Month: February 2006

February 21, 2006

  • Two Weeks With Gordon and Frank

    Last week we did a one week update on our little “gordonandfrank.ca” experiment. Here’s what we see after two weeks:

    • 21,026 pages served (a bit less than half of One Degree traffic).
    • 4,032 people clicked through to the real Bell site.
    • 2,001 people got here by searching on phrases using Bell, Beavers, Frank, or Gordon.
    • “Bell Beavers” is the most common search term. 683 people got to One Degree using that phrase!
    • 89 people got here because of Norm MacDonald. They’re still angry about this.
    • 46 people have taken the time to post “often gushing” comments about the mascots.

    Here are the top twenty “beaver-related” searches driving our traffic:

    1. bell beavers
    2. frank and gordon
    3. bell canada beavers
    4. frank and gordon beavers
    5. rankandgordon
    6. frankandgordon.ca
    7. frank and gordon bell
    8. bell canada commercials
    9. bell beaver commercials
    10. gordon and frank
    11. frank and gordon commercials
    12. gordonandfrank.ca
    13. bell canada beaver commercials
    14. voices of frank and gordon
    15. bell frank and gordon
    16. frank & gordon
    17. “frank and gordon”
    18. bell beaver
    19. bell canada beaver
    20. bell commercials

    Interestingly enough, traffic is increasing over time, not dying down as I assumed it would.

    Today’s lesson: You never know when you’ll blog something that has a *huge* impact on your traffic and the profile of your site. My quickie post about an ad I saw during the Super Bowl now accounts for half the entire one-year-old site’s traffic — after only two weeks!

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on February 21, 2006.

  • Do Real People Know About Agencies?

    I’m not sure that the average Bob and Betty on the street have that much appreciation for the role of advertising agencies in the ads they see. If they do it’s probably a stereotypical Darrin Stevens or thirtysomething concept of what goes on.

    The reason I ask this is that the folks commenting over at Gordon and Frank seem to be very quick to talk about Bell’s agency. For the first week, most of the comments on our post were generally negative towards the ads and to Norm MacDonald’s involvement. Then on Monday, February 13th the posts took a turn and became overwhelmingly positive. I’m not sure what might have caused this — maybe the ads changed or something. Anyway, here are a few representative posts:

    Hilarious. It’s about time we show our great Canadian sense of Humour. How about stuffed animal mascots for sale. Great fund raiser for our future Canadian Athletes. I buy a pair. Keep up the great work.I’m proud to be a Canadian and a Bell subscriber.

    Hooray to the Bell Marketing department to hire a company with a sense of humour. Enjoy the ads, breaking up the sometimes dry CBC commentary.

    Frank and Gordon have to be the BEST ad on TV for a long time. In fact, the advertisers at the Super Bowl paid millions to have their ads seen and I dont remember one of them!!!! SO Frank and Gordon have certainly outrated even the Super Bowl.. They are wonderful, funny, and all Canadian. Right on Bell for picking the right ad for the 2006 Olympics, I hope we see more of Frank and Gordon for other events, you’ve got a winner there. Good One.!!!!!

    I love the Frank and Gordon commercials! They are so much fun to watch. Great work for whoever came up with these commercials! Keep up the good work!!!

    Half the fun of watching the Olympics this time around is seeing Frank & Gordon in the commercials. Their website is great too. I would love to buy the stuffed version of the duo. And if you think about it, its just funny that Norm is the voice of Frank, the patriotic beaver. Because, I, for one, haven’t watched this much CBC in a long time. I wouldn’t even think of turning to an American station to watch the Olympics.

    Relax people, don’t get political, it’s just a commercial and a good one at that. Cheers to the advertising agency that came up with this one. They are fun to watch and I’m sure the US would love to see our Bell commercials on their TV. Toques off to Frank and Gordon.

    I have not seen any commercial that makes me want to split a gut. Hats off to who ever created Frank and Gordon. I simply Love them!!! Its nice to have a hardy laugh at the end of a work day. Kudos!!!!!

