I clearly remember the impact the first time it happened to me. The day Michael Jordan and Spike Lee, sorry, Mors Blackmon, challenged everything we knew about advertising in the early 90’s TV-30-something-landscape, with a pair of Air Jordan Nike shoes. It was fresh, transcended over the early 90’s and took branding far beyond everything I knew about being unique and attention grabbing. The ad stood above every other commercial just as MJ leaped above every opponent, leaving them all in dismay.  It pulled us into Spike’s Lee’s “do the right thing” world, emphasizing black and white, challenging the rules of gravity in TV advertising.

Is it the brand? Is it the brand?

After seeing that commercial for the first time, I was obsessed about trying to re-capture that cool sensation, the excitement that makes you realize that the rules have changed and you are no closer to Kansas than Morris Blackman.

It doesn’t happen every day.  I can think of only a few brands that introduced a new dimension to the way we experienced their vibes. Brands like Apple had success even way before the iPhone, Seinfeld is another one, Google search results,  and of course the movie Avatar. I call these winners “Brands of the New Dimension.”

Marketers have always tried to decipher the formula for recreating Brands of the New Dimension. The truth is that sightings of such success are so rare that it’s almost impossible to recreate them. When my clients ask me what is the formula for creating a killer Brand of the New Dimension I am tempted to tell them that if I knew, I would be too busy drinking tequila on my private Island to answer their silly questions. But since I am not busy on that Island just yet, I can take a moment to point out some common denominators. And I promise not to use abstract words like “vision” or “creativity”.

Brands of the New Dimenion – What Do They Have in Common?

1. None of the Brands of the New Dimension surrender to the “me too” temptation. Instead, being so much ahead of the curve gives them the leverage to ride the wave all the way until the novelty wears out.

2. A strong business model to follow the brand’s promise must be in place. Otherwise the novelty can easily slam into a brick wall faster than you can say “altavista.”

3. Another common attribute is guts. To come up with something that has never been seen before takes balls (ask Michael Jordan).  I can only imagine the creative meetings that took place at Nike during those “30 Something” days and the eyebrow raising and conviction of the gutsy executives entering a new marketing frontier.

Pursuing Brands of the New Dimension is a little like the NASA space race. The huge investment in trying to get far out has many unplanned side benefits for other brands and markets. The new technologies, the new way of looking at things . . . broadens everyone’s horizons and gives us the guts to take our own brands far and beyond.

Yahoo, Bing and even the Chinese search engine Baidu, as well as other smaller search system, mobile devices and mapping quarries, all need to play an active roll when relevant in your SEO efforts. The rise of total searches done in these often SEO neglected search engines, present an opportunity in gaining visibility by optimizing and advertising of businesses on these frontiers.

We’ve been pushing the need for good video to our clients for years already. Just 3 years ago, I recall a large Israel based client saying something like, “Video? Do you really think our clients will want to watch videos on our website?” The answer was – “Yes!!!” The qualifying statement was, “If they are good.”

There is an abundance of really bad video content being uploaded to YouTube by companies. It’s not surprising – look at all the awful written content those same marketing managers are pushing out (many because of some SEO expert telling them to do so or doing it for them). But it’s not just a problem of bad video content. In the many instances where the content is quite good and interesting, it still has no strategy behind it and so does not do as much as it could do to contribute to the marketing goals.

When we built the video strategy for the Aviisha Medical Wellness Institute in Los Angeles
, our goal was to generate awareness and thought leadership for this new venture in the American healthcare market as quickly as possible on a tight budget with limited human resources — in a very, very competitive sphere.

In the case of Aviisha, we found their unique niche, which was to focus on the need of good sleep for overall health. We found that most Americans do not get enough sleep, that sleep disorders are a fast growing problem in America due to changes in lifestyle and weight gain and that most Americans and even many physicians, are not aware of the importance of quality sleep and the symptoms and conditions that can appear as a result of sleep problems. What better way to promote the brand and the position then with educational, informative and entertaining videos?
So as this new company’s management forges forward in establishing itself as a major player, we set ourselves the task of building the foundations for making that a reality. One important element, of many, is the Aviisha YouTube Channel.

