OurielOhayon

McCain logos: this had to happen

I spotted the logo case recently. On my way back to the airport in NYC i saw a McCain ad that was surfing on that trend. I googled McCain ads and here is what i found. A full site dedicated to McCain potatoes built on the elections. With Videos from PNN (Potatoe News Network). Fun!



I am sure a new brand of Chips will come up called Obama.

Got 5 million dollars? Go buy Israel.com

In the early days of domain registration Jean Noel Frydman acquired Israel.com to prevent mailicious usage of the domain. Today he decided to Sell it for a minimum price of 5.5 million dollars during the TRAFFIC conference that will take place in Orlando. He claims money won't do all and will eventually decided on the acquirer once he makes sure he's worth it.

I would doubt the Israeli government let this go. But after all why not? I met at the IVA conference a startup that has acquired Jerusalem.com (for a fair amount of money..) so will see.

FYI America.com will also be on sale at 5 million dollars price point

Via IsraelValley

Technorati Tags: domain israel.com conference TRAFFIC orlando israel

Should an internet startup outsource its marketing activities?

I was speaking last week at a Panel on Internet startups and Branding. One of the underlying assumptions to this panel was the fact that in Israel we are strong in making great technos but not so great at marketing them. I would say this is strongly changing mainly because a new wave of entrepreneurs is getting more and more exposed to consumer ventures and face the challenge to build brands and service that address directly the end user specially in the internet space.

Historically most high tech ventures in Israel have been non end-consumers oriented and more enterprise focused. I remember when i first arrive in Israel four years ago i could count on two hands the number of companies with an international internet consumer brand.

This has now changed a lot. You can find here dozens of new projects addressing directly end users. But those project have to face the difficult phase of attracting users and keeping them. Which requires a strong marketing culture within the company.

One of the attendees defended the idea that the same way you can outsource finance, legal and other stuff you can outsource marketing in order to solve that issue. I answered this was wrong to believe that someone else can do better something that you should do with excellence from day 1.

Finance and Legal are very rarely key competences in the young life of an internet startup. they are important but not key. Therefore it makes sense to outsource them. But if your service is all about seducing, attracting and understanding the user, the marketing is a key competence of the company. Even more: the whole DNA of the company should be imprinted with marketing. From the CEO to the product team. Marketing is not a function or a title: it is the company. Marketing is about having a great product, a great user experience, a good logo and brand identity, a good customer service, a good distribution road map, a good customer acquisition program and even more important a good customer retention program. Marketing is not about sales (which is always mistaken in israel where there is only one word for both). Marketing is not Business Development. Marketing is about how your company interact with your users at all level.

I do not know any successful web service that did not have a great understanding from within when they started. And one of the key symptoms of that is the quality of the execution. If you do not know how to execute well and assimilate fast the feedback around your execution there is low chance you'll make a difference and there is low chance your users will feel it too. This is why it is recommended to get out there with your product early and start to learn on to improve things with your users.

Let's take PR for example: do you need a PR firm from day 1? There are great PR firms out there, but you can start to do the job without at least at the beginning. StyleShake is a company we have invested in: they do not have a PR firm, not even a PR person inside. but the product and the concept is so good that they are naturally covered by the best papers and blogs (BBC, Wired, Financial Times, SpringWise...)..If this goes one they will have to scale it probably with a PR firm. But for now they do very well. You can the attention of bloggers by simply talking to them directly (of course not by sending a Press Release) or by being smart (Twitter for example just put wide screens at SXSW conference last year to get attention of bloggers)

If you think you don't have the necessary skills inside the company for that, then here is my advice: spend all your energy in finding the right key persons and bring them within the company.

Later, with scale, once you have proven you start to find the right pattern for success you will need to outsource some part of it (PR, media buying, SEO, strategy maybe,..). If you have some budget you can afford a consultant that will assist you. But outsourcing rightly is not replacing what you should already know and it requires time and skill.