    I’ll be honest, I’m a little suspicious. I’ve been checking IP addresses as these comments come in and I’m not seeing anything that says they are planted. They come from all over the country through many different services providers at all times of day. Given the traffic, these pages are getting there aren’t even an abnormally large number of comments. Besides, people seem to really like the beavers.

    In fact, CFRB’s Daily Poll is about Frank and Gordon today and “love” is beating “hate”, 84% to 16% as I write this. So maybe Bell does have a huge groundswell of support for these new mascots. Maybe they’re the next Spuds Mckenzie. But I have to ask, do you know anyone in the real world that talks like this about advertising? Anybody have examples of ad forums, TV discussion boards, etc. that show similar passion for ads? I’m just curious.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on February 21, 2006.

February 17, 2006

  • Someone Is Paying Attention To gordonandfrank.ca

    Well, we still haven’t seen anything official from Bell or Cossette about our little “gordonandfrank.ca” experiment, but a sharp reader did find proof that someone at Cossette is paying attention.

    “gordonandfrank.com” redirects to the official “Bell Beavers” site at “frankandgordon.ca”. A quick WHOIS shows that “Fjord Interactive” (the interactive side of Cossette) registered gordonandfrank.com on — February 10th — five days after One Degree registered the .ca.

    Domain Name: “GORDONANDFRANK.COM
    Registrar: DOMAINPEOPLE, INC.
    Whois Server: whois.domainpeople.com
    Referral URL: http://www.domainpeople.com
    Name Server: NS1.FJORDINTERACTIVE.NET
    Name Server: NS2.FJORDINTERACTIVE.NET
    Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK
    Updated Date: 10-feb-2006
    Creation Date: 10-feb-2006
    Expiration Date: 10-feb-2007

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on February 17, 2006.

February 15, 2006

  • One Week With Gordon And Frank — So Much To Learn

    This whole “Gordon and Frank” thing is offering some really interesting insights into cross-channel marketing.

    Not up-to-speed on the saga? Here’s a recap:

    1. Superbowl Sunday — See Bell Beaver ads tagged with “frankandgordon.ca” URL, wonder if they registered “gordonandfrank.ca”. They didn’t.
    2. Register the domain.
    3. Monday, February 6th — write an “article for One Degree” explaining why Bell probably should have bought the alternate domain and point gordonandfrank.ca at it.
    4. Read “the Marketing Magazine article” and realize this is a huge campaign that will go well beyond the Olympics.
    5. Wait for someone at “Bell” or “Cossette” to notice.

    So, after one week, where were we:

    • 6,618 pages served.
    • 1,225 people clicked through to the real Bell site.
    • 745 people got here by searching with words like Bell, Beavers, Frank, Gordon.
    • “Bell Beavers” is the most common search term that gets people here.
    • 34 people got here because of Norm MacDonald. A lot of them are angry.
    • Then again, some people love the beavers so much they’re looking to buy Frank and Gordon plushies.
    • The National Post’s Mark Evans “talks to” “Frank and Gordon”.
    • Still no word from Bell or Cossette.

    Things we can learn from this exercise:

    1. Typo domains can drive real traffic. Don’t expect your customers to remember exactly what your URL is and help them in any way you can. In particular register variations on all your marketing domains.
    2. Think like your customers. Bell and Cossette might be on a first-name basis with Frank and Gordon but to many of them they are the “Bell Beavers”. Bell should be buying AdWords on that term to get people to the right site and similar terms should be part of their SEO strategy.
    3. Listen to the blogosphere. We’ve been talking about this for over a week now and “others” “have” “been” “pointing” “to us” but Bell has yet to join the conversation.
    4. Check your logfiles. We sent over 1,000 people to the real site in the first week (over 1,600 as I write this). I have to think we’re the top non-Bell referrer but Bell doesn’t seem aware of this.

    I love the idea of driving traffic from one channel to another and I commend Bell for doing that. I’m even growing fond of Gordon and Frank (the kids think Gordon — the one on the right — is WAY cooler than Frank). I also commend them for the overwhelming task that a unified all-company marketing platform must be to create. But if we’re going to do this we have to do it so it really works for the customer and that will take more care in the future. So dear One Degree reader, do you see any other lessons to be learned from our little experiment?

