While traveling in Thailand I was pissed to see that Internet Cafe’s are forcing users to use Internet Explorer. No, this isn’t a Microsoft conspiracy to force users to use their crappy product for their financial/advertising gain. It’s because these Thai Internet cafe operators know that Firefox is way faster than Internet Explorer and therefore users have to spend more time on the computers and they can charge you more Baht for usage. I proved this by installing FireFox only to see it removed from the computer after 2 day’s time. Has anyone seen this in the United States or other countries? If so, please leave a comment and I will approve it.

I’m sick and tired of seeing people use Internet Explorer on their personal computers as well - WAKE UP! Firefox is programmatically far more advanced then Internet Explorer. Firefox is faster, more compatible with Gmail, Google Reader, eBay, Amazon, flash websites, and basically any website. Oh, did I mention, Internet Explorer sucks. Stop using Interet Explorer it is full of bugs, programmatic errors, and incompatible with major web portals.

Another upsetting discovery I made about Internet Explorer is that they are trying to compete with Google through unscrupulous methods. When you type in google.com you are directed to Windows Live to perform your search. Unless you put in www.google.com you can’t access google. Furthermore, when you type in an incorrect domain name, Internet Explorer, automatically performs a search query through Live trying to find the website you are looking for. Sadly, Microsoft still only has 10% or so of global searches even with these bait and switch type methods.

Marketing in Thailand, the USA, Africa, Europe, and all over the world is outrageously racist - even though it’s not intentional. Billboards, commercials, websites, and other forms of marketing exemplify white skinned people in predominately dark skinned countries. I don’t quite understand why this is? I doubt that it is racist in itself, but dark skinned people around the globe are most certainly discriminated against. Instead, I think that the global economy puts a “premium” on Caucasian features, and wrongly so, to their own detriment and to the detriment of dark skinned people everywhere. Therefore, the marketing departments of major corporations create advertising pieces that utilize “white” looking people with some Asian features, just not their skin. The Asian features that I notice in the models that appear in marketing pieces are: slightly angled eyes and black hair; if it wasn’t for these features you would think they were white people and from Kansas City. Below are some pictures that I captured on the way to the King of Bangkok’s international airport:

Notice that in this clothing Billboard the model is white and exemplifies business, success, and happiness. This is in a country (Thailand) where the majority of its citizens are of dark color.

This is an advertisement for clothing again and shows a young white couple dressed hip, trendy, and cool. Again, this is in Thailand where youngsters are being told through advertisements that white is the most beautiful color, the best color, the coolest color.

Here is a billboard for Thai Airways and shows a white looking Thai woman in the lower left hand corner. I was looking for a woman that looked like this in Thailand - believe me - I looked very hard and couldn’t find her. Another example of corporations using white people to advertise products and services in a society that is dominantly dark skinned.

Above is another airline advertisement from Bangkok Air; I believe, but yet shows another example of white skin being advertised in countries that are dominantly dark skinned. When will the world stop looking at white skin as superior? I think marketers and advertisers need to wake up the fact that advertising dark skinned people is actually a very effective way to advertise. In America many brands have successfully used dark skinned models to advertise their clothing lines and services. Brands such as American Apparal realize that using people of color is not only cool and beautiful - but also progressive and socially “cool” and therefore white people recognize this and want to be associated with social change; social prosperity, intelligence, and equality for all.

BannerBlindness.com is launching a new low budget modeling and photography business in the next few months. If your business needs low budget modeling that features your products or services please call 843-425-3566 (9-5 PM CST) or email Support@BannerBlindness.com

When our new modeling website is available I will update this post with the domain.

If your company is still advertising on major display advertising networks such as Specific Media, 24/7 Real Media, CPX Interactive, Double Click, adGardner, etc….? STOP and re-negotiate your rates or STOP advertising on these networks all together. It is costing you an arm and a leg for shitty results. Yes, that’s right, shitty results. You may be featured on some of the most prominent websites, but you are also paying an arm and a leg and your banners are “blind” to the audience you are trying to reach. Only two out of ten impressions actually “see” your banner and out of that 20% only 1/10 will click on your ad, resulting in a CTR of around .02%. That’s pathetic, we regularly get 1%+ CTR with the banners and placement we create. But wait, there is a better way: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Adsonar (AOL). Dump your CPM buys and buy CPC - you will actually get traffic.

