Marketing Yourself

The whole dating game/scene or whatever you want to call it is one big exercise in marketing.

Watch this 1990s dating video (via Boing Boing)

It's very interesting to see how people try and market themselves to attract a partner. The key is standing out, but at the same token you don't want to scare people off.

Marketing that Worked

I recently found myself buying something specifically because of some marketing.

I must have seen this Super Bowl commercial 20 times previously, but last time I saw it something clicked.

Soda/Pop and cola commercials have rarely influenced me mostly because I have never really felt that I could even distinguish between Pepsi and Coca Cola. Recently though (and it may be due to a more sensitive palette from wine/beer tastings) I have found some taste differences between regular and diet colas. I realized that diet colas often have a different taste that is not quite as appealing as their sugary counterparts. This mixed in with seeing the above commercial convinced me to buy a 12 pack of Pepsi Max yesterday. (And I don't even drink soda/pop that often).

So, why did this marketing effort work? The key is having a message that fits in personally and/or fills a void with someone. For me it was a connection that I can have a diet cola (and the caloric savings that entails) along with the taste and enjoyment that a regular cola gives. As well, the commercial tells me that I can still be manly and buy this soda, which is important for men my age.

The key is to let your marketing efforts make a connection with someone. I can watch a commercial for Bumpits but that does not mean I'm going to go out and purchase a set (or two for the price of one). It doesn't make a connection with me, it might for a different audience but not for everyone.

The last part of this concept is that you need to choose your audience. If you try to market to everyone you will end up marketing to no one. If that Pepsi Max commercial had more of a feminine angle it would not have had the same message, and it would be much less effective. Because different audiences are different it is difficult if not impossible to make a connection with everyone using the same marketing message.

Coconut

As you may have seen in one of my recent Tweets that I really like coconut. I thought it best to explain what I meant in that tweet.

You might know that I like experimenting with food. I've been known to create some very interesting "shakes" with some fairly random things thrown in there. Within the last week, I've added coconut as an additional topping to my toast. The first test was toast with peanut butter and (creamed) honey, sprinkled coconut on top. I really liked that, as it increased the delicious factor quite a bit. I ran out of creamed honey after trying this combination twice, so last night I tried it on my peanut butter and raspberry jam toast, it was also very very good.

Therefore, I can't think of anything that I've put coconut on where it hasn't been made better. I have tried it on/with things other than toast as well.

I've also found that coconut is quite the polarizing food. When you ask most people it will either be love or hate, very rarely somewhere in between.

How are your results?

Have you recently searched your name on a search engine? I know it kind of seems fairly egocentric and narcissistic but it is important.

Especially since I am currently job hunting, I decided to search my name recently on the big three search engines: Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

Here are my results as of this post:

Google - 8, 6, 4
Bing - 10, 6, 1
Yahoo - 10, 6, 2

Numbers are specific results about me on each of the first three pages of the results (each out of 10).

As you can see, Bing and Yahoo are much better on the first page. All three are tied on the second page for numbers of results, and the third page varied.

For marketing purposes it is important to show up at the top of the results, which means the first page and the top of that page. Check out this article (via Seth Godin) about eye tracking studies. So this is a good thing for me, in all three of the top search engines.

However, I kind of feel bad for other anyone else named Luke Moritz, cause I'm getting all the play time. So does this mean that these search engines are actually doing their job? They are showing results for Luke Moritz, and for me they are very relevant, but are they the best they can be?

I guess I'm just hoping that nobody else that shares my name comes along and makes more of a web impact.

What does searching your name give you?

Photos from East Coast Trip

Check out my flickr stream for my latest pictures from my East Coast trip last month. I put up only a few, and hopefully it will give you an idea of the trip.

Book Update

A while back I shared that I had started a new book. If you know me at all you will also know that I often take a long time to finish books when I start reading them.

Recently I have tried to become a little more intentional in reading more regularly. This means I have done a lot more reading recently, especially in "The Age of Spiritual Machines" by Ray Kurzweil.

The chapter I read this morning was all about Kurzweil's technology predictions for the year 2009 that he wrote in 1998 (the book was published in 1999). I found it very interesting to see what a very intelligent futurist thought about what our time would be like. In a lot of respects he was right, and in a lot of respects he was wrong. The biggest aspect that has not come true like he imagined is speech to text applications. His idea was that keyboards would be rarely used and even found on computers and that speech to text synthesis would be the primary means of "writing" on a computer. I'm still using a keyboard for almost all my communication on the keyboard, how about you?

Some other predictions of note, computers would be prevalent throughout the home and clothing. Most people would carry around lightweight computers without keyboards (iPhones/Touch based smartphones anyone?). Cancer and other diseases would no longer be a leading cause of death due to bioengineering etc.

The next chapter is predictions for 2019. That should also be interesting.

Dave Matthews Band Concert - 8/30/2009

Here is my quick review of the Dave Matthews Band concert this past Sunday.

It was my first Dave Matthews Band concert, I heard they put on a pretty good show, which was my main reason for wanting to go. I was not disappointed. The jam sessions were great and the sound was a great level, not too loud to bust out your ear drums.

I will admit that I'm not the biggest Dave Matthews Band fan, where I'm not even familiar with a lot of their songs. I do enjoy their music though, and their concert was no exception.

I do have a question for those that went to the concert here in Fresno (and presumably on this tour). Was the video screen behind the stage comprised of large LED panels or was it a slatted screen for a projected image? I had pondered it throughout the evening, and I'd love to know what other people thought.

LED Panels - Quite bright, and when the images were shown on itself (the camera was pointed in part at the image in the background) the secondary image looked quite pixelated. As well, in some of the connecting points between the panels, the image was off. This would suggest not a projected image, but it could have been created by multiple projectors.

Slatted screen for a projected image - It would have had to be very reflective to be as bright during certain parts of the concert. One thing that makes me think this was a possibility is that there were parts of the image not projected on the main panels that showed up on the curtains behind panels throughout the concert, making the image more continuous than the odd shape the panels had.

Please comment with your thoughts.