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on February 15, 2006.

February 9, 2006

  • Beavers And Caribou Drive One Degree Search Traffic

    Man, this is turning out to be a very weird week. Our traffic is through the roof because of two innocent posts — one about “Bell’s Beavers” on Tuesday and the other about “Google’s Caribou” last March.

    On Tuesday I wrote about how I felt that Bell Canada’s “Beaver Ads” should have anticipated that people would get confused on the exact URL for the campaign — “frankandgordon.ca”. I registered “gordonandfrank.ca” to see if my theory was correct and pointed that domain to “my post” on the topic. After DNS updates kicked in we started getting hundreds of visitors to that page and the traffic seems to be increasing each day. So, in the spirit of learning and sharing, here are the top 100 searches people did to get them to One Degree so far today:

    • bell beavers
    • bell canada beavers
    • google caribou
    • gordonandfrank.ca
    • frank and gordon beavers
    • degree by mail
    • frank and gordon
    • frankandgordon
    • frankandgordon.ca
    • leevalleytools
    • liberty village toronto
    • miles nadel, mdc partners
    • “blast radius” toronto
    • “frank and gordon” bell
    • “gordon and frank”
    • “jane motz hayes”
    • “ok go” video dance routine
    • “toronto” + “b2b lead generation”
    • “vice president”
    • “service development” wireless
    • “zip.ca”
    • +frank +gordon +bell +commercial
    • .frankandgordon.ca
    • 15earn
    • 247 internet sales toronto
    • account supervisor
    • adwords research
    • airlines trivia
    • ajax web sites
    • alex tew next venture
    • alexander younger
    • beavers
    • beavers and bell
    • beavers on the bell commercial
    • bell beavers commercial
    • bell canada beavers commercials
    • bell canada beavers gordon
    • bell canada frank and gordon
    • bell canada norm macdonald
    • bell commercial norm
    • bell commercials beavers voices
    • bmw search marketing banning
    • campaign banners
    • can west interactive canada
    • conservative party commercials download
    • caribou gmail
    • cma ken schafer
    • commerce in canada during the 1900s
    • ctv cto
    • download googleearth
    • eloqua email deliverability spam test
    • frank and gordon beavers pictures
    • frank and gordon bell
    • frank and gordon bell canada
    • frank and gordon commercials
    • frank and gordon norm mcdonald
    • gmail caribou
    • gordon and frank
    • gordonandfrank
    • how much do marketing degree get paid
    • idleagent
    • jane motz hayes
    • kraft globe mail advertising rfp
    • kraft recipe
    • liberty village + toronto
    • liberty village porn
    • link:http://www.campaigner.com/
    • list distribution channels
    • kraft canada
    • maclaren mccann
    • maclaren+mccann%2c+sony+canada
    • marketing themes
    • marketing, brand extensions
    • mitch joel
    • number of subscribers to sympatico in canada
    • one degree
    • online social network for teens
    • online vs paper percentage of canadians who shop online
    • podcasting projected growth 2006
    • recipes from kraft
    • rogers launches wireless broadband
    • sned mail to one account and have it automatically forward to another
    • subway promotion
    • subway scratch and win
    • super bowl xl
    • “frank and gordon”
    • sympatico beavers gordon
    • ten percent rule
    • the birth of internet advertising
    • the essential message
    • the target new yorker
    • the voices of frank and gordon
    • toyota yaris tv campaign
    • trivia questions insurance professionals
    • voices of bell canada beavers
    • web design contractor job in vancouver
    • what degree is the one for me?
    • what is 15earn
    • yahoo canada
    • yaris toyota commercial song

    Note 1: A full 43% of our search traffic is coming from Frank-n-Gordon related searches — two days after we first posted about them. I’m not seeing any paid search adds on these terms that could drive people to the real site and the site itself doesn’t seem to be fair too well on many of these searches.

    Note 2: I hope that Bell and their marketing partners are watching and listening to the blogosphere as there seems to be a storm brewing about Norm MacDonald doing the voice of Frank. Apparently, LOTS of Canadians have no fondness for ex-Canuck MacDonald.