BannerBlindness.com regularly delivers hundreds of thousands of unique visitors to major portals looking to grow their subscriber base. Why would you want to pay for an impression when you can actually pay for a visitor. We can help - yes this is a shameless plug post promoting our services. We recently helped BuddyTV.com generate tens of thousands of new users. They are in a battle with TV.com for online market share of “online television social-networking”. This is the bread and butter way for major television networks to attract viewers for prime time television shows.

CPC advertising on a display network is cheaper and far more effective than purchasing hundreds of thousands of dollars of CPM buys throughout the year. Again: why would you pay for an impression when you can pay for an actual visitor. So you might be saying, and this is a common statement; “Well it’s worth it to pay for CPM advertising when your banners are very targeted” or “We have such a large marketing budget that we can’t achieve our goals through a cpc buy”. WRONG. I don’t have the time to conduct an actual statistical investigation into how much more effective cpc advertising is vs. cpm advertising - but I can assure you, that the observations and actual experience that my 10 years of online advertising experience disprove any notion that CPM advertising is EVER more effective then cpc advertising. Companies like Blue Lithium, Right Media, Advertising.com, etc… were founded on a performance based model; but quickly warped into CPM advertising as they saw an incredible opportunity to rip off major corporations through HUGE CPM buys. What the hell does a 60 year old marketing manager know about CPM buys? NOTHING.

The major online display advertising networks have been milking major corporations with major advertising budgets for years. I was discussing with an associate of mine recently, that even though major corporations like Budweiser, Ford, GM, Toyota, etc… may be losing out big on CPM advertising; it’s still probably yielding better results then traditional media buys (magazines, television, radio). So they may be getting ripped off, but at least it’s not as bad as it could be. But it’s time to get smart, and it’s time to get lean — corporations! Stop throwing your share holder money down the CPM toilet, and start paying for actual visitors not just impressions!

Contact Banner Blindness if you are interested in making a major dent in your daily and monthly uniques. We have helped clients double their daily traffic numbers, and achieve metrics such as: registrations, newsletter sign-ups, purchases, recurring visitors, landing page optimization, etc… We can very affordably and quickly send you hundreds of thousands of unique visitors through large CPC buys using all the major advertising networks. Additionally, if you are a publisher (as many of our clients are) you will be arbitraging your purchase with us, as you will make it up on the number of impressions you can serve based on the number of unique visitors we deliver. Remeber, only pay for for unique visitors - NEVER just impressions.

Steve Balmer is widely recognized as the insane CEO who repeatedly chanted: “Developers, developers, developers, developers.” This mantra would bode well for Yahoo, and a Micro-Hoo base company. I have been doing online marketing and advertising for nearly 10 years, and it seems like Yahoo just doesn’t spend time developing their advertising platform. It appears that they spend time managing it, but not improving or advancing their advertising platform. Shame on you Yahoo, you let Google get the best of you. I’m not sure why, but I have some guesses.For nearly a decade Yahoo inflated their earnings by charging a minimum of 10 cents a click. It wasn’t till recently did Yahoo finally change this policy, but from reports from other online marketing blogs; little seems to have changed. A lot of talk, but no action Yahoo - typical Yahoo.

Yahoo is like a spoiled little boy that loses interest in his toys, only wanting new ones to satisfy his ego. Purchases like Right Media, Blue Lithium, etc… have cost billions, and will take a decade or more to recoup those investments. It would have made more sense for Yahoo to develop their content network, instead of letting just a handful of employees take years to finally bring it out of beta (ooops, is it still in beta?) Why the 10 cents minimum cost for advertisers still on the network? Why not unleash the gates of publishing and allow more publishers into the network? Quality control? I think not. Lack of employee empowerment, I think so.

Yahoo spends more time thinking about what it’s going to do next, then doing anything at all. For over 3 months Microsoft and Yahoo have been going back and forth about a price tag. Yahoo wants more money so senior execs and large shareholders can make as much as possible. Microsoft isn’t stupid, their not going to pay through the teeth and screw themselves over in the process. Yahoo executives are busy spending their time saving their jobs and their asses; not improving their search technology or advertising platform.

