, consumer loyalty and market watches discoverd through its professional research into weblogs and Chinese BBS. The big boss Sam Flemining attended the 2nd Blog Conference last year convened in Hangzhou and the Client Service Director gave a very nice and fluent presentation about its businesses. The CEO Sam and the company are well know for his newly coined term IWOM (The Internet Word of Mouth). I think it is actually Word of Net. The blog is new and I think there will be something more useful coming up.

The business is interesting. According to the book BRANDChild, the Chinese young generation spend a lot of their time online and the Internet has a very strong influence over their purchase decisions. It's a smart move for CIC Data to start such a business in China.