    So it seems that Bell and their agencies should:

    1. Figure out what to do about gordonandfrank.ca
    2. Buy a ton of search terms to collect up all the people obviously interested in the site and unable to find it
    3. Deal with the *”Norm Storm”* that is building just over the horizon
    4. Start reading One Degree regularly (no Bell or Cossette IP addresses showing up in our logs as far as I can tell) 🙂

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on February 9, 2006.

  • New Gmail Features About To Launch?

    Garrett Rogers at ZD Net was nice enough to link to our almost one-year-old What is Google Caribou? article in his very interesting speculation that Google is testing added Gmail functionality. Rogers speculates that Google may be following Yahoo in offering a domain-based version of Gmail for site owners and corporations.

    Google’s GMail has been firing on all cylinders, but it could be on the verge of getting even more horsepower. Based on information found buried deep within the javascript source, we can start to see the bigger picture for GMail — what else could they possibly add to this mail client? Their next big move will likely be GMail for domains — a powerful way for anybody who owns a domain to utilize GMail as a mail server, not just a client. Yahoo has their own small business mail product which does precisely this, and now evidence suggests Google is planning the same.

    While he notes that this is speculation it is a logical step forward for Gmail (one I’ve been waiting for) and the case he makes by poking around in Gmail JavaScript is compelling. Would you move your corporate e-mail to Gmail if you had the option?

    Update: This story is getting real traction and right now (very early Feb 9th) it is number 4 on Memeorandum. Ironically I wrote Gabe Rivera earlier last night suggesting he take a look at One Degree and consider adding it to the Memeorandum feed pool.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on February 9, 2006.

  • Oglivy PR Gives One Degree Props

    Ah, the things you find in your web stats. We started getting some traffic from a new site yesterday and in checking out the link I found Ogilvy BlogFeeds.

    Here’s how Ogilvy characterizes the site:

    The Ogilvy PR BlogFeeds are our feeds from some of the most influential blogs out there. The ones we’re reading every day. Visit any of the categories below to get a snapshot view of all the headlines. Pick and choose blogs to add to your own personal RSS feed aggregator — or just bookmark these pages to always get the latest headlines from blogs relevant to you.

    I was honoured to see that they had this to say about One Degree:

    This collaborative blog brings together thinking from numerous contributors in the Canadian Online Marketing industry. The blog covers and interesting range of topics and offers a great non-US perspective.

    It was also nice to see that they included us up there with other blogging luminaries like Seth Godin, MarketingVox, John Battelle, and Duct Tape Marketing among others. Good company!

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on February 9, 2006.

February 7, 2006

  • AIMS Discussion List Is No More

    AIMS General Manager Dave Forde just sent out the word that the ADL (AIMS Discussion List) has ceased publication.

    For years, many of you have enjoyed the ADL (AIMS Discussion List), a bi-weekly newsletter full of great discussion and debate on various Internet marketing topics. It gave marketers a chance to connect and pose questions to one another with answers in the following issue. Over the last year we’ve seen a dramatic shift, or decrease in the amount of discussion for reasons such as inboxes being overloaded, work loads increased, etc. Therefore, I now think that it is time we say good-bye to the ADL and retire her at issue number #622.

    I think the big unspoken reason content on the ADL has been thin lately is that there are so darn many real-time sources of news and opinion. Blogs (like One Degree) and the feeds they push out have made it much easier to stay on top of industry happenings without the need of a weekly moderated discussion list.

    So, fellow ADL readers, if you are looking for:

    • Commentary from industry insiders
    • A spot to contribute your opinions
    • A place to have Internet marketing conversations, or
    • A way to get job and event listings in front of the net shakers in Canada then I humbly suggest One Degree is your new best friend.

    I hope the best for AIMS — as one of the founders I wish it nothing but continued success, even without the ADL I used to moderate. I know from conversations with many others over the years that the ADL was considered the primary value they saw in AIMS so it will be interesting to see how AIMS keeps its connections with the members without this important channel.