There are at least 3 good reasons you'll never get a great outcome from a marketing provider if you don't know how do it yourself

• You won't know how to best select your provider
• you won't know how to best brief and pilot your provider
• You won't know how to best evaluate him

Like a great yogurt brand says in its base line: all the goods things start from within

The Power of viral videos for Startups

If you read TechCrunch you may have noted the viral video of Modu (Disclosure: a portfolio company of my employer). Although i usually feed TechCrunch editors with some leads for stories on Israeli Startups this time this was not the case and i asked Erick Schoenfeld how he got the story

He simply received this video that teased him enough to write the post that provoked a lot of reactions and that was seen already more than 5300 times in less than 12 hours. The video does not really explain what the product is nor what the company does. But it is good enough (including their fantastic temporary site) to create curiosity and engage with readers

When used right, viral videos are really powerful. More than sending a PR or pitching bloggers/journalists. A similar thing happened with 5min.com a few months ago with their VC videos (that i am still being forwarded months after).

What makes a video viral? here is the question. there is no easy answer. but this is a video that has an inner trigger for action once your done with it. If someone has the answer please post it here.

There are two more usage made of videos (not always viral) by internet startups

Video Guide: explaining your users how to use your site in a video is something more powerful than any FAQ. Actually if you pay attention most new websites come with a ScreenCast or demo video. Making a good one is not easy but many tools out there enable you to do it for free.

Elevator Pitch: Vator.tv is a good example of that and TechCrunch runs a story about it today

Technorati Tags: viral videos, videos, modu, mobile

The WOW effect of Imagini

Sometimes i get this WOW effect. Last time was for ENSO. Today is for the new imagini service called Christmas Gift Finder which suggests you gift ideas based on a short visual test. The user interface is just stunning (maybe a bit heavy on top right).

I also suggest you take their personality test which is really well done and will draw your visual DNA in a few seconds. You can also compare with millions of other users which is fun.

The user experience registration process and simplicity of the service deserves a full 10/10

 

Read my VisualDNA™     Get your own VisualDNA™

 

Technorati tags: imagini, friends, discovery, christmas

The 2 "import contacts" problems of social web applications

Many of the new web application got very quick viral development through the feature called "import contacts", meaning you can import your address book from most webmails and sometimes from key other application like Outlook or ThunderBird.

With that feature you can in a couple of clicks import your friends' email and then send them an invite to join you wherever you are. There are only 2 important problems

• When you import your contact book, none of the web services is doing a smart display of who are of most important contacts and therefore you need to select manually among those you want to invite.
• But the worst problem is that the contacts imported are only those you decide to import at that specific moment. What about the future contacts that are not yet in my list?  My gmail contacts list for eg. increases after that and once i have invited joined the new service and invited my friends it is very unlikely i go through that process again.

What should be done?

• Webmails should create a list of most used contacts and share them in their apis
• Social Networks and applications should be able to ask the permission to the users to run that process for him at a variable frequency (or send an optin alert every quarter) and alert the user automatically when a new friend from his contact his is already in the application and who among the "new" top contacts are not in yet.

What is also missing to ALL social application invitation systems is the possibility to import in one click and invite my contacts on my mobile phone which are in essence probably the most important ones.

Will probably come one day. Maybe an idea for a startup?

Technorati Tags: invitation system, social network, contact list

Difference between Marketing, PR, Advertising, and Branding: a brilliant illustration

Many companies i meet want to do Marketing, PR, advertising and Branding but very little know the difference. Here is a brilliant visual illustration i shamelessly copied from Pronet Advertising.

They should have added one more illustrating Viral Markerting. I would have drawn two women talking together “I was with him, he s a great lover” and the second that would repeat “She was with him he s a great lover”

Tags: marketing, pr, branding

Imagini is a fantastic website

Just try it. And you’ll understand. I like the design, the idea, the user experience, the value, the brand, the business idea…

In a few clicks on some selected pictures you get your visual DNA. The result is pretty powerful. And with that you can do many other interesting stuff like find the perfect gift

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Tags: imagini, dna, friends

Who said there is no creative advertising in YouTube?

…Out of pre roll/post roll invideo advertising and text links ? below an answer. nicely done

Tags: youtube, advertising

Is there a place advertising won't get?

Now on Dry-Cleaning Hangers. And the business even got funded.