An interesting case study that will be of interest for the many companies marketing their eco-credentials: the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has upheld complaints about adverts that claimed flying with Finnair is “eco-smart”. Of particular concern is that the ASA said that companies should not make an absolute claim – choosing Finnair is “eco-smart” – when flying does have a detrimental effect on the environment. I can see companies in our industry running into similar problems if they are not careful – e.g. “the green power supply for data centres”.

Osbourne Clark’s Marketing Law website has an excellent in-depth discussion of the Finnair case (registration required).

Tags: Advertising, Misc Marketing, UK

Every year I put together a review of what happened in the European electronics media, including some of the highlights from my postings to Napier News. Despite the economic challenges, we saw some positive moves from publishers in our industry, hopefully laying the groundwork for greater success in the future. The Napier News Review of 2009 is available now, simply click here to get your PDF copy.

Tags: Electronics, Europe, Misc Marketing, News About Napier

Many agencies are experimenting with social media: at Napier we’re very active using a range of online tools to improve our communication and that of our clients. I’ve recently received a copy of an extremely interesting dissertation about the use of social media by PR agencies written by Sophie Plastow that is based upon new rese4arch. I’d thoroughly recommend that anyone working in or managing an agency reads it: if you want a copy you can request one from Sophie.

Tags: CIE, Clients, Email, ESE, google, Misc Marketing, Online

We’ve recently completed a great project with ACAL: we co-sponsored a project at the University of Chichester where students were asked to produce viral videos about ACAL. Could these creative students make electronics funny? You can find out on the ACALTech YouTube channel – look out for these videos that were all part of the project:

• The Dating Game
• The Evolution of Electronic Design
• Not Just Any Component
• The Personal Touch
• The Machines are Talking!
• The Switch Specialist
• Those Electronics Are A Nightmare

Let me know what you think of these videos: are they funny? Will they go viral? Can electronics ever make you laugh? I strongly believe that electronics is fun (I used to be a design engineer), and that video will be an increasingly important marketing medium in our industry. If you have an idea for a video project – whether it’s a funny viral, an in-depth technical presentation or a video case study – why not contact Napier to find out how we can help?

Tags: Clients, Electronics, ESE, UK, Video

A couple of recent announcements demonstrate that large publishers – particularly in the US – are working to create better digital magazines. Hearst has teamed up with Skiff to create a “magazine e-reader”, whilst several publishers including Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corporation and Time Inc.have joined forces to define a “storefront" – i.e. a consistent portal for accessing digital magazines.

The fact that publishers are putting resources into ensuring the technology for reading electronic magazines develops rapidly is great news. I’m also much less worried about the impending battle between publishers and digital media companies such as Apple and Amazon, provided that there is a way to distribute controlled circulation titles. In fact digital distribution may not only provide the valuable information about who has read a magazine, but would also allow other readers to get copies even if they fall outside the terms of control (assuming that publishers do continue to manage their terms of control!). Advertisers and publishers can then argue about whether the additional readers justify a higher rate, although hopefully everyone understands that controlled circulation is worth A LOT more than uncontrolled circulation.

One thing, however, does worry me. Although it’s not surprising the main focus of activity is in the USA, I really don’t want publishers using delivery platforms, whether “storefronts” or e-readers to compete. I’d like the publications with the best content to win, rather than those from the publishing houses with the financial resources to invest in delivery technology. This has to be a particular concern in Europe, as many publishers – particularly in the electronics media – are relatively small companies. Having said this, I can’t see that any publisher is going to win by fragmenting the delivery systems: there is no way anyone would accept having to own multiple e-readers to allow them to read titles from different publishers that have chosen different hardware platforms. As long as the publishers strive to create the best content and make it available on all platforms, the hardware manufacturers work on producing the best e-readers, and the readers are allowed an unrestricted choice of publication and platform, then we could see a dramatic recovery in the financial fortunes of magazine publishers.

Tags: Digital Magazines, Misc Marketing, Online

Napier is aiming to break the 1000mph barrier and set a new land speed record. OK, we’re not actually going to do any of the record breaking, but our name will be on the tail fin of the BLOODHOUND SSC as it challenges for a World Land Speed Record of 1,000mph.