    A special note of thanks to our own June Macdonald who I convinced to take on the incredible challenge of moderating the ADL when it first launched. June was the best moderator the ADL ever knew and I don’t think it was the same after she stepped down years ago.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on February 7, 2006.

  • Black-hat SEO Earns BMW.de PageRank Zero

    For your reference — a warning call via IM transcript:

    Ken Schafer: What’s the point of having a site if it can’t be found?

    MarketerDood973: None.

    Ken Schafer: What’s the number 1 way people will find your site?

    MarketerDood973: GOOG

    Ken Schafer: Would it be bad if Google banned you from search results?

    MarketerDood973: very

    Ken Schafer: Would Google be right in banning sites that violate their guidelines…

    Ken Schafer: sites that use tricks to artificially boost their rank?

    MarketerDood973: Of course they would. Don’t want little scam sites getting unfair ranking. kick’em out.

    Ken Schafer: Do you know if *your* site is using any so-called “black hat” SEO techniques?

    MarketerDood973: Uh, what?

    Ken Schafer: Do you know that your “SEO expert” is living within the letter and spirit of Google’s guidelines?

    MarketerDood973: Well, uh, I trust them to do the right thing. They’re getting great results and the pages look fine. I don’t see a problem here…

    MarketerDood973: Besides, we’re a big brand…

    MarketerDood973: Google isn’t going after real brands, just the little scammers.

    Ken Schafer: Uh, what about BMW.de? They just got banned by Google. Check their site — PageRank = 0.

    Ken Schafer: Dood — check out Google Blogscoped and Matt Cutts if you don’t believe me.

    MarketerDood973: gtg

    If you have hired anyone to “do SEO” on your site you must immediately look into what they are doing.

    You can’t afford for someone else’s “over-aggressiveness” to land your brand in search result purgatory. Could you explain to your boss why your site completely disappeared from Google like BMW’s German site did last week or like Ricoh’s German site is about to?

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on February 7, 2006.

February 6, 2006

  • gordonandfrank.ca

    Bell’s new mascots — two talking beavers named Frank and Gordon — have an eponymous website — frankandgordon.ca. I’m glad to see that the folks working on the site heeded One Degree’s recent advice and allow people to drop the “www” and still get to the site. I also really like that they registered the .com version of the domain but still use the .ca in the ads to make it clear this is a Canadian thing.

    Unfortunately, they didn’t read an older One Degree post called How To Add Spell-check To Your Domain Names (go read it, I’ll wait). Now there might be some obvious typo domains that they could have registered (and they may have for that matter — I didn’t check them all), but I know they missed a really big and obvious problem with that domain. Imagine this scenario which is close but not quite what Bell’s marketers imagined happening:

    Jimmy: “Dad, those beavers are funny. Can we go to their website to expand our brand experience interactively?”

    Dad: “Well Jimmy, what do you say we get on the ol’ interweb and Google some beavers.” (Okay I might have just found the second problem.)

    Jimmy: “No Dad, the commercial had their address at the end.”

    Dad: “What was it, Jimmy?”

    Jimmy: “Uh, well it was the names of the beavers — Gordon and Frank. Yeah, it was gordonandfrank.ca.”

    Dad: “Okay, let’s go to gordonandfrank.ca”.

    See the problem? It’s frankandgordon.ca, not gordonandfrank.ca. And Bell didn’t think to register the alternate. What would Gordon say about this clear case of favoritism? So, what do you get when you go to gordonandfrank.ca you may ask? Why (after DNS updates), you get the very page you are now reading.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on February 6, 2006.

  • Major Canadian Brands Launch New Looks

    My guess is there will be lots of Monday-morning quarterbacking about three big marketing events this weekend:

    • Bell pushed their “talking beavers” branding campaign featuring Frank and Gordon into high gear.
    • The Globe and Mail rolled out a new version of their globeandmail.com website featuring a very blog-like approach.
    • Global Television introduced their re-branding during the Superbowl.

    We’ll most likely have analysis on the first two shortly but wanted to give you folks a chance for early reactions. What do you think of the new Bell, Globe & Mail, and Global campaigns? Any thoughts on the wisdom of tying these things so closely to the Superbowl when loads of deep-pocketed American brands are trying to get the attention of the press and public?