We are just at the infancy stage – most of the animation series we produced just went up in the last 24 hours, so we will be closely monitoring the metrics on those. The animations are particularly entertaining and highly professional -thanks to V. Builder, a California based animation company.

Everything is tagged and set up to maximize SEO. But note, first we thought about the content our audience wants and will appreciate – then we thought about the SEO. Not the reverse! And for the most part, the SEO comes naturally, as it does for all the projects WebWhile strategizes for — more on that in another post when I get some time.
These videos will be fabulous linkbait (a good thing). You know how your SEO expert is telling you that they will run a link campaign and you trust him/her to be out there bringing you all kinds of links back to your website? Some of you ask how and what he is doing and others close their eyes and trust. Well, start asking. Because without good content that is truly worth linking back to – then you ain’t gonna get wonderful backlinks, no matter what any SEO consultant or link campaign service is telling you. There is no free lunch. CNN, Fox, major portals in your industry, halfway decent bloggers — none of them are going to link back to you because Makesh or Raji, the sub-contractors hired to get you links – asked. Would you link to something mediocre or awful just because someone asked? And don’t get me started on “link exchange”! Those days are looooong gone.

A great example of a YouTube channel belongs to the Mayoclinic. BTW, most of the videos are made with a flipcam and are not scripted. The now famous piano concert in the Mayo clinic achieved over 5 million views and countless backlinks for the Mayo Clinic lucky social media team – filmed from a patient’s cellphone!

More consumer oriented success stories can be seen on the Harley Davidson channel or Clinique makeup for example. A good failure example? How about the department store, Macys? I can’t believe this is all they could manage since going live 3 years ago!

We still have plenty of work to do, but I’ll try to keep you posted on how it contributes to our overall efforts and the progress we make as we grow the channel.

Just remember, that while lots has changed in the online marketing world in the last few years, the “content is king” motto still holds true today. You want your visibility to grow, your brand recognition to increase, relevant traffic – focus on good content developed under a sensible, solid strategy.

1. Is your website effective? – Check your stats!

This point is so trivial that it’s surprising that site managers I meet don’t routinely and methodically check their metrics. Check your stats! If your site has a clear bottom line then measuring the effectiveness of the site is easy. Just look at the bottom line and compare the change results. But even if your site has softer goals on your Google analytics, there are always parameters to measure, anything from time spent on site, stickiness or contact submission.
If you have not already done so, set the goals up and start monitoring.

2. Integrity

If you were pulled to too many directions and did not find focus, your site will end up looking as busy as a smorgasbord. Your visitor won’t know what you want from them. And that means you probably lost him. Trust your senses. Take a fresh look at the artistic aspect of the site changes. Ask yourself and relevant focus groups if the site changes make sense and how they affect the overall integrity of your website.

3. The 7 second test

Give seven people seven seconds to look at the site and then tell you what it’s about. If they fail – you are out of focus.


4. Evolution vs. revolution

In most cases, after your online brand is established, business focus, design or copy changes should have an evolutionary nature. Embrace the change, don’t fear it. Make the change part of your ongoing routine. Ultimately, the site will evolve more accurately then in the extreme makeover alternative, in the right direction. Small changes can have tremendous impact.


5. Focus

Know why you are changing and stick to that goal. Avoid unnecessary changes for the sake of changes without having a distinct goal.


6. Don’t fall in love

Don’t fall in love with your work or with the concept or design. Avoid contractors who hold a “take it or leave it” attitude. Your test is not how much change you managed to make to the site’s appearance or behavior– it’s how much change you managed to make to the site’s performance. Keep your mind open to a roll back option and make sure it’s technically easy to implement a roll back.


7. Too many cooks spoil the stew

Do you feel like there are too many cooks in your website change process? Get rid of them! Be open to team work and suggestions but explain to your managers that there has to be a clear project management hierarchy with a single point of decision making. Otherwise, nothing gets done and the change reflects a compromise more than wise decision-making.

