Marketing Pilgrim

The average elevator ride in New York City is 110 seconds and the average person’s attention span is 8 seconds. Put them together and you have the formula for the perfect pitch.

The concept itself was pitched by former Kodak CMO Jeffrey Hayzlett during his keynote speech at SES San Francisco. According to a report by ClickZ, Hayzlett really drove home the idea that elevator pitches are getting too long winded. He says that we need to tighten our focus and make every word count so consumers understand the value of the brand.

What is Kodak’s pitch?

“Only Kodak creates emotional technology that makes it easier to make, manage and move images and information so people can strengthen relationships.”

That one is a little corporate, but Hayzlett had a few more including:

Google continues to jump through various hoops to help limit the privacy concerns that their Street View efforts have caused in Europe. In order to hopefully stop any more backlash in Germany, Google is allowing for buildings to be opted out of Street View. Owners of buildings have until September 15th to do this.

TechCrunch tells us

Google made their “opt out of street view” service live in Germany today, giving select Germans until September 15th to exclude their properties from being mapped when the Street View service launches. The function will be available for a limited time in the 20 cities that are mentioned which includes Berlin, Dresden and Hamburg and then extend to all cities covered as Google Maps Germany rolls out.

Will there eventually be the social media version of drunk driving called a DWT (driving while tweeting)? Based on the bizarre story that has come out of Hollyweird, it may not be a bad idea.

I realize that People magazine is not a usual source for Marketing Pilgrim stories but this was just too bizarre (while very sad as well). According to the celebrity mag

Dr. Frank Ryan, plastic surgeon to Heidi Montag and other celebrities, was sending a Twitter message about his border collie just before his fatal car accident, his ex-girlfriend tells PEOPLE.

“He lived up in Malibu on a tiny street and he was texting while driving and he accidentally went over the cliff,” Charmaine Blake says.

With all of the talk about the Yahoo to bing transition there is now more indication (albeit less than overpowering) that the transition is in full force.

Check out the tiny little font at the absolute bottom of a Yahoo search result that I did for “Marketing Pilgrim”.

I wonder if the font size of the “Powered by Bing” notification was part of the negotiation. If it was, score one for Yahoo because unless you are really looking you won’t see this mention. Oh, and I guess that we are all to capitalize Bing now as well? Don’t you love it when companies make a logo that ends up confusing how something should be written? Yahoo (use the exclamation point or not?) and Bing-bing are a match made in Internet heaven then.

If you’re like 35% of the population, you’ve already found a great sweater for Aunt Martha, a singing shark for Grandpa and you’ve got some ideas for the office gift exchange that you get roped into every year.

Ho, ho, ho, it’s time for holiday shopping and the fact that people are already stocking the gift cupboard means that this retail season will be much more profitable than the last.

How individual retailers fare, could be determined by how early they start preparing for holiday traffic. Stores that wait until November to put their best foot forward could end up stuck with shelves of merchandise they can’t unload.

While Twitter and Facebook are all the rage with your average internet user, blogs are still going strong in the corporate world.

According to a study by eMarketer, 34% of all US companies have a public blog and they project 45% by 2012. That’s up tremendously from 2007 which lands at only 16%.

“Studies have shown that marketers perceive blogs to have the highest value of any social media in driving site traffic, brand awareness, lead generation and sales—as well as improving customer service.”

The study suggests that there is a larger number of blogs devoted to smaller companies, where larger companies may be lagging due to legal and logistical issues. It’s a lot easier for George to upload an off-the-cuff blog post when he’s the CEO of a two man company than it is for a VP at Procter and Gamble to make his thoughts known.