    Bell’s new mascots — two talking beavers named Frank and Gordon — have an eponymous website — frankandgordon.ca. I’m glad to see that the folks working on the site heeded One Degree’s recent advice and allow people to drop the “www” and still get to the site. I also really like that they registered the .com version of the domain but still use the .ca in the ads to make it clear this is a Canadian thing.

    Frank. Or is that Gordon?

    Unfortunately, they didn’t read an older One Degree post called How To Add Spell-check To Your Domain Names (go read it, I’ll wait). Now there might be some obvious typo domains that they could have registered (and they may have for that matter — I didn’t check them all), but I know they missed a really big and obvious problem with that domain. Imagine this scenario which is close but not quite what Bell’s marketers imagined happening:

    Jimmy: “Dad, those beavers are funny. Can we go to their website to expand our brand experience interactively?”

    Dad: “Well Jimmy, what do you say we get on the ol’ interweb and Google some beavers.” (Okay I might have just found the second problem.)

    Jimmy: “No Dad, the commercial had their address at the end.”

    Dad: “What was it, Jimmy?”

    Jimmy: “Uh, well it was the names of the beavers — Gordon and Frank. Yeah, it was gordonandfrank.ca.”

    Dad: “Okay, let’s go to gordonandfrank.ca”.

    See the problem? It’s frankandgordon.ca, not gordonandfrank.ca. And Bell didn’t think to register the alternate. What would Gordon say about this clear case of favoritism? So, what do you get when you go to gordonandfrank.ca you may ask? Why (after DNS updates), you get the very page you are now reading.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on February 6, 2006.

February 2, 2006

February 1, 2006

  • Building Trust — Explain How You Make Money

    Best Practice: Explain how your site makes money, or how and why it is funded if this is not apparent. This adds to the site’s credibility and overcomes fears that the site may be a scam of some sort.

    Rationale: Not all sites are what they appear to be and people are becoming wary of new sites as an increasing number of online scam stories are covered in the media and passed around as an urban myth. People are taught (rightly) that “if it is too good to be true, it is”. This has implications for legitimate corporate websites and web-based applications (Web 2.0 take note).

    Many new users, particularly those not familiar with your brand offline, will be very skeptical of your motivations until they get a sense that they can trust you. Design, ease of use, trustmarks, and real-world contact information all contribute to trust. But if people coming to your site cannot determine how you make money or why you built the site, they are likely to assign nefarious goals and may be reluctant to use the site. If it is not clear how your site makes money or how you benefit from making the site available, it is advised that you provide an explanation.

    Tip: Providing an explanation doesn’t mean linking to an essay justifying your site’s existence. Just adding “a free service to support users of our products” for example can ease concerns.

    Best Practice in Action: Ta-da List by 37 signals offers a simple free service but explains why the service has no cost despite being ad-free. Well done!

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on February 1, 2006.

  • Do Overly Specific Subject Lines Impact E-mail Response?

    I just got my weekly e-mail newsletter from Ticketmaster Canada and — like it does every week — my mouse went back-and-forth between the “delete” and “open” buttons as I decided what to do. Take a look at the newsletter as it appears in my inbox:

    <lost due to link decay>

    Now that the kids are older there isn’t much chance we’ll be going to Disney on Ice, so my first inclination is to hit delete. But, if I decide to open the message despite it looking like a completely unappealing offer to me, I find something very different:

    <lost due to link decay>

    I wonder how many Billy Bragg or Kris Kristofferson or Violent Femmes or Rob Thomas fans will be missing these shows because the subject line turned them off?

    This problem isn’t unique to Ticketmaster — it is a fundamental flaw in newsletters. Because you are addressing more than one topic per e-mail, the subject line can never be both explicit and concise. One Degree faces this problem every week. We send an e-mail digest that provides lines to a week’s worth of articles. Usually, we pick a few hot topics and highlight those in the subject line, but we can never mention everything that might be of interest to all readers. Has anyone come up with a solution to this problem, or is it just something we have to live with and test to minimize the impact?

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on February 1, 2006.