I'm normally not in the practice of admitting when i'm wrong.  In this case i'll make an exception. :)

About a year and a half ago I wrote a blog article entitled “Does Anti-Smoking Advertising Remind us to Smoke?”.  The premise of the article was that we get it, smoking is bad and we’re quitting.  The more you remind us about smoking (positive or negative) the more its on our mind.  My suspicion was that anti-smoking ads, namely those sponsored by tobacco companies not only fail to deter young people from smoking, but encourage them to take up the habit. Nothing is more alluring than the thing you’re not supposed to do. And that allure increases the more often you’re reminded not to do it.

Happy New Year All!

One of the first things I did this year (professionally) was have a look at all my various social media tools and accounts to make sure they were aligned and ready for the year ahead.   It got me thinking about which goals I should set and what expectations to have from the blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIN, etc. for 2012.  Since I've been neck deep in this all throughout the holidays, It just made sense to blog about it as well.

I recently read an article published by the Assisted Living Today which touches on the effects of social media on the human brain.  I guess there are no other species that currently utilize social media so until Zuckerberg starts a Facebook for dogs, we'll just call it "the brain".

The most startling takeaway is the average attention span ten years ago was 12 minutes - Now it's just  five seconds.

This is really an unintentional two-parter of my earlier Cyber Monday post from November 28th entitled "Cyber Monday Is Here To Stay".  If you didn't like that one, I guess you're out of luck again. :)

In 2010, Cyber Monday sales topped $1 billion in the United States, making it the highest day for online retail on record. Add to this the fact that even more retailers are discounting their products on Black Friday — The message is getting through and online consumers are responding. Sales for products and services online this past Friday November 25th were up by 24.3% compared to last year, according to an IBM survey of 500 retailers.

...But Where Did It Come From?

I don’t know about you but my inbox was flooded with "Cyber Monday" deals when I got into the office this morning.  It got me thinking about the origin of this new shopping phenomenon.  I did a little research and here's what I found…

You can’t reach your audience until you know what they have in common.

Consider:  On one hand, you have a 24-year-old welder, living in a small house in a small town;  on the other, you have a 32-year-old university-educated hipster art director, living in a loft in a ‘creative’ area of Toronto.  What do they have in common?

Not everything should be advertised with cupcakes.

In my travels around the interwebs lately, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in online advertising: Cupcakes.

Today alone I counted 14 different online ads, for 14 different products (none of them cupcakes or even bakeries, by the way), which featured brightly coloured images of cupcakes.

You’ve spent a lot of time and money defining your target.
How well do you know your actual customers?

There's a reason this picture is creeping you out. We're not comfortable with faceless people.

The other day we talked about how it can be hard to draw a straight line from ‘advertising’ to ‘impressions’, and from there to actual ’sales’.

But there’s a fantastic, underutilized source of information about how well your online advertising is working:  Your online customers.

Measuring advertising isn’t a new problem.
Social media hasn’t made it any worse.

When I was first working in advertising, I read a quote that’s always stuck with me, because I mostly think it’s true:  ”I know half of my advertising dollars are wasted.  I just don’t know which half.”  The quote is attributed to John Wanamaker, the famous department store mogul – who died in 1922.