Yahoo has fleeced advertisers for years, delivering shitty, overpriced results that generally result in negative ROI’s for their advertisers. Super affiliates/marketers took the Yahoo publishing network for millions of dollars. Just look at the impressive checks these wise-asses post on their blogs. How were they doing it? They were web masters of online arcade websites and blended YPN (Yahoo Publisher Network) advertisements into their website. The YPN control panel allowed publishers to choose what niche their advertisements were. So why not display realestate development or legal advertisements? They were blended so well, that users of these websites had no idea what they were clicking. Sort of the bizzaro world of “banner blindness”

Yahoo needs to stop fucking around and immediately take action to improve business performance and return shareholder value. Getting rid of Terry Semel was the first step. The second step is to focus on your core competencies. If Microsoft is going to aggressively pursue a purchase of Yahoo by buying up shares on the open market, so be it; and it might cost Microsoft even more then $31-$33 a share. Stop buying display advertising networks. There are only so many publishers, and they already work with all the majors. Start-up display advertising networks are being overvalued. Now that Yahoo has the components to compete with Google; start competing with them! Don’t let your platform continue to languish, COPY GOOGLE ADWORDS. Sorry to say it Yahoo, but there is no shame in copying Google Adwords.

Google Adwords is integrating the entire advertising agency in one simple platform. After just a week of using Google Adwords nearly anyone can figure out how to use it. Empower your users Yahoo! Why cause first time advertisers frustration by requiring them to have certain spend limits before upgrading their upload capabilities? I quote Steve Balmer again Yahoo, “Developers, developers, developers, developers!”

I see it time and time again - the more granular a business owner operates his/her business: the more successful it is.  When touring the islands off the SE coast of Thailand you get to observe hundreds of retail stores and restaurants.  The more granular the proprietors of these businesses are; the more successful they are - at least I assume.  I dont have financial data to back up my assumptions, but I can easily observe that the more granular a business operator is the more customers they have.

Mr. K’s restaurant is on a main road on the island of Koh-Phangan and is very granular in their business operations.  The restaurant is like any other restaurant; it has tables, chairs, coolers, a cash register, a menu, etc…  However, it’s the small (granular) elements that make this the most successful restaurant on the island.  The following are the granular observations I made while eating at this restaurant:

• The employees wear matching shirts and rotate their shirts on a daily basis
• A few of the employees speak english and ask you about where you come from and your journey
• They give patrons yellow paper to discuss their dining and travel experience.  There were hundreds of these testimonials neatly plastered across the walls
• Word of mouth: the yellow paper and exceptional customer service encourages travelers to tell other travelers about their dining experience.  I told at least 5 travelers about the restaurant.
• Presentation: the restaurant takes the necessary time to ensure that their food presentation is perfect each and every time
• Matching their menu to the tastes of their patrons.  They have food for people from nearly every country in the world.  Burgers and pizza for Americans.  Thai food for Thai.  Spaghetti and ravioli for Americans.  Pancakes for the Dutch.  Additionally, their menu is simple and straight forward.  Usually I notice that more successful restaurants have a “less is more” type attitude with their menus.  However, Mr.s K’s make their huge menu straight forward and simple to read, therefore; it’s still successful.
• An exceptional product.  Mr. K’s food was exceptional.  I don’t think you could order anything from the menu and be dissapointed.

The example above is an example of a granular business that was succintly run.  Is your business granular and succinctly operated?  I would bet that if your not satisfied with your bottom line; chances are that you aren’t running your business at a granular level.  What do your business cards look like?  What level of customer service do you offer your customers?  What type of color scheme is your logo/presence?  If you want to succeed and be the best in your niche - you need to get granular.  There is a famous chinese proverb that says, “People don’t trip on mountains, they trip on stones.”  In the business world, businesses don’t succeed because they dont gather up the stones into a mountain.