Richard Noble and the Bloodhound team are offering anyone the chance to have their name on the tail fin, for a bargain £10.00 donation. Visit the Bloodhound SSC website to find out more.

Tags: Misc Marketing

Most readers of Napier News will have heard of the recent FTC guidelines concerning disclosure of paid-for product promotions online. Here’s a great article explaining the FTC guidelines (free registration required).

Tags: Misc Marketing, Online, UK, USA

The people behind Bedrock must have heard publishers complaining that they could write better adverts, and have given them the choice. Although initially targeted at major brands, this service that allows advertisers to bid on advertising phrases from publishers is something that I’m sure would be attractive to the electronics media. It might only be a matter of time before publishers and editors stop worrying about SEO and start wondering how many advertising phrases they can include on a page!

Tags: Advertising, Editors, Electronics, Misc Marketing, Online

Unbelievably this is the 1000th post I’ve made to Napier News. As it will soon be Christmas (my children are already bursting with excitement, even though there are nearly three weeks to go) I thought it might make sense to write out my European electronics media wish list to Santa.

Dear Santa

I’ve been very good boy this year and have worked very hard. Please could I have some presents this Christmas?

Firstly I’d like engineers to keep their knowledge up to date. When I finished my degree I knew very little and had to read lots of magazines to learn how to be a good engineer. I needed to read, as I simply couldn’t ask the right questions, so why do engineers now think that they can learn all they know by typing a few words into Google?

Please can you tell publishers to continue investing in editorial content. I know that editors cost money, but surely cutting editorial quality is going to eventually mean that no one wants to read the magazine? Surely great editorial will help get more readers, online traffic and advertising revenue?

I don’t understand why websites in the electronics industry are so slow to adopt new media. It seems that whilst publishers are happy to make a couple of quick edits to press release texts to create an online story, they won’t put any video on the website unless its recorded and produced by a team of professional producers. What about recording interviews using Skype? Some of the editors record interviews, so why don’t they just post the audio on the website. Please can you tell them that new media doesn’t need to be difficult!

Whilst I’m talking about online, why can’t publishers create more analysis that would really add value to engineers? Jeff Jarvis has been talking about topic pages for a long time, and this idea would be perfect for the electronics industry. Yet the topic pages that have been generated seem to be written and then forgotten.

Finally please can you help publishers and editors to make better use of social media? I know a lot of engineers don’t use social media, but do we really have to believe that the pinnacle of social media in our industry was EE Times revealing Dr. Nicely’s discovery of the famous Pentium FDIV bug to the world after a forum post.

Thank you Santa. I promise I’ll leave a carrot out for Rudolph.

Love from

Mike

p,s. If you have time, please could I also have an end to the recession, world peace, new killer applications and a chance to drive the Bloodhound SSC.

Tags: Misc Marketing

Users of the Google Webmaster Tools may have noticed that the page rank information has disappeared in the latest release. As Susan Moskwa of Google explains on a support thread:

We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true. We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it. 

Susan refers readers to more information that reveals that there are over 200 different “signals” that can affect how a site is crawled, indexed and ranked. In fact Google started discussing omitting PageRank from the tools in 2007 (who says the Internet moves fast?). PageRank was often over-emphasised by SEO professionals because it was a nice, easy number that could be presented to a client, so this move is a clear indication from Google that it really isn’t the key metric. For more information, have a look at a great post by Derek Powazek about SEO myths (thanks to TWIG for the link).

Tags: ESE, google, Online, USA

One for the publishers that read Napier News: Google has recently published a blog entry, along with a video, that explains to publishers how to improve their rankings in Google News. With more electronics publishers choosing to appear in Google News, and engineers beginning to use it as a source of information, this is something that is important for all publishers and editors in our industry.

Tags: Misc Marketing, Online

Interesting article about whether it is best to route people to the home page, category pages or individual landing pages by Gabriel Francis of the Google Analytics Team. Although it covers a completely different industry the conclusion that creating custom landing pages is the best approach is almost certainly valid for our industry, and the explanation of how to track the performance of different approaches will be useful to those who have control over their websites.

Tags: Misc Marketing, Online