Yet still, many companies think ranking in the search engines is enough. Some are even naive enough to thinking ranking for a handful of keywords could make their business a success. That’s why you will notice when you do your own searches, many times you choose one of the top results only to land on a page that does not hold your attention for longer than the time it takes you to click your way off the site. What is even more puzzling is when this happens with PPC – someone was willing to pay for my click, but not willing to invest to ensure i have a positive user experience on their site. Remember that – user experience — we’ll talk about it later, but you better be thinking about it now! But I digress . . .

Despite having moved beyond SEO consulting in the last few years, the WebWhile site still ranks #12 for “SEO Israel” (actually, as of 12/28/09, we are #6 – I did 15 minutes of tweaking a few weeks ago). I find it funny. And even when until a few months ago we were #7 for “SEO Israel”, I’ll let you in on a secret – I am not sure if we got any clients from that fact. That probably has something to do with me telling the callers that we are not an SEO company and trying to explain to them why they may not need an SEO company just yet – but go try to tell an Israeli Marcom that she has to tell her CEO that he is wrong.

Anyway, if we wanted to rank in the top 5, I am sure we would with some additional efforts — but the point is, that is not going to be bring me relevant traffic at this point in time, so why not spend time on what will?

What amazes me is that we rank above the hundreds of SEO consultants in Israel who actually want to get SEO outsourcing jobs. I found this out while running an initial search for a US client. We want to hire an SEO expert that we will manage. I just have a hard time with the idea of hiring someone who can’t get ranked for their own business.

The SEO industry is transitioning – I am not sure if the SEO agencies in Israel have caught up with the transition yet, but they should. It does not make sense for a marketing manager to simply outsource his “SEO” needs and wait for results. Seach Engine Optimization needs to be an integral part of marketing plans on all levels. For this particular client — a doctor in Los Angeles — we’ve been working on SEO for him since the day we first met him and he did not even have a concept defined for the medical Institute he was building. So while I am looking for someone who can handle the SEO professionally, that person will be fortunate enough to inherit a back office built for SEO, with all the on-page SEO elements he could dream about. He just needs to get out there and get his hands dirty in all the annoying, boring off-site optimization tasks. And while he brings us the relevant traffic – we will be busy continuing to maximize the conversions, strengthen the positioning and ensure the site’s visibility among all target markets.

Trike is used when it’s not possible to drive a car through the area Google wants to map to deliver their wonderful “Street View.” Having myself been doing some remote US real estate searches, I find Street View indispensable and was very disappointed when I could not access a street view of a property I was interested in.

Mapping and GPSing are soon to cover every piece of earth’s terrain, the ocean floor and deep space. With street view you can already peak into people’s back yards. Big Brother is here and he’s mapping everything he can get access to. Now even the last frontiers of the wilderness cannot hide anymore from Trike.

Next, we can probably expect the ability to view just about everything in real time. No more old videos and stills. I want to see what is happening in downtown Sioux City Iowa and Mt. Kilimanjaro now!

Some people may jump to think, “hey, that’s cool”. And it is. Imagine planning your vacation and first being able to see if people are enjoying themselves, if it is crowded, are there long lines? And even more useful, the unibombers and child abductors of the world will have to work harder to dig deeper into the ground to hide.
But if everyplace on the planet is becoming accessible to us in real time – that includes you and I as well! And how would that affect our lives? As live feeds become so abundant I think we have to ask ourselves where this trend might stop. Knowing Google, they will stop just short of Privacy Infringement and No Foreseeable Capitalization.
But for the sake of posting a warning, let’s pretend there are no limits. In that case, what else should Google map? Well, here are some of my thoughts. You are welcome to comment and add your own.

1. Mapping imaginary places
Imagine the impact of Google mapping imaginary places such as Narnia, Oz or Never Never Land. Mapping them could be a literary catastrophe. Treasure hunting will take only a few hours, The Rocky Horror Picture Show would never have happened since no one would get lost . . .

2. Ethical Mapping
For corporate giants who wish to do no harm but their ego driven conscience keeps pulling them in the wrong direction. The app should have an embedded compass.

3. Send a Trike up your butt.
Well, the technology is there. You can swallow a pill and map things from the other direction, all the way through your intestines. So if Given Imaging and Google get together they can offer the US border patrol images of what’s being smuggled in bodies even sponsor “the asshole of the year contest,” allowing live feeds of colons from around the world.

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