If I wasn’t so established in the United States I would move to Thailand, Bali, China, India, Indonesia, or ANY third world country to start a business based on basic marketing and branding principles.  I’m currently in Thailand and amazed at the number of companies that have names like “Goi Chin Limited Trading Company” “Hang Seung Group” “Mokrat Hanolup Co.”  On a bus I saw Colonel Sanders from KFC “Kentucky Fried Chicken” - this is branding.  My sister made a simple yet poignant observation when she stated that the best billboards don’t “say” anything but the actual name of the company “a.k.a…the brand”.  So many start-ups, medium sized companies, entrepreneurs, and even corporations don’t FULLY realize what a brand is and what brand marketing is.  The following are some simple principles to consider when developing a marketing campaign based on a brand:

You need a logo.  A logo is a picture or text that is a “graphic”.  A “graphic” is professionally done, stands out from plain text, is attractive to the eye, and most importantly it is SIMPLE.  Less is more when creating a logo.

Your logo should include an image that represents the primary function of your business.  In the KFC example there is a bucket with Fried Chicken and Colonel Sanders.

When creating a billboard advertisement just advertise your Brand (logo).

The name of your company should be one word.  For example: McDonalds, Google, Yahoo, Chipotle, Dicks.  Antithesis: Panda Express, Sports Authority, etc…

In Thailand there are approximately 65 million people.  Pareato’s 80/20 principle tells us that approximately 50 million people work to support the 15 million (or upper/middle class) in Thailand.  The 15 million people are who businesses want to be targeting as they are the ones with disposable income.  15 million people is 1/5 the population of people in the US with disposable income; therefore, foreign countries present a tremendous opportunity to brand marketers.  Additionally, as 3rd world countries begin to roll-out more credit cards and other credit instruments (leases, mortgages, notes, etc…) you will see increased spending and less saving.

I would like to feature a project we have recently completed and discuss direct response marketing, and how to get your product on TV.  We recently completed the website, infomercial, and marketing for the following direct response product:

www.ElectronicLicensePlate.com

We hope the product will be a big seller - so our clients are happy and we are happy (of course).  Lets discuss some important components of a successful direct response online marketing campaign:

• Sex sells, be certain to use beautiful women and men in your marketing pieces.  BASICALLY: If your not using sexy women or men, your not marketing correctly.
• Testimonials, Testimonials, Testimonials….You need testimonials (video, pictures, and write-ups).
• Performance based marketing - Call us at 843-425-3566 or email Support@BannerBlindness.com to discuss how we can get your product on a CPA basis with major display advertising networks.  This type of advertising costs you nothing unless they sell one of your items.  Companies like BlueLthium recently acquired by Yahoo will advertise your products for FREE so long as they sell and you can offer them a competitive CPA (cost per action).
• Blogs - use a blog!  Blogs are dynamic websites that are easy to update and utilize in a guerilla marketing campaign.  So if you want other blogs and user generated media sites to link to you, you need to get them to you, and this is really only possible with a blog - thats because you blog about something that makes other blogs want to link to you (because you baited them).  This is a basic marketing (not advertising) principle - but very difficult to visualize and achieve.

Some marketing mistakes that direct response marketers make:

• They don’t use attractive males or females to push their products in videos and pictures.
• They don’t use testimonials, but an in-effective and unknown infomercial actor.
• They purchase CPM advertising without the use of an adserver and lose thousands.  Advertise on a PERFORMANCE basis and have a good tracking system in place to prevent advertising agency scrubs.
• Make it difficult to purchase an item.  So that means, offer your product for $4.95 - customer only has to purchase the shipping, and if not returned, you get billed the full amount.  But you can make people aware of the full shipping price by making them check of a terms and conditions box.  To see examples of this look at colon cleaning pills and weight loss patches/pills.

If you need a direct response marketing campaign and website created please call 843-425-3566 or email Support@BannerBlindness.com

I would prefer if you emailed myself and my staff will be traveling in India to meet with our outsourced employees and independent providers.

Yahoo recently reported that the finest wines in Europe are being sold to China on an ever increasing scale.  Wines are going for record amounts as Billionaire, and Multi-Millionaire slave masters and neo-Capitalist-Communist party leaders, are purchasing the fine wines with their ever increasing pocket books.  As the ultra rich have so much money they have to find places to put it; there is just THAT MUCH of it.  Leaders in the United States need to learn that in order to be the economic and global banking masters of this world we need to stop spending more money then we have by printing more and more money - you are fleecing your people and pimping out the people!  You are ruining us from the inside out, and making other countries our masters and far more powerful then us economically and militarily.  Ask your government to stop taxing us so much and spending our money, and then some, and therefore serve its people, instead of US serve them.  I would encourage Americans to fund political action committees that can press politicians to introduce radical legislation to eliminate government spending and taxation.

