Marketing Pilgrim

The marketing world has been working hard to try and corral the power of apps for the iPhone and Android users of the world. Just when it looked like there was some settling of the waters the iPad comes along and churns everything again. This can be a tough game to figure out.

That’s why the approach taken by Fox News to create its first paid app, that initially looks to be just for the US mid-term election period between now and Early November, an interesting play. The news source has developed an offshoot of its existing iPhone app and will sell the new, more focused version for 99 cents. The focus on a hot topic like these elections is what they are banking on for success.

Everyone knows how important it is to market to moms, but what about dads? A survey by the newly formed Dad Central Consulting (an off-shoot of Mom Central Consulting) says that  92% of dads put on their special “Dad Lens” when shopping for the family.

What this means is that they use a different set of criteria when choosing items such as groceries, cars and home entertainment, than they used before they had kids. For marketers, this is a significant piece of information. Now, instead of marketing a car to men for its good looks and speed, this survey would suggest you go with safety and room to grow.

The survey also found that 77% of dad said being a parent significantly influenced their decisions and 82% said being a dad influenced who they trusted when seeking advice.

In the early days of fandom, studios routinely sent out cease and desist letters to fanzine publishers who were producing original works based on the characters from their favorite shows. It had a finger in the dyke effect, stopping one writer as twenty more popped up. In other words, it was useless.

When video software became common and YouTube hit the web, the studios began battling another, bigger problem, that of the unauthorized use of clips from shows. In order to plug the holes, YouTube created their Content ID system which scans videos and compares them to a list of items provided by the owner of the copyright. Then, like a virtual cease and desist letter, the software would block the offending videos, but who really wins? The studio gets their way, but the fans get mad and that’s never a good thing.

Scott Stratten is not your normal marketer.

Actually, he may even take offense at being called a “marketer.” Instead, he’s known as the “UnMarketer” and his book UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging, just hit bookstores today.

I had the pleasure of seeing Scott keynote PubCon South and I’ve been in constant awe of this enticing, engaging, and …Canadian unmarketer ever since. His book will be a bestseller, there’s no doubt about it, and the book’s description should give you an idea why:

For generations, marketing has been hypocritical. We’ve been taught to market to others in ways we hate being marketed to (cold-calling, flyers, ads, etc.). So why do we still keep trying the same stale marketing moves?

What better way to get back from your Labor Day weekend break than to hear about more Google legal concerns. This time there is a mix of the old and the new as an old nemesis shows up in Texas while the online travel industry has some questions about Google proposed purchase of ITA Software. By the way, Google is hiring law related talent so this is a “growth” area for the search giant .

First we are revisited by the group headed by the vertical search engine, Foundem. You remember these guys, right? They were given editorial space in the New York Times to rant about the unfairness of Google’s algorithm. Well, if you can’t succeed in Europe and your pleas go unheard in the NY Times the next obvious stop is Texas. Yup, Texas.

AdAge’s Mobiliby site has been doing a little investigative reporting by obtaining a document from Google that apparently shows the Adwords spend level of some of the biggest players in the Adwords ecosystem (HT to @Ed). The numbers are not shocking as a whole but seeing BP in those numbers is. It’s like one of those kids game where you are asked “Which one of these doesn’t belong?” In this case, BP looks a bit like a fish out of water considering the ad spend company they kept in June. Of course, when you triple your average overall ad spend after a major crisis involving the company like BP did around the Deepwater oil spill, you want to find the best bang for all of those bucks, right?