I regularly post screen shots of DrudgeReport.com as I usually view very good marketing pieces there.  Ben Stein has released a new movie called Expelled The Movie.  It’s a documentary about Intelligent Design, science, and religion.  One of the actors/professors in the movie is Richard Dawkins - Dawkins recently became famous around the world for espousing that “God” is no more real than a Goblin, Elf, Fairy, or Zeus himself.  Dawkins has been a master at manipulating the media for the past few years.  It seems like Dawkins spends more time doing media and public relations than doing research for Oxford and science.  I have to say, that if he wasn’t as intelligent as he is he wouldn’t have come as far as he has, and his logically based arguments are really good.  Dawkins is a great debater and a brilliant metaphysicist.  Below are the two screen shots of Ben Stein’s latest foray into Hollywood and political/intellectual broadcasting.  I was unable to get the rich media advertisement to expand again on DrugeReport.com after viewing it once.  Go watch the preview of Expelled The Movie - it looks great.  I wonder how many people in the US though wouldn’t rather watch Hannah Montana.

I keep seeing Sarah Marshal advertisements that don’t look like advertisements - instead their making people ask, “what the fuck is Sarah Marshal?”  It’s a movie from the creator of Superbad, Knocked Up, 40-yr old virgin, etc…  Below is a MySpace skin and is an example of cutting edge marketing (millions of people are going to see this movie because of this skin):

In addition to the skin there was a flash based movie that previewed the movie.  The first time I saw a Sarah Marshal advertisements was when I was at the airport and I saw it being displayed on the top of a Taxi.  Next thing I know, I see it on a billboard, now MySpace, and probably television next (if I watched it).  I can only imagine what the marketing budget for this movie must be.  This has been one of the smartest and best executed mass movie marketing campaigns I have seen in a while.  So it begs the questions, are the movies good, or is the marketing good?

I recently purchased a Dell CPU, 30-inch flat screen monitor, mouse, keyboard, and other accessories; totaling nearly $3000. This is probably a lot more than the average Dell customer spends; and the level of customer service sucks - that is if you hate dealing with someone in India that could care less about your situation. Below is the copy of the invoice that I receive every month, and the last letter that I have written Dell regarding my purchase:

I’m upset because Dell is outsourcing their finance collections and using Indian labor to relentlessly pound their customers with telephone calls. They are also screwing with my credit by reporting my late payment. These Indians are rather smart as well; they call with blocked telephone numbers, an 800 type looking number, and overseas numbers, in order to make it look like a different call (they do this because people like me pick up and hang up, or never answer). If you read the letter above, you will see that I returned my unopened purchases but Dell is trying to collect on the shipping charges. I was fully prepared to accept delivery of the goods I ordered, but FEDEX was unwilling to attempt to ship to me again, and Dell was completely worthless and could do nothing to insure I received the shipment. So kill me, I’m at the office busting my ass for my clients and unable to take receipt of a $3K purchase, so take the effort and bring it to my residence one more time.

The next telephone call I receive from an outsourced Indian doing debt collections, I will record and post on this website for the world to see. Hopefully, Dell will start treating it’s customers with more respect and Dell’s market value wont look the way that it does. Please comment on this post if you have experienced similar problems.

I don’t hate Dell, I think they make a reasonably good product, for a good price; and I just recently purchased another laptop from them. But this Dell Preferred Finance account has been a horrible experience. The reason they have the Preferred account option is that they want to make additional money by allowing you to borrow from them, and you can’t dispute this with your credit card. Otherwise, VISA would have already been notified and I would have won the dispute for the shipping charges. If Dell rectifies this situation, I will certainly report on it and recommend my readers to purchase Dell products; but till that happens, DON’T PURCHASE FROM DELL SUCKS.

The producer of the above video discuss how to make your viral video go “viral” on youtube and other social media properties. This item was featured on Digg, then made it onto YouTube’s most daily watched, and thus it went “viral”.